Mark 5: 21-43
“It’s Time to Wake Up Little Girl.”

Scripture Reading 

Prayer

Intro: My sermon will take the form of a series of meditations on the different people in this passage.  Jesus returns across the sea, back to the familiar crowds on the West Bank, presumably near Capernaum again, and (FCF) here he is pressed again to show compassion, to heal a bleeding and dying humanity.  Let us consider the people who populate this text, and so (through reflection on their lives) let us open our ears to hear God’s Word for us this morning. 

Jairus:  Pressed in by crowds again there by the lake-shore, Jesus is approached by a man named Jairus who is said to be a synagogue ruler.  Now this sounds like a very dignified title and it was a dignified position.  But the position should not be exaggerated.  William Lane explains that a “synagogue – ruler…was a lay official responsible for supervision of the building and arranging the service.”  Evidence suggests there were sometimes multiple synagogue-rulers in one synagogue – in this case Jairus’ function and authority was something like what we call an Elder or sometimes a “Ruling Elder” in our church – Jairus is something like Kevin Weinrich or Lee Moody – he would have held authority over doctrine and practice in the synagogue.  Often there was only one synagogue ruler, in which case Jairus was really functioning more like a synagogue president.    He’s not a professionally trained scribe or rabbi, and not the mayor of the city, but he is a faithful Jewish layman entrusted with oversight one of the local synagogues.  So, Jairus is a man of social consequence and a man of some means; his name would have been known in the community.  And Jairus knows Jesus.  (If Capernaum, or any by the lake.)  It’s likely that Jairus has heard Jesus preach and seen him heal people.  It’s probable that Jairus has permitted Jesus to preach in his own synagogue in the past – remember, Jesus is Jewish, and he has been preaching and teaching in the synagogues throughout Galilee. 

Who knows, maybe it was the synagogue of Jairus in which Jesus healed the man with the withered hand and caused controversy on the Sabbath. Jesus has already gained a bad reputation in this way among the scribes and Pharisees. 

But here by the seashore, Jairus puts aside any concern with controversy over doctrine or religious practice.  Disregarding Pharisees and social consequences Jairus goes to the only man whom he believes can save his daughter from death itself.  He falls at the feet of Jesus and pleads with him:  “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”  - so that she may be saved and live – the word for healing – sw,|zw - is the same word for salvation in the New Testament.  It means to cure, to rescue, to deliver.  This is what Jairus asks of Jesus, he wants his daughter to be cured, to be saved and to live.  He’s not concerned about what people like the Pharisees might think.  He’s not concerned about what people might say about him in the synagogue.  He simply throws himself at the mercy of Jesus for love of his daughter.  And Jesus went with him. 

WOW – this is the way to approach Jesus.  Disregarding your position or prestige in society, putting aside your sense of personal authority and of social dignity, kneeling and pleading for salvation and life from God.  How many Christians have come to know their Lord in just this way?  At the point of crisis, realizing that being a synagogue-ruler, or a doctor, or a professor, or a banker, or an artist – or whatever it is that makes you proud – means nothing next to knowing Christ Jesus as Lord, to know healing (salvation) and life in God (for you and, yes, for your family.)  Often it takes a crisis like this to bring us to the point of humility before God – a death in the family, the onset of disease, a crippling accident, maybe a failure on the job or financial ruin wakes you up to your need for God.  Spiritual renewal often happens this way, and if it takes death knocking at your door to arouse you to put aside personal dignity and to call upon God – then so be it and praise be to the Spirit of God for his movement in people’s hearts at moments of crisis.  But I don’t believe that it requires personal tragedy for you to find humility before God and come pleading like Jairus pleads with Jesus for his daughter.  I believe that by the power of the Spirit of God working through his Word even this morning – even now – as we read about Jairus, we can be provoked to come to Jesus in the same way.  It’s the right way to approach Jesus.  To put aside your personal dignity and personal pride.  To put aside your position in society and fall at his feet.  We will see that he has authority over death itself.  Find your dignity – find life and salvation – in casting yourself before him.  You don’t need to wait for a crisis in order to take the posture of Jairus before God.  This can and really should become a daily posture of heart by which we cast ourselves before Jesus is the only one who can truly heal, truly restore, and truly rescue us in our place of need.  Jairus pleads earnestly, and Jesus comes with him. 

Bleeding Woman:  But on the way to Jairus’ house we meet another important person.  She’s not important in name or in position like Jairus, but she becomes an example to him and to us by means of her faith.  She is an unnamed woman who has suffered from perpetual bleeding or hemorrhaging for some 12 years.  One branch of later church tradition calls her Berenice; the Coptic church in Egypt names her Veronica, and according to the ancient church historian Eusebius there was later a bronze statue (in the Greek style) erected in front of her house in Capernaum which depicted her kneeling before Jesus. All of this is very interesting tradition, but what stands out more in this text is that she has no name.  On every level she is inferior in status to Jairus.  First, she is a woman.  The Rabbi’s taught that women should generally stay indoors.  She holds no position like Jairus.  And, more significantly, she is an unclean person because of her issue of blood.  Leviticus prescribes that anyone with such a bodily discharge should remain outside the camp until healed (cf. menstruation).  She is a sickly, nameless, unclean woman who has furthermore spent all of her money on doctors who have only worsened her condition rather than bettering it. 

Mark 5: 26 …had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 

That’s a very frustrating place to be.  Have you ever gone to the doctor and come away worse or wasted your money on something that was supposed to help but just hurt.  William Lane describes some of the ancient healing methods recorded in the Jewish Talmud for a condition like this.  Lane says that, “One remedy consisted of drinking a goblet of wine containing a powder compounded from rubber, alum and garden crocuses.  Another treatment consisted of a dose of Persian onions cooked in wine administered with the summons, ‘Arise out of your flow of blood!’  Other physicians prescribed sudden shock, or the carrying of the ash of an ostrich’s egg in a certain cloth.”  (Need not consult doctor.)  She had suffered much under many physicians.  Context suggests that her condition is just as dire as the little girl (12, daughters).  She’s left only with miserable destitution and shame, and in her shame she approaches Jesus from behind. 

But why does she come to Jesus?  V. 27 explains, “She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment.”  This woman came to Jesus in the same way that any of us here have come to Jesus.  She came because she had heard the report about him; she had heard testimony about the goodness and power of this man.  And with her the seed of the Word fell on good soil.  She has ears to hear.  The rest of her account here is taken up with the language of knowing and of faith. 

Lets look at the verbs…

She heard the reports about Jesus…she came…she touched…she said…she knew in her body that she was healed of her disease…Jesus perceived/ knew in himself that power had gone out…he asks and looks around to see who touched him…and the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came…told him the whole truth…your faith has made you well – says Jesus. 

Do you see the transaction of knowing here…

She heard and she believed and she came…she touched and knew (in her body) that she was healed...Jesus knew in himself and he seeks to identify her…she told the whole truth…and he says her faith has made her well. 

But wasn’t it touching the garment that made her well?

Mark is teaching us something here about faith and knowing in relationship to Jesus.  Lee Moody often asks….How do we know?   A big part of the answer is right here in Mark 5.  When your body has been healed – you know it because you can feel it, you may not be able to describe how, but you know the bleeding has stopped.  The woman knows what has happened to her because she experienced it and she feels the wholeness of it.  I suggest to you that there is something similar that happens for Christians spiritually where, in knowing Jesus, you know substantial healing so that you can feel it in your person.  It is an experiential knowledge of the Savior.  To experience the blessing of God in your life is a big part of what means to know Jesus, but it’s not the only part – Christian knowledge is experiential because it is relational and cognitive.  You see, it’s more than simply the touch of blessing.  Knowing Jesus is also to be known by him.  And in our passage Jesus whirls around to make sure that this woman knows that she is known (to him). 

William Lane explains that, “Certainly not every contact with the person of Jesus resulted in a transmission of power.  Involved in the situation was not a unilateral event in which touch released power, but a mutual event in which the personal relationship between Jesus and the woman released power.  Jesus, therefore, could not allow the woman to recede into the crowd still entertaining ideas tinged with superstition and magic.” 

Jesus wants the woman to know that what happened was not simply a transmission of his aura as a great person, a magic touch …no, he wants her to know that she has entered into relationship with him.  To that end he finds her, and he explains to her (and to all of us onlookers) that it is her faith that has made her well.  You need not touch the him of Jesus garment to enter relationship with him.  And here is the cognitive element of faith – knowing the salvation of God in Jesus Christ began for this woman in hearing, believing, and coming.  Faith is the instrument of relationship with Jesus.  And it’s by turning to address the woman that Jesus fully restores her person.  Being addressed by the great teacher and in relationship to her Lord, she is fully restored from her uncleanness.  He heals her socially and emotionally as well as physically. 

"Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." 

The bleeding has already stopped, but with these words Jesus takes away her shame.

(Sonship – Daughterhood) 

She’s part of the family of God.  She’s an heir of the kingdom. 

Mark is making it plain that you also can know Jesus in this way.  Your faith is what connects you to his power.  And connection to his power entails connection to his person.  And in all of this he will be pursuing you more than you will be pursuing him. 

It would be to our liking if religion were more of a touch and go affair – wouldn’t it?  Most people would prefer to just slip in and slip out of church on the back pew with no personal transaction necessary.   Or, better yet, set up a relic or some holy water or an idle that you can just touch to catch the sacred aura in a vacant sanctuary – no personal transaction necessary.  Or, best of all, you could just touch the preacher on the TV screen or send him a check for healing. But Jesus does not settle for private, superstitious, isolated religion.  He is the Living God, the living Son of the Living God, and by grace he moves towards you through faith like this woman. 

Don’t try to privatize God.  Yes, he knows you in the intimate place of your private need, but he knows you in community.  Living with Jesus means living in community with God as a Daughter or a Son in the family of God – and it means being restored from social shame to full relationship with other people.  Touching and going is not the Christian life, and as an example to all of us Jesus refuses to allow this woman to leave with anything less than the whole truth.  There in fear and trembling on her knees before Jesus her confession and her public testimony are part of a coming out which every Christian should embrace. 

So, from this woman we’ve learned that faith involves personal, experiential knowledge of God.  And we learn that God seeks full restoration and relationship with us.  Don’t accept anything less that this gospel. 

Back to Jairus:  And so we come back to Jairus, because it’s Jairus who needs this gospel most right now.  He pleaded with Jesus to come, but the woman brought a fatal interruption and now his faith will be tested.  He gets the news that his daughter is dead – “Why trouble the teacher anymore?”  But Jesus overhears and his words come quick “Do not fear, only believe.” 

How do you believe? – Jairus has an example in the woman who just touched Jesus and caused the delay.  But what is he supposed to believe?  Apparently the statute of limitations within which Jesus can act does not exclude the recently dead.

Jesus sees the commotion and weeping and wailing of what seems to have been professional mourners.  It’s still common in many cultures to hire people in order to help you grieve properly for lost family members – to help get the emotions flowing in dealing with the toxic issue of death.  The Rabbi’s prescribed that at least two flute players and one wailer should be hired for most funerals.  And this would not have been an uncommon sound in ancient Israel where many people died early and often.  And, make no mistake, there were many people recently dead whom Jesus did not raise. 

V. 39 "Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping." 

At this outrageous claim, the mourners laugh at Jesus.  But he disregards their ridicule and attends to the business at hand – putting them out of the house and out of his way  (some people are a hindrance to spiritual work). 

Talitha cumi – “It’s time to get up little girl.” (N.T. Wright) 

This time it is Jesus who reaches out his hand with the touch of life, and the girl arises from her deathbed.  There are many things we could say about this scene, but the thrust of the passage is quite simply that the touch and the word of Jesus hold power to raise the dead.  When Jesus says the child is sleeping he does not seem to refer to a coma (as some have suggested), instead, he means the sort of death that a person experiences when there is hope of resurrection (elsewhere in the New Testament).  The professional mourners are clearly convinced that this young girl (of 12 years) is stone dead.  The language of Luke’s gospel is more clear on this point (physician) – And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. (Luke 8: 53) 

Most people cannot raise the dead.  Jesus does not merely resuscitate a sick girl but he restores her to fullness of life and health.  Jesus is more powerful than a defebulator – that’s not what’s going on here.  In the raising of the girl we find a foretaste of the full power of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This is the full intention of the kingdom of God – to restore life from death itself.  It’s a foretaste of the Resurrection power that overflows when Jesus will take up his own life never again to endure the stain of death.  Here Jesus puts the last enemy – death itself – on notice that time is short.  And he gives Jairus the type of faith that he’s been looking for all along in the disciples.  It’s the faith beyond death that Jesus was looking for on the stormy sea. 

So Finallly..***Disciples:

dullness highlighted as they misunderstand Jesus desire to know who touch them.  They seem more like the unfeeling crowd at this point.   But Jesus still invites James and John and Peter inside the house to witness the raising of the dead.  Jesus is patient and deliberate with his disciples.  He tolerates their dullness – our dullness – and he is committed to revealing to them ever greater measures of his glory.  Jesus will bring them to a faith beyond death despite themselves – just as he can bring us into greater understanding of himself this morning despite our unbelief.  Do you have personal, experiential knowledge of the Savior this morning?  Do you trust him beyond death itself?  If not, know that he is patient with your unbelief, but he welcomes you into a fuller knowledge of himself this morning.