Friday 8 November 2024

[Jesus] said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (v. 34)

Mark 5:21-43 Friday 8 November 2024

Psalm 31:9-24

Background
In yesterday's reading, Jesus was in the Gentile (non-Jewish) Decapolis region. Today we read he travels back across the Sea of Galilee and disembarks on the Jewish shore. And again he is confronted by human need.

Jairus, the synagogue leader, emerges from the crowd and begs Jesus to heal his daughter, who is deathly ill. Jesus makes his way through the crowds, accompanying Jairus. It is then that he is approached by the woman. Her condition makes her ritually unclean, combining both physical affliction and shame. She knows herself to be on the edge of society. At that time, her prospects for improved health were no better than the dying little girl’s.

A protracted menstruation problem left a woman unclean throughout its duration. Desperate to be healed, she risks defiling Jesus by touching him. Her longing for healing and intent to touch Jesus is met by Jesus’s desire, despite the disciples’ remonstrations, to know who touched him. Not content simply to dispatch a miracle, Jesus wants to encounter the woman. For Jesus, miracle must lead to meeting. Jesus’s tender response, “Daughter, your faith has healed you” (5:34), overcomes the woman’s fear of social ostracism.

The drama now intensifies as the interruption has cost the life of Jairus’ daughter. “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” ask Jairus’ servants (5:35). In direct address to Jairus, Jesus commands, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” Arriving at Jairus’ house, Jesus allows only Peter, James and John, his inner circle of disciples, and the girl’s parents to accompany him into her room. Jesus’s figurative reference to the girl’s death as “sleeping” is met with scorn by the professional mourners. The command talitha koum is Aramaic, meaning, “Little girl [literally ‘little lamb’], arise.” Immediately, reports Mark, the girl arises, to the amazement of all present.

What does Mark achieve by sandwiching the story of the haemorrhaging woman into the story of Jairus and his daughter? Mark wants to show that Jairus, a man of reputation and respect, must learn the meaning of faith from an unnamed woman whose only identification is her shame. If Jairus can trust Jesus as the woman trusted Jesus, he need not fear. Faith means trusting in Jesus when all human hopes have been exhausted.

To Ponder:

  • Living the life of faith and trusting in God can be challenging. Do you, or someone known to you, really struggle to believe and trust in God? Light a candle, sit quietly in a peaceful place and know the presence of God. Pray for faith and trust, for yourself or that other person.
  • What can the Church do in order to enable our gathering for worship to be a place of genuine encounter with God which enables the strengthening of faith?

Bible notes author: The Revd Dr Adrian Burdon
Adrian Burdon is Superintendent Minister of the Telford Circuit in the Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury District. He has been a presbyter since 1988 and, in addition to Shropshire, has worked in the Oldham Circuit, on the Fylde coast, in Leeds city centre, the Northeast of England and as a mission partner in the South Pacific. Adrian is Chair of the CTBI writing group which writes material for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and is Chair of the Connexional Liturgy and Worship Subcommittee of the Faith and Order Committee.

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