Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 28th, 2015
Text: Mark 5:21-43 The Message (MSG)
A Risk of Faith
21-24 After Jesus crossed over by boat, a large crowd met him at the seaside. One of the meeting-place leaders named Jairus came. When he saw Jesus, he fell to his knees, beside himself as he begged, “My dear daughter is at death’s door. Come and lay hands on her so she will get well and live.” Jesus went with him, the whole crowd tagging along, pushing and jostling him.
25-29 A woman who had suffered a condition of hemorrhaging for twelve years—a long succession of physicians had treated her, and treated her badly, taking all her money and leaving her worse off than before—had heard about Jesus. She slipped in from behind and touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, “If I can put a finger on his robe, I can get well.” The moment she did it, the flow of blood dried up. She could feel the change and knew her plague was over and done with.
30 At the same moment, Jesus felt energy discharging from him. He turned around to the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
31 His disciples said, “What are you talking about? With this crowd pushing and jostling you, you’re asking, ‘Who touched me?’ Dozens have touched you!”
32-33 But he went on asking, looking around to see who had done it. The woman, knowing what had happened, knowing she was the one, stepped up in fear and trembling, knelt before him, and gave him the whole story.
34 Jesus said to her, “Daughter, you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.”
35 While he was still talking, some people came from the leader’s house and told him, “Your daughter is dead. Why bother the Teacher any more?”
36 Jesus overheard what they were talking about and said to the leader, “Don’t listen to them; just trust me.”
37-40 He permitted no one to go in with him except Peter, James, and John. They entered the leader’s house and pushed their way through the gossips looking for a story and neighbors bringing in casseroles. Jesus was abrupt: “Why all this busybody grief and gossip? This child isn’t dead; she’s sleeping.” Provoked to sarcasm, they told him he didn’t know what he was talking about.
40-43 But when he had sent them all out, he took the child’s father and mother, along with his companions, and entered the child’s room. He clasped the girl’s hand and said, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, get up.” At that, she was up and walking around! This girl was twelve years of age. They, of course, were all beside themselves with joy. He gave them strict orders that no one was to know what had taken place in that room. Then he said, “Give her something to eat.”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
“Who is this Jesus?”
Today’s Gospel lesson, along with last week’s, is part of a series of accounts of the miracles and wonders Jesus performed. Last week, we read about how Jesus could tame nature; and this week we find him back on his side of the Sea of Galilee where he heals that woman suffering from bleeding and raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead.
In between these two passages, he heals the man who is possessed by so many demons that he says his name is “Legion” when asked. At their request, Jesus commands the demons to leave the man and enter into the pigs who were being tended to close by; and all of them, about 1000 pigs!, then run headlong into the sea and are drowned. At that point, the people of that area, known as the Gerasenes, beg Jesus to go somewhere else!
So he and his disciples come home, and they find that Jesus’ fame has preceded him. As soon as he gets off the boat, a massive crowd begins to surround him, jostling, pushing, calling his name, asking him for help…
No doubt a lot of people standing by watching all this asked the question “Who is this Jesus?” Maybe a lot of people in the crowd who were asking him for help had the same question in the back of their minds, but they, at least, were convinced enough that he might be able to help him that they pressed in on him. It had to have been a scene of utter chaos!
And in the midst of all that, one woman, whose name we do not know, touches his robe, and is instantly healed!
No one even notices this. If anything, they’re focused on his conversation with Jairus about his daughter. This woman was just one more face in the crowd.
But Jesus notices. Jesus stops dead in his tracks, and asks, “Who touched my robe?” And the woman, trembling with fear and hope, not knowing really what to expect – will Jesus be angry? Will he take away his healing? – comes before him and kneels, and tells him the whole story.
And what does Jesus do at that point? He gives her a name, a family name, an intimate name – he calls her “daughter.”
I can’t think of a gentler or more loving story than this one. Those 12 years she’d spent with this affliction could not have been easy. A woman with a condition like that was considered “unclean,” and so she was automatically unwanted, friendless, and unloved. She was a “non-person,” living on the edge of society.
But in a split second, all that changed. Before, all she’d had was a past. Now she has a future. For this woman, the question of who Jesus is gets a definitive and positive answer: He is the one who restored her health and rescued her from a life of chronic illness, loneliness and misery.
“Who is this Jesus?” Two thousand years on, we still ask that question. Every follower of Jesus, in every generation, has asked that question and has found an answer to it.
Each of us here today, too, needs to answer that question, whether or not we have answered it before. Times change. We change. And so that question keeps circling back. How we answer that question determines how we will live our lives going forward from now.
Answering the question “Who is this Jesus?” is never easy; and I don’t think it’s ever been harder to answer than today. Every single day we see people telling us who Jesus is. Whether they specifically say so or not, they very often mean that their understanding of Jesus needs to be our understanding of Jesus, too. I’d like to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and believe that they are sincere and truly want us to have the same experience of Jesus that they’ve had.
But – to use the timeworn phrase – “accepting Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior” is exactly that – personal. It really can’t be any other way, because each of us is a unique individual. One size does not fit all. Jairus could no more see Jesus in the way that woman did than she could understand Jesus the way Jairus did. Jairus was a grieving, terrified, profoundly sad father; she had no children, but an affliction that Jairus could never have had. Yet both of them found the answer and the help they desperately needed in that one Jesus.
Jairus had even more to lose than a daughter. He was the leader of the local synagogue, and as such was not given to running after faith healers. Well, he wasn’t supposed to, anyway. He had obviously heard about this Nazarene, and maybe he had held the same opinion of Jesus that his colleagues did – that this person was, at best, a nuisance, and, at worst, dangerously subversive to the social order. But now he was in a desperate situation, and he needed all the help he could get. Anything and everything else, any other consideration, was secondary. Adversity sometimes helps to clear the mind!
But, while they’re talking, suddenly messengers rush up to Jairus with the horrible news that the daughter has died. I can’t even imagine how he must have felt at that moment. Maybe he went weak in the knees. Maybe he saw spots before his eyes and felt faint. I know that I would immediately become a basket case if someone gave me news like that.
“Sir,” say the messengers gently, “let’s go home. No need to trouble the teacher any more.”
But Jesus has overheard their conversation and steps up to them with comfort and compassion. He says to Jairus, “Don’t listen to them. Just trust me.” And he takes Peter, James, and John with him and they go to Jairus’ house, where he performs yet another miracle by raising the daughter to life.
He does it with such tenderness, too – he takes the little girl’s hand in his and gently says, “Tilitha koum,” “Little girl, rise up,” and she does! Just as with the woman, the world of Jairus, his daughter, and the whole family changes in a split second from sorrow to overwhelming joy.
“Who is this Jesus?” Our compassionate and loving God.
The common thread between the woman and Jairus is that both had an unquestioning faith in Jesus. This is all the more striking when we note that everybody around them – except Jesus – either had no clue as to what was happening or were, in the case of Jairus, downright scornful when Jesus said the daughter was only sleeping.
Jesus did not set out to heal that woman – he was busy with Jairus. But the woman reached out her hand with the thought “if only I touch my finger to his robe, I will be healed.” Even before she touched Jesus’ robe, she had faith. Jairus was moved also by faith that was beyond himself, beyond his experience, to ask Jesus to simply lay his hands on his daughter that she might be healed. His desperation sharpened his faith – whether or not he even recognized it as such – and brought him to ask for help.
That’s the same faith that brought us here today. That’s the connection between us and these two people.
Here’s the unvarnished truth: I can’t make you faithful people. You already are faithful people. And what we do here, week after week, is gather together to ask God to inform our faith, to deepen our faith, to strengthen our faith, so that the mustard seed we heard about again last week, that kernel of faith that lies within us, can blossom and grow into a mighty tree.
“Who is this Jesus?” He is the Source and the Perfecter of our faith. He is the One Who calls and leads, who loves and forgives, the One Who is with us at the last, as the great old hymn “My Faith Looks Up to Thee” puts it:
“When ends life’s transient dream, when death’s cold, sullen stream shall o’er me roll; blest Savior, then in love, fear and distrust remove; O bear me safe above, a ransomed soul!”
In the Name of God: The Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.