Preached by Michael Cheuk
June 28, 2009, Fourth Sunday After Pentecost, Year B
Mark 5:21-43
Someone once said, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.” In this morning’s Gospel Lesson from Mark, we meet two desperate people facing desperate times. The first was Jairus, one of the synagogue rulers. We know his name because he was a highly respected leader perched on the upper crust of Jewish society. Yet, despite his power, his influence, his connections and his resources, he was helpless in the face of his twelve-year-old daughter’s progressing illness. Jairus had access to all the best medical care of his day, but they didn’t work out and his daughter’s life was rapidly slipping away. One wouldn’t blame Jairus if he had resigned himself to his daughter’s death, for in his culture, daughters were not valued as sons. But she must have been a very special child, the apple of his eye. Now, he had heard about a faith healer from the podunk town of Nazareth, who, by all reports, was casting out demons and performing miraculous healings. Talk about alternative medicine! All the doctors Jairus had talked to thought Jesus was a quack, and all his friends on the synagogue ruling council said that they wouldn’t be caught dead getting help from an uneducated, hick-town preacher. But Jairus was desperate, and for his beloved daughter, he would try anything. So when he heard that Jesus was arriving to town from the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Lake of Gennesaret, he decided to leave his dying daughter’s side for one final, desperate mission.
Jairus arrived at the lakeshore only to find it already crowded with people, people that he knew. He felt the gaze of their curious eyes as he single-mindedly made his way toward Jesus. He knew what they were thinking. “What’s Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue doing here?” “Is he here to check out Jesus’ credentials?” “To officially welcome him?” “To tell him to go away?” After all, chapter 4 of Mark just told us that after just after Jesus exorcised evil spirits from a possessed man and cast them into a herd of pigs, the people pleaded for Jesus to leave. Nobody really knew what to make of Jesus – and they weren’t sure what to make of Jairus approaching him on this day.
Jairus could hear the collective gasp of surprise when he fell down at Jesus’ feet and earnestly begged: “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” My, how the high and mighty have been made low, but as they say, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
Jesus made no reply, but immediately followed Jairus home, racing against time on a life-saving mission. Like metal shavings to a magnet, the crowds pressed in around Jesus, eagerly anticipating another spectacular miracle. Suddenly Jesus stopped, looked around and said, “Who touched my clothes?” Jesus’ disciples were quick to see the absurdity of this question. It would be like Michael Phelps suddenly stopping in the middle of a 100 meter freestyle race to ask, “Who got me wet?” But Jesus was serious about his question, for he felt his power surge out of him in the midst of the pressing flesh. And as he looked around, a pale, frail woman came and, trembling with fear, fell at Jesus’ feet.
Here, we meet the second desperate person in this story. It was a woman, so anonymous and insignificant that no one even knew her name. While women in those days held little power and status, this particular woman was an untouchable in Jewish society. For twelve years, she suffered from bleeding. She spent all she had to seek help, but instead she grew worse. She was tired physically. Twelve years of anemia exhausted her as little by little, her life-force literally drained away. She was tired spiritually. According to Jewish law, a bleeding woman was considered unclean. Her unclean state prevented her from worshipping in the synagogue, and for twelve years, she had no support from her faith community. She was tired emotionally. Her unclean state also meant that she had to be quarantined from other people until her bleeding stopped. That was tolerable when the bleeding was only for a few days out of every month, but for twelve straight years, this woman was sentenced to solitary confinement in which she was deprived of human touch and human relationship. In a small community where everyone knew everybody’s business, people in her village shunned her. Even her own father basically disowned her for fear of becoming contaminated. She was alone and lonely.
Finally, she was tired . . . of being tired. She heard about a miracle-worker who was coming into town, and at once she knew that she had to meet him. But how? A woman was not supposed to assert herself on a man. A woman like her had no business being out and about in close contact with other people. But she was desperate, and so she set out on a final, desperate mission.
She arrived at the lakeshore only to find it already crowded with people, people that she knew. She felt the gaze of their fearful eyes as she timidly made her way toward Jesus. She knew what they were thinking. “What is she doing here?” “Doesn’t she know to stay in her place?” “She’s going to contaminate us all!” Through the hustle and bustle of the crowd, she was surprised to see Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, fall at Jesus’ feet to plead with Jesus. Jesus stopped to listen, and then immediately changed directions to follow Jairus, and they, together with the crowd, were walking straight toward her! She could tell they were in a hurry, and she figured that Jesus would never stop to hear her story. So when Jesus passed by, she turned to follow him and thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” She felt guilty sneaking about stealing a miracle from Jesus, like a shoplifter swiping a candy bar on her way out of Kroger. But as they say, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
In our story, we find two desperate people. In our churches, I wonder what kind of desperate people will we find? I think many Christians can relate to both Jairus and the woman in our desperation for healing, for relationship, for a miracle that will give joy and meaning to life once again. But I also think that many Christians are also desperate to hide our brokenness, our hurt, our pain and our struggle. Like Jairus and the woman, we know and are afraid of what people will think and say. In a small town where everyone knows everybody’s business, we know that word of our situations will spread like wildfire. Maybe we even think that we can find the healing we need on their own. But in the meantime, we are suffering and alone keeping up appearances or going undercover and not making any waves.
In the same way, many churches are also desperate to keep up with appearances that everything is well while their spiritual lifeblood is slowly ebbing away. These churches become tired – tired physically from all the meetings and programs, tired emotionally from the anxiety of making budget and finding volunteers, tired spiritually because in the midst of their busyness, they are disconnected from God.
The Good News this morning is that Jesus specializes in desperate cases – provided that we acknowledge and recognize our own desperation and come to Him in faith and trust. Why do you think Jesus stopped everything and interrupted his mission to save Jairus’ daughter when the woman reached up to touch his cloak? She was already miraculously healed of her bleeding, so why did Jesus choose to take precious time to identify and speak to her? Was it to call her out and embarrass her in front of the crowd? No, I don’t think so. In speaking to her, Jesus addressed an even deeper need than her need for physical healing. Her faith in Jesus not only healed her physically, but also spiritually and emotionally, so that from now on, she could go in peace, in shalom, in wholeness, freed from her suffering. To the woman who had no father and no meaningful human relationship for twelve years, Jesus lovingly let everyone know that she is a “daughter,” one who was as beloved and valued by her Heavenly Father as the daughter who lay dying in Jairus’ house. Holistic healing came not as a result of the potency of her touch, but as a result of the powerful presence of the Son of God.
This tender scene was a moment of holy affirmation that the woman sorely needed, but it was also a moment of high anxiety for Jairus. While Jesus dallied around, news came that Jairus’ daughter had died, and so there would be no need for Jesus to go to her. But even before that dreadful announcement, Jairus had reason to fear because, as a ruler of the synagogue, he knew more than anyone that because that unclean, bleeding woman had touched Jesus, Jesus was now unclean and useless for further holy work. It was as if someone with the swine flu had just sneezed all over a surgeon right as he was going into emergency surgery. Jairus had power, respectability and prestige, but none of those things were going to bring his daughter back.
Why did Jesus stop and spend time with the woman healed of bleeding? Was it only to affirm her? Was it also to frustrate Jairus? No, I don’t think so. Just as Jesus knew that the woman needed more than physical healing, Jesus knew that Jairus needed more than his daughter healed. Jairus himself needed to be healed of his dependence on his own power, of his impatience at God’s timing, and of his fear of losing control. So Jesus said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” Jairus needed to believe, to have faith, to trust that God is in control of the world, that God works God’s purposes in God’s own timing, and that God has the miraculous power to heal and to raise the dead to life. Jairus was asked to just have faith to follow Jesus.
Miracles are tricky things. When we see one happening to others, we want a miracle for ourselves. We want to control the timing, the purpose and the occasion of miracles. And we’re often led to believe that if we only have enough faith, miracles will happen. But as Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Faith does not work miracles. God does. To concentrate on the strength of your own belief is to practice magic. . . . This is the difference between believing our lives are in our own hands and believing they are in God’s. God, not faith, works miracles.” She continues: “Jairus followed Jesus home and watched that unclean holy man do his work. Either way, the high point was not then but earlier, when Jesus told him, “Do not fear, only believe.” If Jairus was able to do that, then he would have survived whatever happened next, even if Jesus had walked into his daughter’s room, closed her eyes with his fingertips, and pulled the sheet over her head. [Jairus’s] belief would have become the miracle at that point, his willingness to believe that she was still in God’s good hands even though she had slipped out of his.”
Barbara Brown Taylor’s comments make me think that perhaps the real miracles that took place that day were not the healings that Jesus wrought. Perhaps the real miracles that day were two people acknowledging their desperate need and willing to let Jesus address both their perceived needs and their deepest needs. Perhaps those are the miracles that we need both in our lives and in our churches. Will we be desperate enough to drop all semblances of being “OK”? Will we be desperate enough to shed all veneers of respectability? Will we be desperate enough to lay aside all pretenses of power and control? Will we be desperate enough to risk associating with those who are considered “unclean” by our society? All for the sake of faith or belief or trust in the One who can and will heal our brokenness and raise up the dead places in us to a newness of life. Amen.
Let us pray: Companion in life and death, your love is steadfast and never ends; our weeping may linger with the night, but you give joy in the morning. Touch us with your healing grace that, restored to wholeness, we may live out our calling as your resurrection people. Amen.
