Sermon on Mark 5:21-43

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost | (Proper 8, Ordinary 13) 27/06/2021) | Sermon on Mark 5:21-43 | by Paul Bieber | 

Mark 5:21-43 Revised Standard Version

²¹ 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. ²² Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and seeing him, he fell at his feet, ²³ and besought him, 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.” ²⁴ And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. ²⁵ And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, ²⁶ and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. ²⁷ She had heard the reports about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. ²⁸ For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” ²⁹ And immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰ And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, “Who touched my garments?” ³¹ And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” ³² And he looked around to see who had done it. ³³ But the woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ³⁴ And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

³⁵ 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?” ³⁶ But ignoring what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” ³⁷ And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. ³⁸ When they came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, he saw a tumult, and people weeping and wailing loudly. ³⁹ And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a tumult and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” ⁴⁰ 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. ⁴¹ Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi”; which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” ⁴² And immediately the girl got up and walked (she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. ⁴³ And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

 

also

Lamentations 3:22-33

Psalm 30

II Corinthians 8:7-15

 

Two Daughters: Saving Faith

 

 

Grace, peace, and much joy to you, people of God.

 

When Jesus first came into Galilee offering his new teaching with authority, he taught and did his first mighty works in synagogues. Of course, since that beginning the religious authorities have begun to oppose him. One of the reasons for this was that he didn’t seem to respect the Old Testament laws about uncleanness, about ritual impurity.

 

The Old Testament was doing social distancing before it was cool. We think first of lepers, keeping their distance, calling out “unclean, unclean.” But touching a dead body, human or animal, brought the requirement of distancing until you could sanitize and offer sacrifice. And the flow of blood—because in the Old Testament blood is life—made women unclean during menstruation, so long as the flow of blood continued. Today our Gospel gives us a miracle within a miracle, and in both of them the Old Testament purity code is challenged by God’s steadfast love in Jesus, and by saving faith.

 

Jairus is a powerful and respectable religious leader, an archisynagōgos—the president of his congregation. And he believes that Jesus can help his very sick daughter—if he arrives in time. In the presence of the crowd he kneels before Jesus, laying his respectability aside, and asks that Jesus come and lay hands on his daughter that she may be saved (sōthē) and live—now, please; she is at the point of death.

 

Jesus’ attention to the woman who makes her way to him through the crowd means that he will not be in time to save Jairus’ daughter. On the way to Jairus’ house, Jesus suddenly wheels around in the crowd and asks who touched him. Ridiculous—as his disciples point out, representing common sense: the crowd is pressing around him on all sides. But Jesus knows that another kind of touch, a touching coupled with faith, has occurred. And one other person knows it. A woman who has been unclean because of a flow of blood for twelve years. Only the wealthy consulted physicians in Jesus’ day, and she has seen many, so she must have once been a woman of means and some status. If she had been married, she would have been blamed for the childlessness that her condition would have caused, and been “dismissed,” divorced.

 

Now she is weak, physically ill, impoverished, without status, and, of course, unclean. She is ritually impure and has to keep her distance from everyone. Impurity was regarded as highly contagious: she may not move through this crowd, where everyone’s touching each other. And she absolutely may not touch even the garment of the one whom even the demons have already identified as the Holy One of God, Jesus.

 

But, like Jairus, she has heard of Jesus. Faith comes from hearing, and she believes that Jesus can help her. She’s as desperate about her own condition as Jairus is about that of his daughter, and, like him, she kneels before Jesus, and tells him how the faith that grew in her when the word about Jesus was implanted overcame her fear, and how his power did heal her and she knew it at once. Jesus calls her “Daughter” and tells her more than “your faith has made you well.” He says, “your faith has saved you” (sésōkén); go in peace and health and wholeness.

 

But what about the other daughter, Jairus’ daughter? The report from Jairus’ house confirms Jairus’ fear: this interruption of Jesus’s itinerary has cost Jairus’ daughter her life. But faith can drive out fear: it did so for the woman with a flow of blood. And when Jesus hears the suggestion that his visit to Jairus’ house will be fruitless, he responds with the command that could be the epigraph of St. Mark’s Gospel: “Do not fear, only believe.”

 

At Jairus’ house, the mourners represent common sense, laughing at Jesus’ statement that the child’s death is but a slumber. Death is real, and dead people stay dead. Jesus goes into the room. Doubtless he is aware that if he touches this corpse he will have to socially distance until he has sanitized his entire body and all his clothes, and will have to offer a sacrifice and wait until sundown before the distancing can end. Even so, he takes her by the hand and says “Talitha cumi,” which literally means, “little lamb, arise.”

 

Jesus healed one daughter and raised another. Yet many people still get sick and all must die. Has nothing changed because Christ came? Christ, St. Paul says, was rich and became poor, that we might become rich. This is not an early example of the prosperity gospel, it is statement of the fröhliche wechsel, the joyous exchange of Christ’s descent into death so that he might take our dead hands and raise us to overflowing life. Christ’s coming does change things. But when?

 

Like Jairus, we worry that the Lord’s delay in answering our prayers will end in catastrophe. But like the woman, we have heard about Jesus, and we recognize the life and work and teachings of Jesus as the saving power of God active in the world. Faith is the response to hearing, and so is Jesus’ power released. Like the miracle within a miracle of today’s Gospel, ours is a story of salvation by faith. The woman whose faith overcame her fear is a model for all those who want to enter into a relationship with Jesus and earn from him the affectionate address, “daughter,” or “son.” That move from fear to faith is possible for every one of us, though we may require the “gift of desperation” to see it.

 

And the other daughter, Jairus’ daughter? Death is a more formidable enemy than illness. But for those who trust Jesus, death is only a sleep from which he can and will awaken us. The words for “arise” and “got up” in this story are resurrection words. Faith in Jesus means fruitful growth in our lives now, and an awaking from sleep in the likeness of Jesus when God, in his steadfast love, raises us from death.

 

The story of the miracle within a miracle shows us that respectable congregation president or person with no status or money, male or female, powerful or weak, all can be part of the fruitful growth of the kingdom when faith comes through hearing the word. Do not fear, only believe.

 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

The Rev. Dr. Paul Bieber

San Diego, California, USA

E-Mail: paul.bieber@sbcglobal.net