As we have explored the interplay between our faith and God’s faithfulness this month, I have tried my best to turn away from some of the more common messages we sometimes hear about faith to focus instead on how it is ultimately God’s faithfulness that does the heavy lifting. Our faith is the tiniest seed. Our faith can feel lonely and cause conflict with loved ones. Our faith can falter when we think we are the ones doing the work. And yet, God creates great things, calling us into new families, and never leaving us alone.
Our last topic this month is the one that leaves me feeling the most cautious and uncertain. I touched on this briefly last week as I spoke of my discomfort with so much of the talk we hear about what our faith is supposed to do. As Jesus says so many times, our faith makes us whole; we are healed because of our faith (see Mark 5:21-43). Sometimes we read or hear these words, and we imagine that if we just had enough faith, if we just believe hard enough, God will have mercy. It is difficult not to think this when we read stories like the ones we have today. It is especially hard if we have ever heard church leaders or family members express exactly that sentiment. Somehow we are failing in our faith if we are not made into the image of wholeness that the rest of the world has for us, an image that we often carry within ourselves, an idea of what our lives should be or should look like. These ideas can make any chronic illness doubly debilitating. We have not only the disease to deal with, but the guilt that our faith isn’t stronger.
Given what we know of Jesus and his ministry, it is difficult for me to believe that this is the message we are expected to hear in these stories. Jesus expresses love and concern for people of all walks of life, but most especially for those on the margins. He frequently highlights the stories of those who would have been considered outsiders by the establishment. He heals the unclean and lifts up foreigners, even enemies, as examples of faith. There must be more to these stories than simply continuing the same ideas of faith that social custom, guided by the Law, has given the people.
Jesus has been continuing his ministry as before, crossing the lake, coming to shore to teach and heal, before getting back in his boat and moving to someplace else. This has been his pattern for much of the last two chapters. As he comes to the shore at the start of our reading today, one of the people in the crowd is Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue. He approaches Jesus, pleading with him. His daughter is ill, on death’s door. Perhaps Jairus really believes that Jesus has the power to heal her. Perhaps he has tried every other cure available to him and is willing to give this traveling healer he has heard so much about a try.
As Jesus follows Jairus, the crowd swarms around him. There's a woman in the crowd who has been bleeding for twelve years. The context suggests this is a bloody discharge. In other words, she has been constantly menstruating for twelve years. Aside from the ways that we in our day might consider the problems associated with this, there is the further complication that according to the Law, this makes the woman unclean. Because she is unclean, anyone that she touches also becomes unclean. She is also unable to enter the Temple to seek intercession with God. She has spent all that she has looking for a cure from various doctors but has only gotten worse. So she is doubly marked, not only as an unclean woman, but as a poor unclean woman.
This woman reaches out toward Jesus, thinking if she can just touch even his clothes, she will be healed. Immediately on touching his robes, she is healed. She recognizes at once what has happened. Jesus as well had sensed the change in her, his power flowing into someone in the crowd, healing them. He turns, trying to find the person who had touched him.
The woman is full of fear now. She knows that in touching him, she has marked him as unclean as well. At the same time, she is likely ashamed of the sneaky way in which she did this. Yet she steps forward, fearful of his reaction. Instead, Jesus lifts her up and praises her; he calls her daughter and sends her on her way, healed and clean.
Rather than her touch making Jesus unclean, the power of God within him has made her clean. As we frequently see in these stories, Jesus inverts the social constructs we find in the Jewish Laws. Here he makes clear that a person’s status as clean or unclean should not be made into an impediment to the relationship with God.
As Jesus is addressing the woman, messengers arrive from Jairus’ house. It is too late now; his daughter has died. I cannot begin to imagine the pain and grief that Jairus must have felt at that moment. He had not yet given up hope as he sought out Jesus, still seeking out the possibility of finding a way for his daughter to be healed, but now his hope is surely dead along with the news of his daughter.
Jesus overhears the news and says to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid; just keep trusting” (Mark 5:36, CEB). I try to imagine what Jairus would have felt at Jesus’ words. Did he feel a renewed spark of hope? Did he perhaps believe that maybe Jesus could in fact do something even now? Or did Jesus’ words ring as hollow as the many platitudes we are often guilty of sharing in moments like this? Maybe it was a little bit of both.
Somehow keeping the crowds from following, Jesus takes only his three closest companions, Peter, James, and John, as he continues to the synagogue leader’s home. There he finds the mourners already crying loudly. And why wouldn’t they be? But Jesus shoos them away, stating that the girl is not dead but only sleeping. Entering the daughter's room with the parents and the three disciples that were with him, he calls out to the girl, demanding that she get up. Surprising everyone present, she does just that. This twelve year old girl who was dead a moment before is now up and walking around. To prove this is not just some sort of illusion or some magic spell that is only reanimating the corpse, Jesus tells them to get her something to eat. Feed her, and see that she is truly alive.
Though Jesus doesn’t say it this time, there is the implication that his daughter has been healed through Jarius’ faith. The fact that he continued to trust Jesus enough to bring him to his home even after receiving the worst news possible is implied, even if it is not outright stated.
But is that all there is to the story? And why are these two stories pushed together in this way? There is more going on here than what we see on the surface.
First we must consider the pieces of the story that we have that seem unimportant at first. Jairus is a leader in the local synagogue. While not exactly a member of the religious authorities that have been afraid of and plotting against Jesus, there is still some connection to the religious leadership of Israel. While the Temple in Jerusalem is the only place that sacrifices and other religious rites can be held according to Jewish custom, the synagogues became places of teaching and learning in the dispersed Jewish communities. It was a place where those who could not make the journey to Jerusalem could still gather to study the scriptures and to hear them explained.
As a leader, Jairus would have certain commitments to upholding the religious traditions. And he would likely have been a wealthy man in his own right. Our story today starts with this man seeking out Jesus. A man who is righteous under the Law, a man of high standing in his community, seeks out Jesus, one who is on the outs in religious circles, one who is actively working primarily amongst the poor and outcast communities.
On the other hand, we have the woman in the crowd. She is unclean according to the Law, unable to be a part of religious activities, unable to even enter the Temple. She has spent all that she has on doctors leaving her with nothing. Her condition suggests that she has no other family to intercede on her behalf -- no one to make offerings at the Temple for her, no one to seek out other means of help. This woman also seeks out Jesus.
In the end, both of them receive the blessing that they were after. Both of them are recipients of God’s grace through Jesus. God’s grace is not dependent on social standing or on religious status. God is faithful regardless of how rich or poor, regardless of how clean or unclean we may be.
At the same time, there are other things we must wrestle with here. As I stated earlier, it is easy to look at stories like this and suggest that if one has enough faith they will be made whole. But as we consider these stories today, are we meant to believe that only Jairus and this one woman had faith on that day? Are we meant to think that they are the only ones with sufficient faith? I mean, given the situation, I find it difficult to believe that whatever faith Jairus had as he sought out Jesus was still in the same place after he received the news about his daughter.
Even in our own lives, we know people of faith who are not healed as expected. We know that there are children who still die. Given our reading and others like it, do we turn to those people and say, “I guess your faith wasn’t strong enough”? I know there are people who say such things, and it makes me more than a little sad to know that.
We have to be careful when we try to generalize stories like this out to all people in all places at all times. There are things that are happening here that are not as obvious as we sometimes want to believe. There are things in this story that have nothing to do with an individual’s faith and everything to do with God’s faithfulness.
As we read this passage today, one of the things that jumps out is the fact that the woman who was healed had been bleeding for twelve years and the girl who was healed was twelve years old. It seems oddly coincidental that the number twelve would occur like that. We know that the number twelve has special meaning in the Bible. There are twelve apostles representing the twelve tribes of Israel. Does it change our perception of this story if we consider the number twelve here as a subtle reference in the same way? How might it change our understanding of this text if we think of this as God healing Israel? Israel that is at once faithful according to the Law, and Israel that falls short according to the Law? All are included in God’s redemption.
At the same time, there is something to be said for God’s redemption of those considered beyond help. The woman bleeding for twelve years was thought to be beyond healing. Jarius’ twelve year old daughter is beyond life. But God is not through with either of them. Through God’s faithfulness they are both renewed and able to continue forward in newness of life. It can be the same with us. Just as we consider that we are beyond hope, beyond having a future, God is not done with us yet.
Still we know it is not always that easy. There are faithful who are not made whole. There are children who still die. There are communities of faith that close their doors. How do we sit in this tension in light of our stories today? How do we continue to trust and have faith in God’s faithfulness when our faith feels so fragile? How do we maintain faith when we know that our faith alone is not the deciding factor?
God’s faithfulness rarely comes as expected. Individuals may be healed or chronic illness may remain. Individual children may die or miraculously recover. But the people of faith continue forward, guided by God’s faithfulness. As hard as it can be for us to acknowledge, an individual’s illness or death is neither a sign of their own lack of faith nor a sign of God’s lack of faithfulness.
Healing does not always look like wholeness. Sometimes it looks like acceptance and finding a way through the pain. Simply continuing to exist is not always the same as living. Sometimes it means finding new purpose and new ways of being in the world. And neither is a sign one way or another of faith.
As our series on faith comes to an end, I find that my own ideas about faith have shifted a little. I have come to the determination that our faith is both always enough, no matter how small it may seem, and also that our faith is never enough to earn us God’s grace. This is because God’s grace is not for sale. God remains faithful regardless of the level of our faith. Rather than judging faith by the standard of any single individual, no matter how great or small we may determine their faith to be, we should look at the history of God’s relationship with humanity to find the signs that are there all along the way of God’s faithfulness continuing to work in the world.
Where are the signs of healing that you see as you look at what is happening in the world? Even in the midst of chaos and destruction, we find glimpses of God’s ongoing faithfulness.
May we always rely on the family that God has called us to be a part of.
May we always look for and continue to plant the seeds of the kingdom.
May we always trust that God is faithful.
May we always recognize God’s healing presence, even when that healing doesn’t come as we expect.