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 been bleeding for twelve years, and who 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 come up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made whole.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out form 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 whole; 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 Jesus 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, get up.” And immediately the girl got up and begam walking (she was twelve years old), 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.
“Do not fear, only believe.” I wonder if the father of the little dead girl even heard Jesus’ words, or if the news from home rang too clearly in his ears: “Don’t trouble the Teacher, your baby girl is dead.”
We’ve had a lot of mixed emotions this week, a lot of big things happening in the news and here at home. Kids are growing up, graduating, moving on and farther away. The Supreme Court has ruled marriage equality is in line with our national constitution. The Episcopalian Church elected a new national Bishop. Our ELCA Bishop has called for this day to be a national day of mourning and repentance for our perpetuation of the sins of racism and white supremacy. And it’s raining.
Some days are like that, though. Every emotion is at the surface, every moment we are pulled in a different direction, every hope and fear all in front of us at once. And when we go to get Jesus to help us out here, well, it seems even he is distracted. Jairus, a synagogue leader, who has done everything right to be on God’s good side, has every right to implore the Teacher to come and work a miracle for his little girl who is so terribly sick. He meets Jesus at the lakeshore just after Jesus has returned from that other side where he cast out some pretty powerful demons, and he begs for help. Jesus follows him, but word about this miracle-worker has spread, and Jairus is also probably pretty well known, and the crowd just keeps getting in the way. There are people all over them, wondering, asking, doubting, wanting, watching, waiting to see what will happen next, and in the middle of that cacophony of bodies pushing this way and that, suddenly Jesus stops and turns around and asks “who touched me?”
Sorry? Jesus, there’s a crowd here you just can’t get away from, what do you mean, “who touched me?” They’re all touching you.
But Jesus had been touched with intention, not just in passing, not only accidentally. The hem of his robe, the farthest reach of what could be called his personal space, had been all that she wanted, but the bleeding woman needed touch so desperately to be whole again, all of her twelve long years of waiting were in that touch.
Can you imagine bleeding for twelve years? Twelve days is a stretch. Lots of women bleed for about five days out of the month, and it can be downright exhausting! It’s amazing women don’t die every month from that regular loss of blood, and its a good thing women have each other to understand that pain, because in Jesus’ day, and in a lot of ways and places even today, bleeding women get set apart, pushed aside, disregarded, and are considered ‘unclean’ to the point of not even being able to enter the worship space.
Because blood is such a powerful thing, you see. For the most basic scientific observer, blood is the thing which gives life. You see an animal bleed on the altar for sacrifice, and once the blood is drained there is no more life in the animal. Blood, we now know, also carries a number of diseases, and so anyone trained in first aid has to put on latex gloves before tending to the care of someone who is bleeding, lest the nurse or patient transmit an illness unawares. The MacHayden theater here in town is currently running a musical called “Rent,” celebrating life and friendship in the midst of that great and terrible plague we finally named as AIDS, which is carried in the blood and other life-giving fluids, and attacks the body’s immune system. When AIDS first hit, before we had a name for it, it was such a mystery, striking seemingly out of nowhere, and the President never talked about it, and there were so few people not infected who dared put on gloves and masks and actually touch those patients suffering from it.
But Jesus never wore latex gloves. Jesus didn’t worry about infection from the people around him. That’s how the world works, isn’t it, that illness and disease are catching, and we have to protect ourselves lest we, too, become ‘unclean,’ but Jesus is different.
“Do not fear, only believe,” he says. The woman who had been drained dry financially by doctors, and drained dry emotionally by being socially outcast, and drained dry by her own body which somehow kept living even while continually in the process of dying, she knew there was one last hope to cling to when all else had failed her. Or maybe she didn’t know, but was just desperate enough to give it one last shot. Jesus had been healing and teaching, calming storms and silencing his opponents, and word had gotten around that he didn’t discriminate like the rest of the world did. He didn’t wait to see someone’s credentials, didn’t look at someone and judge their worth by what they wore or what color their skin was or how often they had been to synagogue. Jesus was different. Jesus is different.
It’s no wonder he was so often interrupted. Who else would welcome the stranger the way he did? Who else would speak with such grace, truth, and forgiveness? Who else, on their way to a very important synagogue leader’s house, would stop and look an old woman in the face, and speak to her gently even though he had the right by law to stone her for being out in public while so terribly unclean? He should have devoted his entire focus to Jairus, the religious leader, whose little girl was just on the edge of womanhood, rather than spend his energy on this old woman whose usefulness had long since dried up.
“Do not fear, only believe.” The healing of that woman came not just to her body, but she was made whole when she was finally, after twelve years of invisibility, finally seen. Like the AIDS patients of the 1980s, she was ignored by her community until she went away, avoided in hopes that her problem would resolve itself without getting too many others involved, and she was shunned out of fear of contagion. But that fear itself became the contagion, infecting everyone who stopped being able to touch or see or care about the sick. And Jesus restored her to visibility, called her out and gave her her voice back to speak for herself and tell her story in public. What a relief, what a joy, what a miracle, that the community could now see and embrace her again after a lifetime of shame for something she could not control.
In the middle of that joy came word to Jairus that his little girl, his hope for a future, had died, and all that was left for him was to grieve. But Jesus had not forgotten him just because he was interrupted on the way. Jesus is not the sort to go halfway on healing ministry. Jesus reminded Jairus “do not fear, only believe,” and they continued on their way.
Now, after being touched by a bleeding woman, technically, legally, Jesus would have been considered unclean himself - but Jesus, remember, is different. Jesus doesn’t catch our disease, rather he himself spreads the contagion of wholeness and healing. So Jairus takes him into his home, where the wailing and mourning has already begun, and God only knows what Jairus expected at that point. Compassion for his now grieving wife? A word about resurrection someday? A witness to his own grief? Probably Jairus didn’t expect what he got: Jesus ran the wailing crowd out of the house and took three of his disciples, along with the child’s parents, to the bedside of the little girl, where he very simply woke her up and got somebody to bring her a little broth in a bowl or maybe some bread. Something to put the color back in her cheeks. “Little girl, get up.”
Jesus does the same for us, you know. There are so many ways this world bleeds us dry, so many ways the ones we love are taken from us when it seems God is looking the other way. But Jesus doesn’t ever forget us, doesn’t ever abandon us.
“Do not fear, only believe.” It is a hard word to hear when we are struggling, an easy one to say when we are rejoicing, and a true word no matter where in between the two we find ourselves. Because Jesus himself bled and bled and died to give us his life. Jesus himself, the healer, the Teacher, the one who feeds us time and again, gives his blood to us, for us all, at this Table of very ordinary, every day stuff which has sustained humankind for generations. Bread and wine, common around the world, body and blood, basic to our existence, grace and forgiveness, welcome and embrace, strength and sending, given and shed …for you, whoever you are and wherever you are and no matter where you come from or where you are going.
Our lifeblood now and always is Jesus the Christ, the One who made us, who has come among us, who still stirs in our hearts and surprises us with second chances, and third, and fourth… The world will bleed us dry, over and over again, breaking our hearts with joy and sorrow and pulling us apart at every change and challenge we face, and we will be bled dry as we give ourselves away in imitation of the One who names us and claims us, and that very One who gives us his own body and blood will continue to revive us, to renew us, refill us, restore us one to another until the whole world - and yes I believe that means the whole world - has been bound together in love and newness of life.
“Do not fear, only believe” is not something we can do on our own strength or individually alone, but it is a gift given to us in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the promise of resurrection and life everlasting, the witness of those who have known restoration and who walk among us or whose stories are told around all of those tables that feed us. It is something we receive when Jesus touches us where we are broken, when Jesus hold our shattered hopes and hurts, when Jesus embraces all of ourselves, even those things we have been taught to be ashamed of. For everything that makes us bleed, Jesus bleeds with us, bleeds for us, bleeds into us so that we may live again, whole and restored, welcomed and new. Thanks be to God.
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