Mark 5:21-43. And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” And he went with him.
And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 3And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesusf saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat. (ESV)
It’s hard to be needy—and sometimes it’s even harder to ask for help when you are. The
American ideal is to be a strong and independent person. And it’s so infused our thinking that we sometimes think that Christians are supposed to be strong and independent, as well.
I once asked a priest who had spent years counseling parishioners what he saw that changed in people after they got healed emotionally. I had thought that he would say that they got hurt less by others and became stronger and more independent. But what he said surprised me. He said, “People, when they get healed emotionally, actually hurt more, but they heal faster.”
Today’s reading from Mark 5, verses 21 through 43, includes two very needy, but very different people: Jairus, a ruler in a synagogue, and a poverty-stricken, sick woman. Mark highlights the similarities and the differences between them by showing how Jesus first met with Jairus about his daughter, and then the poor woman, and then with Jairus’ daughter again.
At first comparison, these two people look very different. He is a powerful male, has people around him, and presumably money. She is a woman, with no money, having spent it all on doctors for her illness, and has no one with her. And she can’t even go into the synagogue because her illness defines her as unclean as we know from Leviticus 15; whereas, he is part of the synagogue structure.
Yet both of them are similar in that they are very needy and hopeless. She has nowhere else to turn; and he, wanting his daughter not to die, also comes begging to Jesus.
She, because of her ritual uncleanness is not only unclean herself, but anyone she touches is unclean as well. Likewise, when Jairus’ daughter dies, Jairus’ plan to have Jesus touch his daughter is gone. Jairus had said to Jesus, “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” But his daughter became unclean when she died. This is because in the Levitical system touching a dead person would make you unclean. So Jesus, as a proper holy man or rabbi, should never touch a corpse.
Yet Jesus does touch and is touched by these unclean people. In the temple system, not only could ritual uncleanness be transmitted, but ritual holiness could transmit, as well. And Jesus’ touch transmitted his holiness and health to them.
As to more similarities, both of these people’s hopelessness and problems with being unclean are dealt with in this situation by having faith in Jesus. Jesus tells the woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” And to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.” Jesus was communicating to the woman that because she looked beyond what her eyes could see, she was made well. She trusted Him.
Jairus’ companions, however, could not see into the kingdom Christ was bringing about. They laughed when Jesus said that the daughter was not dead but sleeping. But the term “sleep” here used by Jesus is the term one uses when one believes in the resurrection of the dead. We also see this use of the word “sleep” in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. Paul says in chapter 5 that the Lord Jesus Christ is the one who “died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.” So when Jesus says that Jairus’ daughter is only sleeping—he realizes that she’s actually dead—but he’s viewing her death in light of the coming miracle. Jesus saw behind the veil into the kingdom of God.
The result of both of these healings was awe and amazement. The woman fell down before Jesus in fear and trembling knowing that she had been healed by touching Him. And when Jairus’ daughter started walking around, the people around her were “overcome with amazement.” This wonder that these miracles inspired helped the bystanders and those involved to see God as having moved among them, just like, as it says earlier in Mark’s gospel, that after Jesus healed the paralytic the people “were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’”
The last similarities in this event are that these healings happen both to daughters who are associated with the number twelve. Jairus’s daughter is twelve years old. And Jesus calls the woman with the twelve years of hemorrhaging, “Daughter.” Perhaps Jairus’ temple and Levitical system served him well up until this point, until the point when his daughter, through no fault of her own, died and became “unclean.” Then this system failed him, and he became desperate. But did he realize that this system had been failing this “daughter” of Israel for twelve years, in deeming her unclean and untouchable through no fault of her own? She’d been “dead” for twelve years, unable to touch or be touched. As psychologists tell us, people die when they are excluded—yet they come alive when they are included.
When people come to us as Christians for healing, either physical or emotional, we have help for their desperation. People aren’t supposed to be strong, independent individuals, as the synagogue ruler discovered. We all need each other. We all need to touch and be touched. And God has given us of His Spirit so that we can become, as Francis of Assisi said, “little christs” to each other. Through Him we can bring each other healing, emotional and physical. And in our resulting wonder, we will glorify God.
Jesus’ final words to the woman were, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” The peace Christ blessed her with restored her to a proper relationship with God. She was not unclean anymore and would soon have unrestricted access to the new temple in Christ through faith.
The Hebrew term for peace was “shalom.” Shalom in the Hebrew is a rich word. It means wholeness, well-being, prosperity, security, friendship, and salvation.
Since Christ’s resurrection, we all now have access to this kind of healed relationship with God, through faith in Christ. He offers to include us in His Body, the Church—a place of healing and the shalom of wholeness, well-being, prosperity, security, friendship, and salvation. His offer to us all is—as it was to the woman in this story—“Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”
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