Redeeming From All Walks of Life

Text: Mark 5:21-43

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

            Jairus was a regular in the synagogue. He was faithful in attendance, generous in giving, and had thoroughly learned the lessons the rabbis taught; so much so, that he had even become a leader of this gathering of believers, a ruler of the synagogue, as St. Mark calls him. As such, Jairus had heard the Scriptures constantly—the prophecies and promises about the coming Messiah, what the kingdom of God would look like when the Anointed One arrived. So when he had heard of everything Jesus had accomplished—the casting out of demons, the cleansing of lepers, the healings of people with various injuries and sicknesses—Jairus began to hope that this Jesus could very well be the One, the fulfillment of all that Jairus had become so familiar with from hearing the Law and the Prophets his whole life, week in and week out. So when his daughter fell ill, Jairus fell at Jesus’ feet, kneeling and begging Him, “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.”

            Meanwhile, as they passed through town, there was another: a woman who had not been to the synagogue for twelve years. She had an ailment, a discharge of blood, that made her unclean, as declared by the Law of Moses. She could not enter the synagogue, or any holy space, while the uncleanness clung to her. She had gone to doctor after doctor, spending every mite she had, but her condition had only gotten worse. She was out of options—except for maybe one. Jairus was not the only one who had heard about the healings and signs Jesus had performed. So when she heard that Jesus was passing through her town, she threw the last scrap of hope toward Him: “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.”

            There are some fascinating intersections in our reading from the Gospel of St. Mark this morning. We have a man who heard the Word continually; he had a strong faith that was well-informed and reinforced weekly, even daily, through hearing the Word, praying in the community of faith, and practicing all that the Lord desired humanity to practice in generosity and compassion. We also have a woman at the end of her rope, with not a cent left to her name, who hadn’t stepped into a synagogue for 12 years, but had nothing else to cling to except Jesus, faintly remembering those lessons she had heard from long ago about the coming Messiah. Both of these individuals, who would have otherwise been unlikely to cross paths, have faith in Jesus and are found with Him. Both are holding on to Him in faith—hope against hope, trust that grips all the tighter even when reason is screaming that it’s over. They both have faith that even when it seems hopeless—“Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher any further?” “She had suffered much under many physicians and spent all that she had, and was no better but grew worse”—even then, they still trusted that this man who seemed to fulfill the Scriptures could save them.

            And for His part, Jesus does fulfill those Scriptures. In our reading today, there’s something very interesting happening. Jesus is going through a village on His way to defeat uncleanness, disease, and even death. But there’s more happening here. On His trip from the sea through the town, Jesus is also walking through the history of His people. But this time, instead of it being a record of their continual mistakes and missteps, things are going the way that Jesus always wanted them to go.

            Pay close attention. As Jesus walks through the crowd, after the woman has touched His robe and was healed, Jesus repeats a question: “Who touched me?” Why would Jesus, who knows all, need to ask such a question? He doesn’t need to, of course. But in that question, “Who touched me?” as He searches the crowd, we have an echo of a question that was asked much earlier in the Garden of Eden, after Adam and Eve had fallen: “Where are you?” That time too, they hid from Him, much like the woman does here; but this time He asks the question so that she can approach Him to be blessed and strengthened, rather than hear the doom that Adam and Eve heard that day in the Garden.

            Even the woman’s touching of Jesus’ garment has an echo of a big part of Israel’s history. The Ark of the Covenant was the vessel of God’s holiness. Because it was His throne on earth and the place where His perfect righteousness was located, no one who was unclean could touch it. We see what happened when a well-meaning soldier reached out to steady the Ark as it was jostled in a wagon on a bumpy road. He was struck dead. But now here, a woman made unclean by her illness touches Jesus’ garment and instead of being struck down, she’s healed. She touches God’s holiness in the body of Jesus, concealed in His flesh and blood, and she receives His grace.

            Likewise, Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter echoes the great prophets Elijah and Elisha from Israel’s history, who both raise children from the dead. And Jesus’ instruction to those in the house of what to do after the little girl had been resurrected—to give her something to eat—reminds us of what He had done for His people Israel after their rising up out of the waters of the Red Sea, when He gave them something to eat: manna and quail. Even the recurrence of the number twelve—the girl’s age, the number of years the woman had suffered—brings to mind the twelve tribes of Israel that the Lord delivered and planted in the Promised Land.

            In this one scene, Jesus going through an Israelite town, He’s living out the history of His people. He’s showing that He’s come to save them, to do everything right for them, to rescue them from the uncleanness and death that’s stalked them ever since the Garden of Eden. He’s come for the likes of Jairus, those with strong faith nourished regularly by the Word, as He desires all His people to be; and He’s come for the bruised reed and smoldering wick, like the woman in our reading today. He’s come for the well-taught and for those who have the faintest recollection of what they once heard in Sunday school. He’s come for the well-established and for those who are at the end of their rope. He’s come for the clean and the unclean.

Jesus is holiness, righteousness, forgiveness, and life in human flesh. And He comes this way so that we can all approach Him: in prayer as Jairus does, and to touch Him in the flesh as the woman does. But no matter where we come from, He wants us to come to Him. So He walks through His people’s history—through their successes and failures, their victories and losses, their lives and deaths. This means that He walks through your life too, high points and low points. He comes to heal you, to rescue you, to cleanse and forgive you. He walks through your history with you. He comes even to raise you from death.

Be resurrected by Jesus. Be raised by Him in faith, just as you were at Baptism, when the old nature was drowned and the new saint was raised up from those waters. Be purified of everything in your past—every sin, every shame, every speck of uncleanness—through those cleansing words, “I forgive you all your sins.” Rise, and receive something to eat here at your Lord’s table. In the name of Jesus, who saves us. Amen.