30 June 2024 Pentecost 6
2 Samuel 1.1, 1.17-27 Psalm 130 2 Corinthians 8.7-15 Mark 5.21-43
Our gospel presents us with two different types of healing. The healing of Jairus’ daughter begins and ends our passage, and in the middle we find the story of the woman with the flow of blood. These two come from the opposite ends of the social ladder, and Jesus responds to them both without hesitation or bias. Jairus is wealthy and well respected, yet his daughter’s impending death brings him to the point of desperation. As a leader in the synagogue, he may previously have looked at Jesus with suspicion, but that is forgotten now and he comes begging Jesus to heal his daughter, and Jesus immediately responds. The woman comes with similar desperation. She is a social and spiritual outcast, alienated from family, community, and religion. She may also have been internalising those judgements often heard in her day (and may be even today) that her predicament is an indication of her sinfulness; that God is somehow punishing her for an unknown sin. And today she sees her last hope arriving by boat.
We are told this ‘unnamed’ woman has ‘tried everything’ to no avail, but I also imagine that Jairus has as well. He, like the woman, has probably pleaded with physicians, asked his colleagues for pray, he has probably used his considerable influence in the community looking for options. He too has spent time and money but failed to find a solution. So he throws professional caution aside and falls at the feet of the ‘heretical’ Jesus’. He is probably carefully balancing hope with despair; doubt is fighting with trust; courage is warring with fear. And just as there appears to be a chance for everything to work out, Jesus suddenly stops. Why? For what? And he asks that ludicrous question – who touched my clothes.
Jairus knows that time is running out, seconds count, and this delay is not going to help. Jairus has to learn to wait when waiting is the last thing he can afford to do. He must learn to wait, to trust, to breathe, to hang on – even at that moment when all seems lost. And when he receives that soul-crushing news that his daughter is now dead, he has to sit with that mind-boggling question that faces many of us at one time or another – Jesus, why did you delay.
The woman risks everything by mingling with the crowd and reaches out to Jesus. She does not approach him personally, she just gets close enough to touch his garments, reassuring herself that ‘if I but touch his clothes, I will be made well’. And after she has touched him, she feels the healing energy flowing through her. It is a power so great that it unsettles Jesus, the healer, who looks for the recipient of the healing. Healed, she approaches Jesus, elated but also filled with fear and trembling at what she has just experienced and unsure how he might respond to her. And it is then that she receives the final blessing ‘daughter, your faith has made you well’.
Once Jesus has blessed the woman, and they continue to the house, Jairus has to learn another kind of faith. The faith to keep walking in the valley of death, simply because Jesus told him to. The faith that holds steady in the face of mocking and disbelieving laughter. The faith that leans hard into resurrection. The faith that trusts an absurd and impossible word from God ‘she is not dead, but sleeping’.
The woman’s behaviour in approaching Jeus is a desperate and stunning act of civil disobedience. She has no business polluting the crowds with her presence. She knows she is forbidden to touch other people. She knows that even her fingertips on Jesus’ cloak will defile him. But she touches him anyway. If this story finished here with an unreported healing, with an invisible but still potent transformation of the woman’s life, it would be miracle enough. But Jesus invites more. Jesus insists on more. He insists the woman, terrified as she is, come forward and tell her ‘whole truth’. Jesus knows this woman has suffered injustices, prejudices, assumptions and interpretations for twelve long years, and she needs someone to listen, to understand, and to bless her ‘whole truth’ in the presence of the larger community.
Even though Jesus has important other business to attend to, he pauses to restore this broken woman to fellowship, dignity, and humanity. He insists that her experience is no less important than the synagogue leader’s. Jesus does not allow her to disappear into obscurity, he invites her to bear witness, find her voice, speak publicly and confidently about her story and God’s story. And when she has finally fallen silent, he tells her. ‘Daughter, go in peace’.
The intersection of these two stories in Marks gospel in intriguing. Two daughters, two ‘twelve years’ stories, two people who push through physical barriers and religious taboos to reach Jesus. In Jairus’ story, Jesus demands that we not see death where he sees life. In the woman’s story, he demands that legalism give way to love each and every time. In each story, Jesus restores a lost child of God to community and intimacy. In each of these stories, Jesus embraces what is ‘impure’ in order to practice mercy. In each, a previously hopeless daughter ‘goes in peace’ because Jesus is not just a pronouncer of death, he is also a giver of life.
What do we have to push through so as to grab hold of God’s boundless compassion. What taboos or scepticisms are blocking our way. What is our ‘whole truth’ and when will we find the courage to tell it. These are ancient and ever-living questions. These are our questions. May we ask them, face them, love them, and live into them.