A few years back, when Covid was still a very scary thing, we eventually ended our quarantine and began venturing out… carefully. Most folks were wearing masks, and we were still very carefully social distancing, and if we were out and about and someone coughed or sneezed, they got the side-eye from everyone around them, didn’t they? Everybody moves a few steps away from them, and if it was you that coughed or sneezed, you felt like you had to make an explanation. “It’s allergies”, or “I was just tested this morning and I’m negative”. And hopefully you won’t cough a second time because now you are just a pariah. Not too long after my store re-opened I got bronchitis. I was tested multiple times during that bout of bronchitis and was negative, I didn’t have Covid but still, I would cough, and my customers would straight up walk out of the store. I stayed off of the selling floor as much as I could while I was sick, and literally tried to walk out the back door if I felt a cough coming on. I really felt like an outcast; like people genuinely did not want me around.
When we talk about the Jewish laws that related to ritual uncleanness, I’m not sure that we understand just how alienating it was to be declared unclean. But just as much as a person coughing during Covid felt like an outcast, I’m sure that it was much worse for the ritually unclean of first century Israel. You were completely excluded, not just from the assembly, but from your own friends and family. If you were unclean, anyone with whom you came into contact was made unclean also. And so you were really excluded from absolutely everything. You couldn’t work, you couldn’t socialize, you couldn’t attend worship, your whole life pretty much came to a standstill. But, for the most part, as bad as it was, it was still, for most folks, just an inconvenience. A day or two of isolation and then everything was back to normal. But for some folks, lepers, shepherds, and the woman in our story today, it was a permanent inconvenience; and then some, because the isolation became debilitating. You couldn’t live with your family, you couldn’t buy anything at the market, you weren’t even allowed at the market. You couldn’t eat at your own home; you couldn’t sleep at your own home. This woman who was bleeding would have lost her home, her husband, her children, everything.
But today’s reading doesn’t start with the woman’s story, so we’re going to have to come back to that. Our story today actually starts with Jairus. Jairus was the head of the local synagogue, he was important, he was influential, he was almost certainly wealthy, and he had a 12 year old daughter, Luke tells us that she was his only child, and she was dying. In the Greek, Jairus referred to his daughter as θυγάτριόν (thy-gat-ri-on) which was a diminutive that would appropriately be translated “my baby girl”. His daughter wasn’t a baby, she was 12, but I’m sure that every parent here understands exactly what it was that Jairus was saying. Jairus’s daughter was everything to him. Now, given the fact that by the time these events took place, the synagogue was, in large part, in opposition to Jesus, Jairus was risking his career and his reputation in coming to Jesus, but the only thing that mattered to him at this point was his “baby girl”.
Our story tells us that “when [Jairus] saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. He pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live’.” Jesus immediately went with him. I’d like to focus for just a minute on the faith of Jairus. It took a great deal of courage for Jairus to even come to Jesus. Perhaps Jairus had heard the priests talking about healings that Jesus had done, or maybe Jairus investigated on his own and heard stories, or maybe he even saw a miracle in person. But for whatever reason, Jairus believed that Jesus could heal his daughter. And so he risked the ostracism of his peers, and turned to the One who he believed was his baby girl’s last hope. As is so often the case, people will turn to God most readily when things seem to be most hopeless.
But on the way to Jairus’s house, there is a delay. An unnamed woman (Though Catholic tradition identifies her as Veronica) has been bleeding for 12 years. She believes that if she is able, just to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment, she will be healed. With a large crowd pressing Jesus in from all sides, she makes her way through the crowd, touches the hem of Jesus’s garment, and instantly realizes that she has been healed. When Jesus feels the power that healed her go out of Him, He asks who touched Him. The disciples, probably incredulously due to the crowd pressing Him in on all sides, basically said to Jesus “What are you kidding? A hundred people have probably touched you”. But Jesus knew that someone had touched Him in order to be healed, and now the woman has another problem. Remember our discussion about being a Covid pariah? Well, every single person that she had touched in that crowd as she worked her way towards Jesus has now been made unclean, as has Jesus. I would imagine that the woman was hoping to touch His garment, be healed, and slip away into the crowd unnoticed, but Jesus wasn’t about to let that happen; and for a very good reason.
The text tells us that she “fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.” She told Him the story of her disease, how long she had suffered with it, how much she had lost, and how she believed that she would be healed if she were just to touch the hem of His garment, and I would imagine that she also apologized profusely to all of the people that she had just made unclean, especially Jesus. At this point, I am sure that she expected Jesus to rebuke her for having made so many people unclean, but what Jesus did next was remarkable. Jesus first told her that her faith had made her well, but then, Jesus called her “Daughter”, and she is the only person in the entire New Testament who Jesus did call “Daughter”. If we stop to think about this, this woman had been through a 12 year long, terrible ordeal. I don’t think that we can even imagine the depth of what her illness had cost her, but her loss wasn’t just physical. Her marriage, her family, her friendships and relationships, all lost. Whatever money she may have had she spent on doctors who were unable to heal her, she had to live on the fringes of society, probably scrounging to find food to eat and a suitable place to sleep, and undoubtedly routinely being scolded by people who discovered her illness and who may have been upset because they had been made unclean by her. In short, she was an outcast in the worst possible way. When Jesus healed her He didn’t just heal her physically. In calling her “Daughter” and in telling her to “Go in peace” Jesus was restoring her to the community from which she had been excluded for 12 long years. Warren Wiersbe commented, “To be made whole meant much more than receiving physical healing. Jesus had given her spiritual healing as well.” And Mark L Strauss expands on this thought with, “For Jesus to say “go in peace is not simply [telling her] not to be afraid of what she has done, but to go in the wholeness and completeness of life because [she] has been rescued by the Lord”.
Just as Jesus is about to return His attention to Jairus, some people came from his house and told him that his daughter had died. One can only imagine the frustration that Jairus must have felt. If only this woman had not interrupted Jesus, we may have made it home in time… But Jesus hears what is said, and He tells Jairus “Don’t be afraid, just believe”.
When they arrived at Jairus’s house, there was already a crowd of paid mourners, as was the Jewish custom. The Jewish Mishna, the book of oral traditional laws, says, “Even the poorest in Israel do not hire less than two flute players and one wailing woman”. Jairus was wealthy, so there must have been quite a crowd of paid mourners. Jesus asks the crowd “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” Knowing full well that the child was indeed dead, the crowd’s mourning turns to derision. As they laugh at and mock Jesus, he throws them out of the house. In the Greek, the word used to describe Jesus’s action was ἐκβάλλω (Ekballo) which, according to Thayer’s, means to drive out with a notion of violence. This is the same word that was used when Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple. And there is a whole sermon in this verse alone. Our most sacred responsibility as believers is to love God AND to love one another at all times and in all ways possible. In the midst of grief that was only moments old, try to imagine how painful it was for the family to hear all of this laughing and mocking coming from those who were supposedly being paid to support the family in their grief! As is so often the case, when Jesus becomes angry, it is because someone has done something that is hurtful to others.
As Jesus unceremoniously clears the house of everyone but the family and Peter, James, and John, Jesus takes the child’s hand and tells her to get up. The girl immediately rises and begins walking around. Jesus tells the family to give her something to eat, then He commands them, and the disciples, sternly, not to tell anyone about what happened. I spoke a few weeks ago about Jesus’s requests that His miracles are kept a secret. There was a great, though decidedly unauthoritative, quote from the TV show “The Chosen” that explains this. In the show, after the Jesus character tells the family not to say anything, He says “It is not yet time for the commotion that will result. None of you need the attention, not all of it will be good.” Even though this isn’t authoritative, I do believe that it helps us to understand the dynamic of Jesus wanting to keep the news of His miracles quiet.
One of the things that jumps out from our story today is the issue of uncleanness. Touching the woman who was bleeding made everyone ritually unclean for one day. Jesus touching a dead body rendered Him unclean for a whole week. While the ritual cleanliness laws were scrupulously observed by most first century Jews, Jesus would not permit laws born of oral tradition to interfere with His loving care of His children. The disciples were probably aghast the first time they saw Jesus touch a leper. In fact, just in the last few weeks we have seen several occasions where Jesus violated a law in the interest of filling a need. Healing a man’s hand in the synagogue on the Sabbath, allowing His disciples to pluck heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath, and here ignoring the cleanliness rules twice in one day. Do we think that maybe this should teach us something?
We can snicker at some of the rules and regulations that the Pharisees demanded that everyone follow. They may even seem a little silly to us, but the 21st century church is steeped in tradition and we need to be cognizant of the fact that we also need to be on our guard that we don’t allow our traditions to interfere with the real work of the church, which is to be bearers of the Good News, to love and care for others, and to worship God in spirit and in truth. (Not necessarily in that order).
In studying Jesus’s actions, time and time again we see love placed above all else. Though it may not always be apparent at first glance, the love and concern that Jesus shows to His beloved children is displayed throughout the Gospels in situations exactly like our two examples today. Why do we think that the first thing Jesus did after raising Jairus’s daughter was to ask the family to give her something to eat? Her physical needs, and the bleeding woman’s spiritual needs were the first priority to Jesus after He healed them. And both were actions born of love.
Mark L Strauss had a wonderful observation on today’s reading, “[Another] important theme in this episode is Jesus’ care for those of low social status. Jesus turns away from Jairus, a religious male of high social status, to meet the needs of a woman whose gender and illness render her of little value by society’s standards. As both a female and a child, Jairus’s daughter would also be low on the social pecking order. Through Jesus’ willingness to touch and heal these two women, He challenges both social norms and purity laws and demonstrates the restorative power and inclusivity of the kingdom of God.”
But there is one more lesson for us to look at today. When we look at the miracles of Jesus, what we think we are seeing is Jesus somehow bending the rules of nature, doing something extraordinary and supernatural. But that isn’t the case at all. What Jesus is actually doing is not something that is contrary to the way that things are supposed to be. What He is doing is returning things to the way that they were intended to be. He starts with a world that is broken with sin and illness and death, and through forgiving the sin, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, giving hearing to the deaf, and even raising the dead to life, He is restoring the world to the way that God always intended for it to be.
Strauss says, “From a Biblical worldview, human death is not a natural part of an endless “cycle of life”. It is a tragic intrusion into God’s created intention for humanity, an aberration resulting from a fallen creation.” When Jesus tells us not to be afraid but to have faith, what He is telling us is not that He is going to save us from all of life’s trials and tribulations, what He is telling us is that He is in the process of restoring the world to that which it has always been intended to be. A world without pain or suffering or death. A world where we will be able to love God and love one another unencumbered by the sin that has polluted our world and polluted our actions. In telling us not to be afraid but to Believe, what Jesus is telling us is that, as God’s beloved children, our place in His new heaven and His new earth is assured. Is there any better news than that?
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