Mark 5: 21-43
Desperate measures
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I think it’s true to say that most parents would do anything for their children. We see it week by week on the television news. Perhaps it’s the desperate desire to give their children the best educational opportunities. Or perhaps the great acts of sacrifice that parents make to give their children a good start in life. Or even the ultimate sacrifice of putting their own lives at risk to save their children’s lives.
Desperate situations
I’m fortunate that I’ve never been in those kind of extreme desperate situations. And I guess that that’s true for most of us. Nevertheless if you have had children, you may know that awful feeling when you lose a child in a shopping centre. You immediately imagine the worst.
So I’ve never been in those kinds of desperate situations. But that is something of the desperate situation that we find in our Bible Reading today. In our passage from Marks gospel we read about two desperate people. They are quite different, but equally desperate.
First of all, we have Jairus, one of the synagogue rulers. I guess he might be the equivalent of a churchwarden, and a person of some social status. I can imagine that he was quite confident person, perhaps quite a self-sufficient person. But, his desperate situation was that his little child, his daughter was dying. The dying and death of a child is an extremely traumatic event, and it is said that it is such a difficult situation that the odds are against the parents of the child staying together after the child death. So it was a desperate situation.
Secondly, we have the woman. By contrast to Jairus, she is unknown. We do not know her name. By contrast to Jairus, she is a social outcast. For by Jewish law, her illness made her untouchable, unclean. I can imagine that her illness had made her isolated, lacking confidence, timid and shy. And her desperate situation was that she had been haemorrhaging for twelve years. We don’t know, but we presume that it was some kind of gynaecological problem. I can imagine that was pretty desperate. It was a desperate situation.
So we have two quite distinctly different people. A man and woman. One with a name, one unknown. One of some social status, one a social outcast. But united in their desperate situations.
Daring faith
They were also united in their daring faith. For both of them, their desperate situation drove them to trust in Jesus. For Jairus, perhaps it meant for once admitting that his was a situation beyond his ability to do with. Now we know that some sections of the Jewish establishment and religion were very much opposed to Jesus. So perhaps for Jairus, it also meant going against the social grain. Most of us don’t like to be different do we? Even if we do not want to keep up with the Jones’s, we would rather not stand out from the crowd. And so perhaps it required even more daring faith for Jairus to go to ask Jesus for help. But there was clear trust there. For his words to Jesus had that daring expectation that Jesus touch would heal her and she would live. V23. Please come and put your hands on her, so that she will be healed and live.
That faith needed to be daring because, as we read later in the passage, as Jesus and Jairus were on the way home, a message comes to them that the child has died. But Jesus says to Jairus – ‘ don’t be afraid, just believe’. Don’t be afraid, just have faith. Be daring!
And the woman also had a daring faith in Jesus ability to heal her. She was in a desperate situation because for twelve years, she tried everything to get well. And she must have had her hopes raised and dashed so often. But when she heard about Jesus, she came to find him. And her faith in Jesus healing power was such that she thought ‘ if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed’. There’s a lot in this passage that gives you a sense of the total lack of confidence of this woman. It is as if she dare not come up to Jesus face-to-face and ask him. It is as if she dare not come up to him in front. It is as if she dare not even expect to receive a touch from him. But rather, in her timid, shy and socially excluded way, if she can just sneak up behind him and touch him, she will be healed. That is a daring expectation of Jesus healing power.
Divine response
So we see that both these people are in a desperate situation. We see that they both have a daring faith in Jesus. And we also see the divine response to their situation and their faith.
In both situations, Jesus was surrounded by crowds. It must have been enormously draining for Jesus, with people pressing around him, wanting to speak to him, wanting to hear him, wanting to be healed. Jesus was surrounded by crowds. And if I was in that situation, I can imagine that I would want to deal with the needs as quickly as possible. So when Jairus comes to ask Jesus help, instead of healing the daughter from a distance, which no doubt he could have done, we see that Jesus went with Jairus. Jesus was concerned for Jairus as well as for his daughter. So Jesus went with him. Jesus has a real concern for the individual. Jesus shows real concern for the individual needs.
Jesus not only went with Jairus, but he gave him encouragement too, when the message came that the child had died. Now we don’t know whether the child had really died or not. In a sense, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Jesus restored that child to full life. And I love the little details. I love the fact that Jesus ‘took her by the hand. It is that personal touch, that divine response to the little girl.
And we see that too, with his response to the woman. Instead of simply walking on, knowing that somebody had touched him and had been miraculously healed, he stops. He is concerned for her. He is concerned to know who it is. He is concerned to give her value. He looked for her. Just imagine that. For years she had been somebody that nobody looked for. But today Jesus looked for her. Today Jesus calls her ‘daughter’. And he gives her a real blessing when he says ‘ Go in peace and be free from your suffering.’ The divine response to that unknown woman was not just to heal her from her physical affliction, but to bring great wholeness to her. He gives her value, and affirms her as a person, and gives her peace. What a wonderful gift, what wonderful healing.
Well that was then, and we are here now. Is it any different? I don’t think so. Our world may be different in many ways, but people are much the same. We and our neighbours and friends and families find ourselves from time to time in desperate situations. These desperate situations affect both the rich and poor, the adults and the children, the celebrities and the unknown. We all from time to full time find ourselves in desperate situations of one kind or another.
And what is required in those desperate situations is that kind of daring faith that we have seen today in the snippets of the lives of Jairus and the unknown woman. Unfortunately, the sad thing is that very often faith is the last resort. We know that the woman had tried numerous doctors before coming to Jesus for healing. Now she may not have any other choices. But it is often true that we try so often to solve desperate situations by ourselves, and is often true that it is only when they fail that we call upon God. But if God is truly God with all that that means, then we should be able to have that kind of daring faith that we have read about. The way that faith is shown may be very different from person to person. But in every case it needs to be daring. It needs to be expecting great things of God. It needs to show great trust in his son Jesus Christ.
Because what is true is that there is a divine response to daring faith. And the divine response is deeply personal, is all encompassing and brings a wholeness that goes far beyond our expectations.
And in that sense, you do not need to be in a desperate situation in order to exercise that daring faith and receive the divine response. For whatever your situation, God is seeking a faith and trust in him which is truly daring, and to which he can respond in ways which far exceed our expectations.
May be that in response to our daring faith today, Jesus will touch each one of us and give us his healing, his wholeness and his deep peace.
