Mark 5:21-43
“Healing Touch”
July 1, 2012 - Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

         Last Sunday hundreds of people lined up outside the Coburg Road Safeway store. They hadn’t come for a big sale. They came to get a glimpse, an autograph, maybe a handshake from Ashton Eaton who broke the world record for the decathlon at the Olympic trials. Eaton is an Oregon native who runs for the Oregon Track Club Elite in Eugene. A crowd gathered around a hometown young man who had done great things.

         Crowds kept gathering around Jesus as Mark’s story unfolds. As we jump in here at chapter 5, verse 21, Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee once again. This time there’s no drama. We’re just told they crossed over to the west side, back in the vicinity of Nazareth where Jesus grew up. Once again we hear, “a great crowd gathered around him.”

         We’re doing the same, you know. We are gathered here, even in the chill and damp outside, to be near Jesus. He’s the reason we come together. He is the one we come to meet. We may shake hands or exchange hugs and greetings with others here, but it’s still Jesus at the center of our gathering. Like the people hoping to see and touch Ashton Eaton last Sunday, we’re here in the hope of seeing and touching Jesus.

         In our text we meet two people who came to Jesus in a crowd. One was a Jewish religious leader in verse 23 who wanted Jesus to come and touch his daughter and heal her. The other was a woman in verse 25 who had suffered for twelve years. She wanted to touch Jesus. That’s what it’s all about today, touching Jesus, being touched by Him.

         Mark put these two stories about the touch of Jesus into his favorite literary device, another “sandwich.” The raising of Jairus’ daughter begins and ends the narrative. The healing of the woman is sandwiched in the middle. Besides the touch of Jesus the stories are both about women, both of whom are called “daughter.” Both involve Jesus touching someone unclean, and both of them seem beyond any hope of human help.

         In verse 23 Jairus’ request for Jesus to come is urgent. His daughter is about to die. So Jesus doesn’t question him or even pause. Verse 24 just says that He went with him. But they still have to get through the crowd to Jairus’ home. On the way there is someone else with a pressing need.

         There is a lot in this story worth lingering and reflecting over. But like Jesus on His way, we don’t have much time today. Yet here is this woman which verse 25 tells us had been bleeding for 12 years. Our best guess is that this was some terrible menstrual disorder. Her suffering is magnified in verse 26 by the fact that “She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had.”

         Whatever you think about our healthcare system or how to fix it, that verse still rings painfully true. How many people do you know who have “endured much” from doctors and come to the end of both financial resources and what medicine can do? Just as can happen to you or me, this poor woman reached out now for the only hope left to her.

         We could be critical. In verse 28, she is clearly thinking in terms of magic or superstition, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” It’s a magic touch, like people who kiss the Blarney Stone in Ireland or who rub Lincoln’s nose on the bust in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois to receive good luck. It’s like people who crowd around a celebrity believing even a little brush with her clothing will impart some virtue or blessing.

         Yet Jesus doesn’t take it that way. Verse 29 says it worked. She touched Jesus’ garment and was immediately healed. And Jesus felt the healing power of the Holy Spirit move through Him to that woman. So He looked around until He found her. Then He didn’t criticize or scold or try to educate. In verse 34, He just tells her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

         There’s something to learn here about faith. We tend to want people who come to Jesus to have facts straight. We want them to know it’s not magic. We want them to believe that He is the Son of God, that He died and rose again, that He expects repentance from sin and a lifelong commitment to follow. But all it took here was the tiniest speck of faith that He could help for the woman to find her healing. Let us be more in the business of discovering and encouraging little specks of faith like this woman had.

         We could dwell here, but the story is moving fast. With verse 35, He’s still talking with the woman when messengers come to say that the synagogue leader’s daughter has died. It’s too late. Why bother Jesus anymore? But Jesus overheard and won’t have it. Taking His three closest disciples, Peter, James and John, He hurried off to where the girl lay dead.

         The mourning had already started. As reserved westerners we just weep quietly into our hands and brush away little tears on our cheeks. But Beth remembers that when our Iranian friend Arezoo died, her mother went almost insane, screaming and wailing with her sorrow and loss. That’s what they were doing when Jesus came and asked in verse 39, “Why do you make such a commotion? The girl is not dead but sleeping.”

         We could take what Jesus said two ways. Maybe He meant it literally. She wasn’t really dead, but just in a coma. He was going to wake her up. But these were not stupid people. This was a well-off family. They had doctors. They wouldn’t have started their wailing unless they had really confirmed she was dead. No, what Jesus meant, was that because of what He was about to do, this girl’s death would be like a short nap.

         He took the three disciples and the parents and went into the girl’s room. Then what Jairus asked was done. Jesus touched her. He took her hand and spoke in tender words, “Talitha, cum.” That was Aramaic. Mark translated it into Greek, making it, “Little girl, get up!” Or in English the Greek words could be made be even more tender and respectful, “Little lady, arise!” But talitha in Aramaic is a feminine form of the word “lamb” or “child.” “Little lamb, get up,” said the Lamb of God.

         She got up. This twelve year old girl, just on the brink of becoming a woman, rose up and “began to walk about,” says Mark. She walked back into the life that everyone thought was over for her, all because Jesus touched her.

         So what about you and me, as we come here with our own desperate hopes and desires to be touched and helped and even resurrected by Jesus? We’ve gathered, we’re a small crowd, but still a crowd, assembled around this person named Jesus Christ. Yet unlike that desperate woman with the hemorrhage, unlike the daughter of Jairus, we can’t seem to just reach out and lay our hands on Jesus. How might you and I touch Him? How might we receive His healing touch?

         The literal hands of Jesus are in heaven, waiting for His return to this world in God’s good time. But through the Holy Spirit He is still present. By the Spirit Jesus lives in His Church, in you and me. That’s why Paul calls the Church the Body of Christ. And so when we ourselves reach out to touch and help and heal someone, Jesus Himself is extending His hand to touch their lives.

         In our lesson from II Corinthians 8, Paul called for the church in Corinth to help their brothers and sisters living in poverty in Jerusalem. He asked them to be the loving touch of help needed by other Christians. Laura has talked to you about a coming fund-raiser for the Dixon family to pay for Zeke’s medical care. Your help with that is Jesus reaching out to touch and help that family, that little lamb.

         So the first way we find Jesus still touching and healing is through our own hands, our own hearts extended in love to people around us. But there’s another blessed and beautiful way in which we may reach out our hands and touch the Lord. You are invited to do that this very day as gather here around the bread of His body and the cup of His blood.

         In the Covenant Church we don’t try to explain how, but we believe that Jesus Christ is really present in Holy Communion. Reach out and touch the bread and we will say, “This is the body of Christ, broken for you.” Receive the cup and raise it to your lips, and hear, “This is Christ’s blood, shed for you.” At this table, you touch Jesus.

         You don’t need to understand it anymore than the woman or the little girl did. Just come as she did, as that father did. Come in faith, come believing that Jesus can help and save you, and when you do, you will receive the loving, healing, saving touch of Jesus.

         Amen.

         Valley Covenant Church
         Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
         Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj