I got started writing another sermon and realized I had never posted this one! I preached this one at St. John UCC in Robinson, Texas on June 27, 2021. I’ll copy the gospel reading, which the congregation would have already heard read aloud, then my sermon below.

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’
While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
—Mark 5:21-43

I was so excited when I saw this story from Mark was today’s gospel lectionary reading. I LOVE THIS STORY.

Maybe you know, maybe you don’t: for the past 10 years, I have been working with families giving birth— as a doula and childbirth educator. I end up talking about uteruses and menstruation and female bodies A LOT. So today’s story is right up my alley.

But first, before we can even begin talking about the main character in this story, we have to talk about what to call her. Like many female characters in the Bible, she doesn’t get a name. Some refer to her as a woman with a hemorrhage, or woman with an issue of blood.

But I refuse to identify her as her illness. As we will see, she is not defined by her illness. Her identity is so much more than what is making her sick. Just as every person with a chronic or terminal illness is so much more than their illness.

It is bad enough she doesn’t get named. But we can not add insult to injury by calling her something that reduces her to her illness. I will be referring to her today as the woman in the crowd or just the woman.

And as we just heard, she is not the only unnamed but central character in the story. She has has in common with the girl whose story she interrupts. She actually has a lot in common with this girl, known to us as Jairus’ daughter.

They are both

unnamed,
they are both referred to as daughter (Jesus calls the woman in the crowd Daughter, while we know the girl only as Jairus’ daughter),
they both are associated with the number 12 (the woman has been bleeding for 12 years, while the girl is 12 years old)
And they are both considered unclean (the woman because she is bleeding, the girl because she is dead).

Mark loves to tell stories this way, where he starts telling one story, then gets distracted with another story, then goes back to finish the first one. There’s even a name for it: Markan sandwich.

The meat of the sandwich comes in between the two pieces of bread. The middle story helps us understand the one it interrupts.

So let’s look first at the meat—the woman’s story, then we’ll see what it teaches us about the bread: Jairus and his daughter’s story.

The Woman’s Story

She has been bleeding for 12 years. And when we say “bleeding” we mean she has been menstruating for 12 years. She spent all her money on doctors, but never got any better, only worse.

Now before we go thinking how awful it must have been then (which it was) and how much better we have it now, let me tell you—we don’t.

Has anyone heard of the condition endometriosis? It is a condition where tissue just like the lining of the uterus grows in other areas of the abdomen. It causes (among other symptoms) extreme pain with periods and copious bleeding, including bleeding between periods. Who knows? Maybe this is what the woman in the crowd had.

Endometriosis today affects 1 in 10 women, and it takes *on average* 7 years to diagnose. SEVEN YEARS for people suffering right now in the 21st century, before they can get a diagnosis and start getting some relief.

So, it was not just way back then. We still do a terrible job of caring for women’s bodies.

But back to the woman in the crowd. Her illness is not just debilitating—can you imagine managing a period that lasts 12 years in the time and place she lived? The sheer amount of washing up involved?

It was isolating, because of the purity laws in place. She was considered “unclean”—unable to participate in community life. And not just her, but *anyone who touched her* became unclean. Talk about social distancing. We all could barely stand a year more or less of social distancing under covid. She lived that life for 12 years. Isolated, in pain, without hope.

But then.

She heard the rumors of a man who could heal people. She was intrigued. She was desperate.

She thought to herself, “If I can just touch the edge of his cloak, I will be healed.”

For a gal with a chronic illness, whom many define by her illness, she sure got around. The text says that she

Suffered

Endured

Spent all her money

Grew worse

But then she

Heard

Came up from behind

Touched

Said

And then immediately, she felt in her body that she was healed.

That’s a lot of active verbs for somebody who didn’t even get named.

She was stealthy, she was sneaky, she was persistent.

She also exhibited a blatant disregard for others.

Just by walking through that crowd, brushing up against all those other people, she made them unclean. She knew that by reaching out and touching Jesus’ clothing, she risked making him unclean.

She must have been terrified that she was going to get told off when Jesus turned around and said, “Who did that?”

She had tried to be sneaky, but she got caught.

Meanwhile the disciples remain clueless, as they often are. “Uh, Jesus, there’s a giant crowd pressing in all around you. What are you even on about, “who touched me?” You can almost see them rolling their eyes. “Geez, Jesus, sometimes you really don’t make any sense.”

But Jesus just ignores them and keeps searching the crowd for the one he knows has just been healed by him.

And that’s when she sheepishly puts her hand up.

And that’s when she pleads for mercy, on her face in the dust, because she is sure that someone like her, an outcast, the lowest of lows, is really going to get it for daring to touch his holy man.

But surprise! (And Mark loves to set up a good surprise.) Jesus speaks to her directly (first time he actually speaks to a woman in Mark), calls her daughter (only time he ever calls a woman “daughter”), and tells her “Your faith has made you well.”

YOUR faith. Not I have healed you, not I have made you well. YOUR FAITH has made you well.

Now this is all really shocking.

Jesus insists on seeking her out, insists on speaking to her, calls her “daughter”, and praises her faith. This woman, who has been living on the lowest rung of the social ladder for more than a decade.

Whoa.

What does this tell us?

Jesus insists on breaking down the walls that we put up. He brings in those whom we have pushed out.

Whom do we push out? Who lives at the margins of our society? For centuries we pushed out and aside Black people, and there are absolutely ways in which those actions by our forebears reverberate and continue today.

I think today we as a society tend also to push down people based on gender and sexual identity issues. For evidence of all this we have only to look at the scapegoating in our legislature of Critical Race Theory and of transgender folks who just want to use the bathroom and play sports.

We still do this. We still push people out and aside and down. And what’s most abhorrent, is that we do it sometimes in Jesus’ name.

This Jesus, the one who just spoke gently to a woman he called daughter, whom everyone else crossed the street to avoid at all costs.

Jesus is the one who breaks down the walls that we put up, who brings in those whom we have pushed out.

Jesus also praises this woman’s faith—a faith that was gutsy, and stealthy, and self-serving.

Wait, what?

Gutsy we might be able to get behind—being brave and daring are seen as virtues by most people.

But stealthy? Self-serving? Those attributes are kind of, I don’t know, underhanded? And Jesus is praising that kind of faith? Preacher, are you sure you’ve got that right?!?

All I know is what Mark tell us! This woman snuck up on Jesus, stealing a healing from him, and disregarding the fact that she was making the whole crowd unclean in the process.

Maybe if we’ve always been told that it is virtuous to keep to our place, keep quiet, don’t be demanding, don’t try to rise up and take hold of what is rightfully ours, of justice for ourselves—maybe all of that is actually not virtuous.

Maybe Jesus wants us to be bold in our requests of him, maybe he wants us to seek healing and justice not just when we can be sweet and demure while doing it. Maybe it is ok to reach out and grab what’s right, even if the others in the crowd wouldn’t approve.

Jairus’s Daughter’s Story

So that’s the woman’s story, the meat. What about the bread? Why did Mark decide to interrupt the story of Jairus & his daughter with this one? What does the woman’s story tell us about how to understand Jairus’s words and actions?

If the woman in the crowd had some things in common with Jairus’ daughter, she had almost nothing in common with Jairus himself.

The woman is unnamed, but we get to know Jairus’ name and his place at the top of the social ladder—he is a respected religious leader, while the woman is a social nobody. While the woman felt that her only option was to sneak up behind Jesus and seek a blessing without asking for one, Jairus felt confident enough to walk right up to Jesus and ask him directly to drop what he was doing to come to his daughter’s bedside.

Jesus did respond to Jairus’ request, agreeing to go with him. I wonder though, was Jairus tapping his foot and glancing at his watch during the whole scene with the woman? I wonder how he felt about his errand being held up by her?

And then, how did he feel when his deepest fear came true—when someone brought the news that while Jesus had been stopped here chatting with this woman, his little daughter had died?

Clearly the bearers of this sad message thought that all hope was lost. Why continue to bother Jesus about it? It’s over. She’s dead.

I wonder then, when Jesus looked into Jairus’ eyes at that moment, what did he see? He must have seen that Jairus had also lost hope, he must have seen his despair, his fear, his lack of faith.

Because he said to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.”

And we have to compare (as Mark intends us to do) Jairus’ faith with the woman’s. She believed so hard that she was sure that just touching Jesus’ hem would be enough to heal her.

And here Jairus thinks a little thing like death is enough to put his daughter beyond Jesus’ ability to heal?

I can’t really blame him, can you? I think I also would have thought that my only chance to save my child had been lost.

But Jairus must have rallied, must have been willing to bring himself to hope, because they all continue on to the house.

Where Jesus immediately meets more resistance in the form of the noisy mourners who laugh in his face when he insists that the girl is only sleeping.

Both the crowd of disciples and the crowd of mourners do not come off looking good in these stories. It is almost like following Jesus will put you outside popular opinion. It’s almost like, if the crowd says it knows what is right and good, maybe you should question those assumptions in light of the words and actions of Jesus.

Jesus gets fed up with them all, locks the door on them, and goes to the girl’s bedside with her parents hovering, anxious behind.

And in case you missed the memo in the woman’s story, the one about how Jesus breaks the socially accepted rules of who is good and clean and worthy of being touched who is not—he reaches out and touches a dead body.

When he does that, he is 100% doing something that should make him “unclean”. But it doesn’t. What it does is bring life.

He takes her hand, tells her to get up, and then she does! And—I love this part—while her parents are still standing there with their mouths open, he points out that, you know, she’s probably hungry?

Jesus reminds us that we have to remember to meet people’s basic physical needs, not just spiritual ones. So practical, Jesus.

So the meat of the story taught us that there is no one whom we think is too far out there, too low or too dirty, that he won’t reach out to with healing and kindness. It teaches us that faith that is worthy of praise is faith that is gutsy and fearless, and even sometimes self-serving and subversive.

And then Jairus’ story affirms that faith in Jesus can turn despair into hope, fear into wholeness, even when circumstances are at their most bleak.

There is no one outside the reach of Jesus’ love and healing. And when we put up barriers, Jesus will insist on tearing them down, siding with the outcast over the popular crowd, and show us again and again that we are wrong to try to put limits on who Jesus reaches, and whom we ought to reach out to in his name.

I encourage you to be bold, to speak up on behalf of the lowly and lost. Especially if that means speaking up for yourself, when you find yourself running low on hope. Jesus encourages each of us: “Do not fear, only believe.” And to remember that he will be right on our side, even against the crowd, when we seek justice and healing and wholeness in his name.

This is the prayer that we will sing here in just a minute: We ask Jesus to abide with us, through our own suffering, through any trial, even up to and through death.

Let’s sing it now: Abide with Me #419.