Wisdom 1.13-15, 2.23-24; Mark 5.21-43
On the surface, it’s hard to imagine two people more different from one another than the people Mark’s gospel brings together in today’s reading: the leader of the synagogue and a woman Jesus heals.
It starts with their names, or lack of them. The Gospel of Mark rarely tells the names of the people Jesus encounters. We meet the rich man, the man with an unclean spirit, the paralytic; even the mother-in-law of the apostle Peter isn’t named. Today’s unnamed woman fits that pattern. Jairus, by name, is an exception. Perhaps this is a sign of how exceptional he is. As leader of the synagogue, Jairus would’ve moved around the community with esteem, status, and privilege. People would’ve come to him for advice. You get a sense of how much clout he when the gospel tells us that he has the power to summon Jesus to come to his house. The woman, in contrast, has no clout, can’t approach Jesus directly, even hopes to escape notice. She suffers from a debilitating and chronic ailment that would’ve isolated her from her family and her faith for more than a decade. Jairus is impressive; she is impoverished. Jairus exalted; she is exhausted. Yet both Jairus with his daughter dying and sinking fast, and the woman with the hemorrhage, are united by common themes: the need for healing, of fear and faith, and of Jesus as the source of life leading us from fear to faith.
Every parent who has had a seriously ill child can identify with Jairus in today’s gospel. Anyone who has spent a bank account’s worth of savings on medical care and not gotten better knows something about the experience of the woman. Here are two people at the limits of all possible human resources and Jesus gives them the healing they seek.
Biblical commentator and New Testament scholar Pheme Perkins wonders, however, if accounts like this promise too much. Miracle stories in the scriptures are spectacular, of course. There is comfort in hearing about Jesus stilling storms, healing the sick, and raising the dead. Our Lord’s miracles remind us that the way things are in a broken and fallen world is not an infallible sign of the way God wants things to be. God’s will for our lives is not chaos but wholeness, not suffering but healing, not death but life. This is what today’s first reading tells us. “God did not make death and does not delight in the death of the living…God made us in the image of his own eternity.” Every miracle proclaims this. Every storm calmed, every healing, every driving away of evil is a place where heaven and earth overlap and God’s kingdom is seen. Yet it can be hard to hear about Jesus doing miracles for others when everyone of us knows someone suffering who could use one of their own but is left without one.
To both Jairus and the woman, Jesus’ response is the same, is centered on faith. To the woman Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” To Jairus, “Do not be afraid, only have faith.” So is that what it takes: faith? To get a miracle of your own or for someone you love, just have enough faith and it’ll get the job done? You’ve maybe heard people say something like that. ‘If you have enough faith things will turn out all right.’ That’s how it seems to work for the woman and for Jairus. But what does this faith even look like? What’s enough? And what does it mean if your miracle seems to be missing?
Barbara Brown Taylor says one of the worst things people can do is to blame the sufferings and troubles of others on their lack of faith. She tells a story of serving as a chaplain on a hospital cancer ward. Patients there began complaining that groups of complete strangers were walking into their rooms, holding hands around their beds, and praying for an increase in the patients’ weak and little faith. It turned out a local congregation was doing this, uninvited, as a part of what they called their ‘healing ministry.’ Only it didn’t have a healing effect; it had a bludgeoning effect. And people who were sick got a strong dose of guilt and shame mixed in with their chemotherapy.
Maybe the people doing that ministry had an image of faith like those strength tests you’ll see the next couple of weekends at the Red River Valley Fair, the ones with the bell on the top and a sledgehammer for you to take a swing at it. If you’re really strong, you ring the bell and win the prize. The trouble with that image, though, is that trying to strengthen your faith to get more of it pictures life in God as something in your control. If you are sick and getting sicker try harder, pump up your faith, show the muscles of your belief. It’s all an effort on our part to turn things around so that we can to be in charge of our lives and make God respond to us. ‘Is my faith strong enough to get God to save, heal, and rescue me? Is my faith strong enough to ring God’s bell?’
But you see how that turns the focus away from God and inward on ourselves. Yet faith is Christ is not about trying harder. There’s nothing more either Jairus or the woman could’ve done. Faith means shifting trust away from ourselves to trust in Christ; not concentrating on the strength of our belief but on resting in God who “created all things that they might exist…and made us in the image of his own eternity.”
Faith, in and of itself, is not our power or possession. It is, as Hebrews says, “The assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.” Hoped for and not seen. Faith is the empty and open channel through which Jesus’ power works. Jesus’ power is what rescued and healed the woman and gave life to Jairus’ daughter. Now it is true that Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well.” But faith is not working harder, it’s working less. It’s Jairus tossing aside the dignity of his status and falling at Jesus’ feet; it’s the woman turned toward Jesus, touching him and not wanting to draw attention to herself. Both find hope in Jesus when all human hopes are exhausted. There is a difference between believing God ‘helps those who help themselves’ because our life is in our hands or believing and trusting that all our life is in God’s hand. Only one of those notions is in the Bible, only one is what the Bible means by faith—and it’s not the one about God helping those who help themselves. That comes from a man named Algernon Sidney, a 17th century British politician—a politician—and I’m not sure these days how much I want the principles of politicians guiding my life! Rather, in the words of an old spiritual, “In the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.”
When we long for a miracle in our lives, when pray for a miracle in suffering or to be rescued from fear—whenever we know the way things are is not the way God desires them yet the answer to our prayers still seems missing—remember that even Jesus prayed for rescue the night before he died. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed so hard, his agony was so deep, that the Gospel of Luke says that Jesus’ sweat was like blood. Jesus begged his Father to rescue him from what was about to happen the next day. “For you all things are possible,” he prayed. And again, “Remove this cup from me.” Yet when Jesus got up from prayer, his cup was still there; the cross remained on the horizon. Did Jesus lack faith because his prayer didn’t remove his cup or cross? No. Yet surely a miracle happened.
Through the cross, Jesus overcomes the power of death, not only for Jairus’ daughter but for us; his resurrection is the first fruits of a harvest that will include us. Through the cross, healing comes not just to the woman but to the world; “By his wounds you have been healed.” Whatever faith we have in Christ, even as small as small as a mustard seed, what matters more is the faith of Christ that holds us in God and assures us of God’s love in and through all things. From Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane to his presence with us in this Gethsemane, a life of faith is about being in the presence of Jesus, of being welcome in the presence of Jesus, of being known by him and following him.
Today’s gospel shows Jesus’ commitment to minister to human need and to the immeasurable worth of human individuals. He will never stop giving you his saving, rescuing love. ““Do not fear, only have faith.” Because, as Jesus did with Jairus and the woman, he will never stop leading you from fear to faith.
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