Home Sermons Reflection on Mark 5: 21-43

Reflection on Mark 5: 21-43

I’m not so sure if I’m the one who should be preaching this sermon today. We meet a very, very sick woman who is not named and we meet a very, very, desperate father whose name is Jairus. I have never been that sick and I’ve never lost a child. So what that woman and Jairus were going through, I can’t even imagine. Before we get too far. I need to explain something about Mark’s unique style of writing. Mark begins to tell a story, then interrupts that first story with a second story, then finishes that second story, and then goes back to finish the first story. Some people call this the Markan sandwich. It happens about 9 times in Mark and each time it’s the centre of the sandwich that is the most important part. The centre of the sandwich tells us how to interpret the outsides. The woman and Jairus make up this Markan story sandwich. And it’s the story of the woman that is the centre of the sandwich. So that’s where we need to start in order to understand the story of Jairus. A woman has a bleeding disorder for 12 years! I used to be a lab technologist and that is a lot of blood loss. Her haemoglobin is probably around 30 or even 25 (maybe even 20!). She’s no doubt pale and weak and shaky. We hear about how she’s been to every doctor she could find and most likely has been prescribed every treatment in the book. And in those days medical books described things like · concoctions made from ashes of burnt wolf’s skulls, heads of mice, and owls brains. · take a dose of Persian onions cooked in wine and while you took it, someone had to say the words, “Arise out of your flow of blood!” · If you had a cold the treatment was to kiss a mule’s nose. Quack medical treatments have been around forever. I did some digging and found this from the Winnipeg Free Press Archives from July 12, 1875: An English physician recently removed a section of a patient's, liver, placed it on a plate, and scraped it carefully, and returned it to its place, fully restored to its normal action. This promises to work a revolution in the treatment of disease. In a few years you will be reading things like this: "Husband, I wish you would take John's right lung down to the doctor’s this morning, and have the middle valve fixed,” or "Will you stop off at the doctor's office when you come home for lunch and see if he has Mary's liver mended as she wants to go out to tea this evening. (Danbury news) That is the kind of medical world the woman most likely lived in. And there were no malpractice suits either. She had been through it all, and eventually it all runs out. All her faith in doctors, in health, in her whole life as she knew it before she became ill, all of that runs out. But here’s the thing about this woman….she doesn’t give up faith in Jesus. Somehow in her fragile state she breaks through the crowd and interrupts Jesus and all the people, saying, “All I have to do is to touch Jesus’ clothes and I will be made well.” And she does. And by her faith in Jesus, she is made well—This is miracle #1. That is the centre of the story sandwich. Let’s go back to the first story about Jairus and his dying daughter. First of all Jairus is as desperate as the woman was for his daughter to be healed. Then things take a turn for the worse and the unimaginable happens. She dies. And people are ready to give up even on Jesus. But Jesus says, “Do not be afraid. Just keep believing.” And the little 12-year-old girl is brought back to life. This is miracle #2. We can stop there and be glad for these two miracles. But to be honest this scripture troubles me, because I know that apart from the odd miracle, like the recent one in which 8-year-old Samuel Gross came out of a 2-week coma after being under water in a culvert for 20 minutes, most children are not that lucky. Most stay dead. I cringe when well meaning people tell those who suffer that they need to pray and believe more in order that they will be healed. I don’t believe one iota of that. The real question I have, is not how we hold onto faith when miracles occur. The question is how do we hold onto faith when the miracles don’t occur. God promises to make us well. How do we believe it? How do we hold onto faith in God’s promises to heal us and make us well, when hope looks like it’s gone? How do we keep believing? You’re going about your business behaving yourself and doing all the right things, eating the right foods and you get a phone call from your doctor saying that your Cat Scan is positive for pancreatic cancer. How do you stay well? When Jesus says all will be well in my name, how do we believe him when all the things we normally lean on have crumbled to dust? I don’t really know what to say. I’d love to give you a miraculous story, but I haven’t got one. I really don’t know why there is illness and disease in the world. I don’t know why such bad things happen to such good people. I’ve been hearing about some really good people who have become ill. And I am thinking about someone I know who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 20 years ago, when he was 50, and he told me that he prayed back then that he might be healed. Now, twenty years later he is in the last stages of the disease. Did God answer his prayers? Was he healed? He did tell me recently, “I have not been healed of Parkinson’s disease, but I have been healed of my fear of Parkinson’s’ disease.” Maybe we need to take Mark’s advice and to listen to the woman. Never lose hope in God who never gives up on us. Maybe that is the real miracle here. And maybe having faith in Jesus who will touch us is really the thing that makes us well. The fact that Jesus keeps on touching us. I hope when I am ever in that situation, and I will be, because death, or illness, or disease is not something anyone can choose not to have. I hope that I will remember the faith of this woman and I hope I too reach out to touch Jesus like she did. But I also know that if I forget, Jesus never will and will keep on touching me with grace and healing, and somehow I will be made well through it.