Sunday Sermon 27th June 2021

 MARK 5:21-43

I am sure you are by now used to hearing about my favourite stories in the Gospels: today we have another one: I love the stories of the woman with the issue of blood, and Jairus the desperate father, because it speaks of people who have tried everything and now have nowhere else to turn, and it speaks of Jesus power.  We can really sympathise both with Jairus and the sick woman with the haemorrhage; these people are hanging on to life by a thread. And they both teach us about how to approach God.

It is also written in a favourite technique of Mark’s Gospel: he begins to tell one story, then inserts another story and then resumes his original story. So we have Jairus and his sick daughter, then we switch to the woman with the haemorrhage, and then we switch back to Jairus and his daughter. To Biblical scholars, this is known as a Markan sandwich: a story within a story.

In Mark’s Gospel, we read about Jesus healing Peter’s mother in law, a paralyzed man saved by the faith of his friends; we read about Jesus healing the Gerasene Demoniac and give him back his life. And we have witnessed Jesus quiet a fierce storm on the Sea of Galilee. Mark wants us to be in no doubt about Jesus supernatural powers.  Jesus can control the uncontrollable.

Now, Jesus has come ashore at Capernaeum and is immediately surrounded by more needy people. One was Jairus, and one was a nameless woman who dare not approach Jesus face to face. These two people could not be farther apart socially.

Jairus was an important man in the Capernaum synagogue, likely a Pharisee who lead the community’s prayers. He was the kind of man who others would approach for help. But now, God doesn’t seem to be hearing his prayers and he can do nothing – now he understands what it’s like to feel powerless.  For all his piety and religious knowledge, he is helpless.

We know that many of the Jewish elite and the scholars didn’t approve of Jesus, and, at times they accused him of doing Satan’s work.  We have no idea if Jairus was one of those who opposed Jesus; in fact, we know very little about him except his daughter is 12 years old and she is dying.

Jairus approaches Jesus directly and asks him to heal his daughter. It must have cost Jairus a great deal of pride to kneel before Jesus, in public, and to beg for his help. After all, Jairus was an important man, and yet his desperation as a father overcame his misgivings and the potential disapproval of others in the synagogue. He wasn’t approaching Jesus to discuss theology, rather he was approaching Jesus as a desperate man.

The doctors hadn’t been able to help him, and I suspect he simply didn’t know where else he could turn.  He was a broken man who was willing to try anything if it would help his child. When Jesus agrees to go with Jairus, we can imagine Jairus trying to hurry Jesus along through the crowd pushing people aside.

And then from the great crowd around Jesus, a woman appears, just wanting to touch Jesus cloak.  She is invisible to almost everyone else, she is faceless and she is nameless, yet her needs are no less important than Jairus. But unlike Jairus, she doesn’t dare approach Jesus face to face and ask for his help, she comes silently to Jesus, confident in his ability to heal her. All we know about her is that she has suffered from a gynaelogical disorder for 12 years, and her complaint has left her ritually unclean.

It’s hard for us to understand how this affliction affected her whole life. It meant not just poor health, but social death.  Her illness condemned her to a living death. The book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Scriptures describes what should happen to women with her complaint. 

If she had family, they were to refrain from lying in the same bed as her, sitting on a seat on which she had sat, and were not able to touch her in any way, lest they become contaminated and ritually unclean.

As the bearer of such impurity, she could not go to the temple, or worship God in any way, and she was excluded from society and her community.  She was the equivalent of a leper. Her impurity meant that she shouldn’t even be out in public, in case she contaminated others.

She was considered too unclean to worship God, as if God would refuse to hear her prayers or accept her offerings because of her affliction.  She must endure the shame and the disgrace and the contempt of her neighbours.  Such an affliction must have caused her physical, social, psychological and economic suffering.  Can you imagine how it would feel to be told that God wasn’t interested in you?  That God had turned his back on you because you were a sinner and you deserved your misery?  If God were only interested in perfection, I think that our churches would be empty.

We know that she has spent all her money on cures which had no effect.  A social commentary on this passage lists some of the cures which would have been tried on her:  Firstly, she was to boil onions in wine, and as she drank it, someone would say “cease your discharge”. 

If that didn’t work, she was to sit at a crossroads, holding a cup of wine in her hands, and a man should come up behind her, frighten her and exclaims “cease your discharge”. And if that didn’t work: A handful of cumin, a handful of saffron, and a handful of fenugreek are boiled in wine, she drinks it and then someone says “cease your discharge”.  And if that doesn’t work:  Sixty pieces of sealing clay of a wine vessel is brought to her, smeared all over her, and then someone says: “cease your discharge”.  And I won’t even mention what she is to do with the dung of a white mule.

A woman at the end of all hope.

Like others, she has heard about this amazing new rabbi, who heals people just by touching them.  He doesn’t seem concerned about perfection or ritual purity, or catching some terrible disease, and it’s well known that he won’t turn away anyone who needs his help.

I suspect that it was her intention to creep away after touching his cloak, and on receiving instant healing, to disappear back into the shadows before anyone realized what she had done. Quite how Jesus knew that someone had touched him when he was being jostled from all sides, we don’t understand, but he knew someone had. Slowly, she comes forward and confesses what she has done. 

We might imagine all the crowd jumping back in horror at this woman – if she gets too close to them then they will become impure as well.  Jesus wants to hear her story, and he doesn’t berate her or accuse her, no, he affirms her faith.

This woman is nameless and poor and Jairus is important and rich, but they both represent all the powerless people both of their generation and of every generation since.  They represent us.  They have looked everywhere and tried everything and human hands cannot help them; Jesus is their last hope. And Jesus does not fail them.

Now of course, we would expect these two to get medical help, but feelings of fear and despair do not change, no matter which age we are living in. Our emotions still affect us in powerful ways and none of us are immune from worry at times. If we think back over our own lives, there are doubtless times when we have been at the end of our rope as well.

God doesn’t discrimate. Whether we are young or old, male or female, a mature Christian or a new Christian; a leader bold enough to approach him face to face like Jairus; or perhaps the unnamed woman who reached out to Him in secret.

God knows you, God loves you, and God wants to hear your prayers and share your load. You are a part of God’s family. Go home and read and meditate on this passage, and if I may leave you with one thought this morning it is this:  no one, but no one, is ever too small or too insignificant for God to love them.  Neither are we just another person to God. God always knows our name. AMEN