6th Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 5:21-43

    The women are back today.  Today we get the next installment of our year-long series about women in the Bible and early church.  And we get to see yet another powerful story about a biblical woman who is brave, pushes boundaries and leads and who Jesus praises unconditionally for these qualities.  She is a woman who can serve as a model for us all  And also, quite typically, the Bible doesn’t even give her the courtesy of recording her name.

    But our story for today doesn’t actually begin with our heroic woman, because in our gospel reading we actually hear a pair of stories about how Jesus brings healing, restoration and hope to the people he encounters. So instead our story begins with a man, who incidentally does get his name recorded, named Jairus, the leader of the local synagogue.  As soon as Jesus arrives onshore, in a display most out of character for a man of his rank and station, Jairus throws himself at Jesus’ feet and begs Jesus for to help his daughter who is gravely ill.  As we would expect, Jesus has compassion on him and follows him.  

    But as is often the case in the gospel of Mark, what we really have is a story within a story, because then our woman enters.  As they traverse the crowd, they pass by a woman who is sick, who has been sick for a long time, who has suffered from a bleeding hemorrhage for 12 years.  She has been to many doctors, tried every test and treatment and yet still she has found no relief.  Now anyone who has ever suffered or cared for someone who has suffered from a long term or difficult to diagnose medical issue knows what a devastating toll that it can take on your personal, financial and emotional well-being.

    Imagine how much worse then it was for this poor woman, for in her time, feminine bleeding would have been not only painful and inconvenient but also made her ritually unclean, isolating her from society and rendering her unable to take part in everyday activities or fulfill her duties as a daughter, wife or mother.  For 12 years.

    So perhaps it was desperation, or deep faith or maybe the last fringes of hope that lead her to seek out Jesus and undertake a ridiculous and dangerous action as he passed by.  She sneaks up behind him and from within the crowd reaches out and touches the corner of his robe.  Now there was a legend in ancient Israel that if a man was truly, truly holy, his Talit, his prayer shawl or mantle or could convey some of his power.  This probably dates back to the biblical story of Elijah whose mantel was used by his successor to perform miracles even after he was taken up to heaven.  And it led some religious men, trying to show off their holiness to even sew extra-long fringes on their mantels so others might have the opportunity to bask in their power, usually to no avail.

    And it’s funny how the women in the gospel of Mark, especially the otherwise unnamed and unnoticed ones, like Peter’s mother in law, or the Syrophoencian woman, or the woman who anoints Jesus before the crucifixion are always smarter than everyone else in Mark.  This woman today is in good company because she knows what the others in the crowd don’t realize, what the leader of the synagogue doesn’t realize what even the disciples don’t yet fully understand.  That Jesus is God’s anointed one.  He is the one who can restore her to life.  And that God’s power is so great, it cannot help but flow forth from him.

    And so she reaches out and touches just the corner of his mantle.  And immediately she is healed.  And for one brief shining moment it looks like she will get away with it, everything will be okay.  And then something terrible happens.  He notices.  He stops, he looks for her.  And she is afraid.  She knows she has committed a sin.  She in her unclean state has touched a man, a holy man.  It is a violation, it dishonors him and risks making him unclean by contact with her.  And worse now she has distracted Jesus from helping the leader of the synagogue.  The very person who among other things is charged with enforcing biblical laws and ensuring that people like her don’t do the very thing she has just done.  This moment could prove disastrous for her.

    What courage it must have taken for her to step forward, to tell Jesus what she had done.  And yet contrary to all expectations, he listens to her, with no anger or judgement.  Instead of rebuking her, he praises her faith and confirms the rightness of the healing, effectively shielding her from any possible retribution for her action.  At this moment, Jesus is doing exactly what this woman needed to be done.

    And while this story tells us a great deal about this woman and the importance of taking risks and stepping out boldly in faith, it tells us even more about Jesus.  And how he thinks about the social order and how God works with a different set of priorities than we might expect.  For even though Jesus was on his way someplace else, stopping and taking time not only to heal this woman but to listen to her and form a relationship with her is the most important thing to Jesus in this moment. 

    And this forces us to think about our own priorities a bit.  Because by our own common standards there is no way Jesus should have stopped.  He was already on his way to help someone else.  Jairus had asked first, he had come out to meet him at the boat, why should this woman get help before him?  She should wait her turn even if that turn never came.  Plus Jairus was important and powerful, he could help Jesus’s mission, this woman had nothing to offer in return, why would Jesus choose her over him?  And most importantly, Jairus had a genuine emergency, this woman had been sick for 12 years, a few more minutes wouldn’t matter to her, his daughter was dying, even a momentary delay could mean it was too late.

    What Jesus does here isn’t fair, and haven’t we all found ourselves using all these reasons and more for why our own needs or our loved ones needs should take precedence over someone else’s.  But all of this is human calculus, it comes from our own perceptions of scarcity, but divine calculus is different.  Jesus couldn’t help but care for this woman.  These social concerns of rank, primacy and urgency have no bearing on the divine.  He simply cannot be constrained by them.  Grace doesn’t work like that.  This woman is brave, but even if she wasn’t it wouldn’t really matter because she is still important because she is and always will be a beloved child of God made in the very image of God.

    This story reminds us to examine our own priorities and to begin to shift our thinking toward God’s way.  It calls us to examine the way our own privilege and perceptions of scarcity may be distracting us from those God is calling us to serve. For those most deserving, those God is truly calling us to serve, to minister to may well be the least visible and the least regarded among us.  For the poor, the marginalized, the misfits and the late comers are never outside of God’s concern.

    But the story doesn’t end there.  For a terrible moment it appears as if Jairus’s concerns were right.  While Jesus is speaking to the woman, news comes that it is too late, his daughter is dead.  That the time it took Jesus to stop and talk to this woman has cost his daughter her life.

    But this is not the case, because Jesus has another even more powerful lesson to teach us.  That it is never too late.  That he is never too late.  There is no situation, no matter how terrible, how catastrophic, how cruel that he cannot redeem.  That even death cannot end the story in the presence of the one who offers new life to all people. 

    Instead Jesus tells us, “Do not fear, only believe.”  Believe that he is the one who brings new life out of death, believe that he is one who brings healing, restoration and wholeness and most of all he is the one who seeks justice for the oppressed. 

    It is to us he says, “Talitha cum.”  Little children get up.  Take something to eat and go proclaim the good news.  It is us he calls to step out and take a risk in faith, even if feels dangerous.  It is us he calls to reach out to those in need, those who have been excluded, those who face danger simply by being who they are.  Jesus doesn’t envision a world where we are separated by perceived differences of race, gender, wealth or importance.  And he calls on us to follow the example of the woman today and to reach out boldly in pursuit of healing justice for all people.  Amen.