Mark 5:21-43
21 When Jesus had crossed again in the boat* to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. 22Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet 23and 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.’ 24So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. 25Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.26She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak,28for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’29Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ 31And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ 32He looked all round to see who had done it. 33But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’
35 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?’ 36But overhearing* what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ 37He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. 38When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. 39When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ 40And 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. 41He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ 42And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. 43He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Do not fear, only believe.
I honestly can’t believe how lucky I am to get to talk about this scene from the Gospels, which I have always loved - not the least because there’s a beautiful Sam Cooke song about it. But reading this story again and trying to see it with fresh eyes was extremely surprising to me. I had always remembered the woman who was healed by touching Jesus’s cloak, but had completely forgotten two crucial elements of the story.
The first was the woman’s motivation for touching Jesus. In my dim recollection of the story I always grouped this healing in with Jesus’s healing of the paralyzed man and the man with the withered hand. But reading these stories now it feels important to note that Jesus doesn’t heal people simply because it’s a nice thing to do; in both of those other cases he’s proving a point to onlookers, using a miracle just like a parable - to provoke a discussion.
When the woman approaches Jesus to touch his garment, she is not doing this because Jesus heals indiscriminately. Jesus doesn’t have a special cloak, he hasn’t said that anyone who touches his cloak will be healed, there isn’t a long line of people touching his cloak and being healed. In fact, the space is so crowded that Jesus is constantly being pressed and jostled, to the point where the apostles are surprised he would notice a particular touch - but none of the other members of the crowd receive any miraculous benefit.
When this woman touches Jesus, however, she instantly feels that she is healed. It’s an incredibly beautiful and very private moment - unlike Christ’s miracles up unto this point, there’s no indication that anyone else notices or could notice. She feels her body heal, and he feels the power moving through him. Why does she receive this blessing, which is so spontaneous it seems to surprise Christ? We don’t know whether she was a good person, or whether she was a committed follower of Jesus. All we know about her is that she was suffering, and she had faith - she says, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well’ - and Christ replies, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’
The second thing I forgot about this miracle is that it happens entirely inside the story of another, arguably greater miracle! This entire scene occurs while Jesus is on his way to perform another miracle - raising a young girl from the dead. And it honestly seems a little strange, narratively, for these two events to happen one after the other, especially when one is kind of weird and the other fits a familiar pattern - where Jesus says something a little difficult to understand and then performs a miracle to make his point. But there is something different about this second miracle.
When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead he did so in front of a crowd, explicitly stating that he was doing so in order to show that he was the son of God. But here he leaves the crowd outside, wakes the girl gently, tells her family to feed her and to not talk about what has just happened. The scene feels very gentle and very private - exactly how you would want to wake a child who has fallen asleep.
I think that these miracles are bound together because they are both quiet, private miracles. A wound deep in the body is healed; a terrible loss in a family is restored. Something very important is changed, in a place that very few people can see, and it is changed by faith. I am not certain if we get any of the big ticket miracles anymore but I think these private ones can be just as impactful.
Six months ago it would have been impossible for me to imagine how much of a difference Holy Apostles has made in my life - it was almost impossible for me to imagine going to church, much less praying and reading the Bible on a regular basis. I didn’t come because I had a spiritual awakening or epiphany or felt I desperately needed a relationship with God. Something deep inside me simply changed, quietly and without any obvious outward signs.
Right now I am feeling a lot of fear. I cannot predict what tomorrow will bring - I honestly can’t tell you what the next six hours are going to bring. What a perfect story for us to read right now.
Do not fear, only believe. Do not fear, only believe.
P.S. If you liked the Sam Cooke song Basia Bulat also has an incredible cover!
