The Gospel stories of the raising of Jarius’ daughter and the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage conclude a series of miracles that reveal that Jesus is the Son of God, as proclaimed in the opening sentences of Mark’s Gospel. Obviously, these stories are very different – almost inverse images of one another. And, yet, at their most basic level, they are the same story. They are stories of two people, who, when they come into contact with Jesus, were transformed from death into life.
After Jesus returned from the country, He was teaching in Capernaum when Jarius fell at His feet in a gesture of respect and prayer, begging Him to come to his young daughter, who was near death. “Come lay your hands on her so she may be made well and live,” he asked.
As Jesus, the disciples and the crowd that followed Him set off for Jarius’ home, a woman who suffered from a hemorrhage for 12 long years squeezed through the crowd, came up behind Him and touched Jesus’ clothing. As she did, the story says that “she felt in her body that she was healed from her disease.” Somehow, Jesus felt power leave Him and inquired who had touched Him. In fear and trembling, the woman came forward, whereupon, Jesus commended her faith and told her to go in peace. Here the word “peace” is used in the sense of healing and wholeness.
This story is, again, as were last week’s readings, a demonstration of Jesus’ compassion. He took time to minister to the woman with the chronic illness in the midst of an urgent situation with Jarius, His compassion not only resulted in the woman’s healing, but under Jewish ritual laws of that time, she was considered “unclean,” so Jesus broke down cultural barriers by speaking with her publicly.
After caring for the woman, Jesus turns back to Jarius, who has just received word that his daughter had already died. The crowd insists that there is no longer need to trouble Jesus, but, true to form, Jesus reassures Jarius: “Do not fear, only believe.” The group continues to Jarius’ home where there is weeping and mourning going on. Taking Peter, James, and John and the girl’s parents, Jesus enters the house and takes the youngster by the hand and speaks to her as though she were asleep, telling her in Arabic” “Get up.” Her life revived, she indeed stands up. The text makes a special point of noting the girl is 12 years old, the legal age when a young woman could be betrothed.
So, in both stories, life and hope are restored. Both women went from death to life. Even more, the imagery and language foreshadows the Resurrection of Jesus Himself and emphasizes that: “God is the God of the living and not the dead.”
I believe that there is something to the weaving together of these two very different stories into one. I believe the text says something very important and very profound to each one of us. I believe that the miracles are God’s way of saying the 12 year-old daughter of Jarius, who died – is us. And the woman whose life was drained out of her for 12 years and who was, in a manner of speaking, dying – is you and me.
What the stories at the end of Mark’s 5th chapter make clear is the same message as Ash Wednesday – all of us are dying; all of us are having the life drained out of us – UNTIL! Until we encounter Jesus. Until, somehow, we are touched by the Master’s hand.
These intertwined stories point to the central posture of the Christian life: Jesus’ arms stretched out, reaching for us and our own arms outstretched reaching back. Christ touching us and us touching Christ in our own way. It is in that posture we discover our identity as beloved, redeemed, and the holy children of God Himself.
We must reach out and touch – an act of blind faith to be sure – to receive life. We must allow ourselves to be touched – perhaps making us more vulnerable – by the arms of others to be truly alive. Only then can we hear the welcome command: “Get up!” And then, in that posture, with our hearts wide open, our arms outstretched and the walls we have built broken down, we as individuals and as a faith community may be brought from death to life by Christ Himself.
Faith is an attitude of wide-open expectant trust that moves us into action. This is the same kind of faith that moves us into action. This is the same kind of faith that moved Jarius and the woman with the chronic illness to believe the impossible could happen. It is this kind of genuine trust through which the power of God can work most freely. Therefore, do not fear, only believe.
Source: © The Rev. Peter Groschner, July 1, 2018. Mark 5:21-43. Reprinted with permission from the author.