A Sermon on Mark 5:21-43 by Worth Green, Th.M., D.Min.
This week has been hard on Hollywood. First, on Tuesday, June 23rd, Ed McMahon died at the age of 86. He was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the Tonight show for thirty years. Next, on Thursday the 25th, Farah Fawcett died at the age of 62. She was one of the original Charlie’s Angels, and now, one hopes and prays, she is the real deal. Finally, who can overlook the death of Michael Jackson? Michael has been called the King of Pop. He, too, died on Thursday, at the age of fifty. It was the sad end of a sad life. As a boy Michael had to be a man, as a man, he only wanted to be a boy again.
At one time all three of these celebrities were wealthy and sheltered.
The author of Psalm 30 was also wealthy and sheltered. At one time he said in his prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”
He was wrong. He became deathly ill, so ill that he despaired of life itself. Of course, his illness was not final. He cried out to God, and God healed him. Verse 2 is a short history of his illness. He wrote:
O LORD my God, I cried to thee for help, and thou hast healed me.
When you and I are ill, we want a doctor, and a good one. There is nothing wrong with that. For the first nine centuries the Popes in Rome favored Jewish physicians because their method was more scientific and more successful than their Christian counterparts.
When you and I are ill, we want a good doctor, but we also want God on the case. There is nothing wrong with that. In the New Testament healing is one of the signs that the kingdom of God has come among us.
A hymn writer of the 19th century called Jesus, “the Great Physician.” On two occasions in the gospels Jesus referred to himself as a physician. In Matthew 9:12-13 Jesus says, “It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick….for I did not come to call the righteous (to repentance) but sinners.” And in Luke 4:23, he says, “No doubt you will quote this proverb to Me, ‘Physician, heal yourself!”
In the New Testament no illness so insignificant that it escapes his notice, or devastating that it is beyond his power to heal
In Mark 5:22-42, we read of two healings that are more or less typical. One is very dramatic, the other less so.
The less dramatic healing is the healing of a woman with an issue of blood. There are three points to be made.
1. This woman hemorrhaged for twelve years, perhaps not constantly, but at least repeatedly. Not only so, but the text says that she had “suffered much at the hands of many physicians, and she had spent all that she had, and was no better, but worse.”
The first rule of medicine is “do no harm.” Yet, this is not always the reality. At times in the history of medicine the cure has been worse than the disease—bloodletting is jut one example. It is interesting to note that this same story also occurs in Luke chapter 8. Mark says that the woman had suffered much at the hands of many physicians. When St. Luke tells this story, he simply says, “she could not be healed by anyone.” Luke’s gospel does not fix the blame on the doctors. Many scholars attribute this difference to the fact that Luke himself was himself a physician. In fact, in Colossians 4:14, St. Paul calls Luke “the beloved Physician.”
Suffice it to say that when some people are ill, in the course of the illness, they fix at least some of the blame on their doctors. Others do not. St. Mark represents the former, and St. Luke the latter.
2. We we ought to note that woman’s sickness is not a threat to her life, but, rather, a long-lasting annoyance. She had lived with her illness long enough to know it was not fatal. However, her suffering was real enough. Her money was gone, she had no health insurance, and she was desperate for any help she could get.
3. We should note that this woman had heard the reports about Jesus, and she had sought him out because of those reports. This still happens. When a doctor helps us we recommend her. When we need a doctor, we ask friends about their experience with their doctors.
And you know the rest of the story. The woman came up to Jesus in the crowd and touched his garment. She must have heard great things about Jesus the healer, for she said to herself, “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” And her faith became a reality. When she touched his garment, immediately the hemorrhage ceased; and, according to the text, “she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.”
We know that experience. We have a raging fever, and we take the first double dose of a Z-Pack and we know that something good is going to happen. We are on the road to recovery.
Of course, the healing itself was not the end of her encounter with the Master. She is not allowed to melt back into the crowd. The text says that Jesus, “perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’”
This question surprised his disciples. They said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” They implied, of course, that Jesus has been jousted about and touched by many in that crowd, and it was impossible for anyone to say which members of the crowd had, and had not touched him.
Jesus is not deterred by the objections of his disciples. It does not take long to discover who it was who touched him. He looked at the crowd, and the woman, herself, knowing what had been done for her, and knowing that she had been healed, came in fear and trembling and fell down before Jesus, and told him the whole truth.
Jesus was not angry. She had taken from him only what he wanted to give. He did not scold her; he praised her. He said, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
And she passes, in peace, from the pages of the New Testament.
That is a relatively minor healing; but both St. Mark and St. Luke tell it in company with a more dramatic healing.
According to Mark a ruler of the synagogue, Jarius, came to Jesus and fell at his feet, and told him that his daughter was at the point of death, and unless Jesus comes and lays hands on her, she will die. Before Jesus can do anything about the little girl, he has the encounter with the woman with an issue of blood. Then before he is through talking to that woman, someone comes from the ruler’s house and says to him in the hearing Jesus, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?”
Most people now know that the healing of the little girl is out of the question. However, ignoring what has been said to him, Jesus spoke to the ruler of the synagogue saying, “Do not fear, only believe.”
Then Jesus went with the man to his house, allowing no one to follow him, except Peter and James and John the brother of James. This is interesting because, according to tradition, Peter is the authority behind Mark’s gospel.
And when they came to the house, Jesus saw that the crowd in and around the house was in a tumult, and people were weeping and wailing loudly. Jesus entered the house and said to them, “Why do you make a tumult and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.”
The text says “And they laughed at him.” Jesus did not give in. He put them all outside, and he took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went into where the child was. Then, according to our text, he took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cumi”; which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”
And immediately the girl, who was about twelve years of age, got up and walked and all that saw it were overcome with amazement. And Jesus strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Now there are two ways to interpret story. First, it may be that the crowd is wrong about the girl being dead, and Jesus is speaking plainly, without a figure, when he says, “The child is not dead, but sleeping.” Some have suggested that the child had epilepsy or some other sleeping disorder. They say that Jesus may have had prior knowledge of her case. Today we know that in ancient times, and in times not so ancient, many people were buried alive when they were unfortunate enough to fall into a trance or a coma. As recently as two centuries ago, as he lay dying, our first president George Washington instructed that he not be buried for a number of days after his death to avoid all possibility of being buried alive.
Of course, this is not the only option. In the second option, the crowd is right about the girl being dead, and Jesus is speaking metaphorically about death. In this scenario Jesus calls death sleep not death, because Jesus knows he has power over death.
I am not sure it is possible or desirable to make a final determination as to which way to interpret this. In my mind there is a clear ambiguity in the text. However, there are other incidents in the gospels in which Jesus raises the dead. In Luke 7 he raises the son of the Widow of Nain. In John 11 when he raises Lazarus from death even though Lazarus has been in the grave for four days, and he is warned there will be an odor. The gospel’s clearly believe that Jesus has the power to raise the dead, and most Christians, including this author, believe them.
More important is Jesus’ own resurrection. The Resurrection of Jesus is different from every other resurrection recorded in scripture or the gospels. In every case, even in the case of Lazarus, one is raised from death to the same kind of existence that one had before. But in his own resurrection Jesus is transformed into a whole new order of being, and the body of his humiliation has become a body of glory. To use the language of 1st Corinthians 15, his body was sown a physical body, but raised, by God, as a spiritual body, suited for life in the eternal Kingdom of God. The resurrection of Jesus is the massive sign that God has not abandoned us in our little world of time and space, but penetrated it, shattered it, and begun its transformation.
Now that we have done our duty re the exegesis in this passage we can reasonably ask, “What do these texts teach us about healing?”
1. We might note the importance of the laying on of hands. Jarius says that Jesus must lay hands on his daughter. He touches her. Then the woman with an issue of blood reaches out to touch even the garment of Jesus. The late Bishop Herbert Spaugh was a member of the Episcopal of Order of St. Luke. He was interested in spiritual and physical healing. He once wrote a newspaper article entitled, “The Hands of the Healer,” in which he praised nurses for the way they lay hands on their patients. There is something soothing and healing about physical touch.
2. We ought always to pray and not to faint. Most illnesses, even many serious illnesses are not “unto death.” More importantly, God is as eager for us to be healed as we are eager to be healed.
3. Faith always plays a part in physical healing. The woman with an issue of blood had faith in Jesus for herself. Jarius had faith in Jesus on behalf of his daughter. Oftentimes, the faith of a person’s family or friends is as important as the faith of the person him or herself. Sometimes it is up to us to have faith for a person in our circle of friends or family who has lost faith in his or her own circumstance. But the faith of the individual is never unimportant. “Heaven only helps those who help themselves.” Or, as Jesus himself said, “If you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, which is the smallest of seeds, you can move mountains.”
4. Illness is never ever confined just to the patient. It affects the patient’s family. It affects the patient’s friends. It even affects the doctors and nurses that treat the patient. I have seen doctors and nurses moved to tears by the illness of a person who came to them as a stranger. We want our doctors to have knowledge. We care what they know; but we also want to know that they care.
5. The crowd that gathers around a person who is ill, like the crowd that gathered in the house of Jarius, is often a hindrance rather than help. I once knew a woman who was dying of cancer. Her friends told her it was because she lacked faith, and that if her faith were stronger, she could get well. Before she died that woman told me that this accusation of “having too little faith” was sometimes harder for her to bear than the cancer itself. Her sister is a member of this congregation.
6. There are at least three kinds of healing. 1) First, there is immediate healing, like the healings in the gospels. I think I experienced this at least once, and I will be happy to tell you about it if you will only ask. It was a very minor healing, but it was important to me at the time. 2) Second, there is gradual healing, like that experienced by the Psalmists, and that which takes place in hospitals. God has a role to play even in these healings. Over the gate of the French College of Surgeons there is a sign. It reads: “The physician binds the patient’s wounds, but only God can heal.” God has built wonderful properties of healing into our bodies. God is very much in favor of scientific attempts at healing. We ought to pray for our doctors and help pay for medical research. In Winston-Salem, I am proud that the “Miracle on Hawthorne Hill,” started as a mission of the Baptist Church. I am equally thrilled that a technically secular hospital like Forsyth Memorial retains a full-time professional chaplain on its staff, and uses dozens of volunteer chaplains besides. As a pastor, I have full access to most hospitals. It is a recognition that healing has a spiritual dimension. 3) Finally, there is the resurrection healing. I am not referring to the kind of healing that Jesus gave to Jarius’ daughter, or the kind that he gave to Lazarus. I am referring to the kind of healing that Jesus himself experienced when God reached down into the grave and transformed the body of his humiliation, to the body of his glory. The author of 1st John gives us hope when he says that we shall someday be like him, for we “shall see him as he is.” The resurrection healing is the final healing.
7. Finally, it ought to be said that God is still in the healing business, and, from time to time , this manifests itself in some amazing ways. I have spoken before of my friend and teacher, the late Robert Lyon. Bob was my professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, and I have often reflected that God led me away from Moravian, which I love, to Asbury, just so that I could sit under Bob. He taught me much, and then sent me to Princeton for advance work in New Testament. This story is his. I heard it from his own mouth. In the early 1970’s Bob was diagnosed with heart disease, and told he would have to have open heart surgery. This at a time when such surgery was still quite dangerous. Bob learned of this in the middle of the week. That weekend he and his wife Judy were scheduled for a Marriage Enrichment Encounter, so they went on and attended. They were paired with a couple they did not know, and instructed not to speak of their work, but only of their marriage. This they did. It was not until Sunday evening that the partners were allowed to tell each other about the rest of their lives. When his turn came, Bob told of his illness, and of his need for surgery. Immediately, the husband of the couple who had been paired with them crossed the room and knelt before him. Taking Bob’s hands in his own, with tears in his eyes, he said, “Bob, God has brought us together. I am a cardiac surgeon, and I will do your surgery.” Bob had that surgery, and though he is dead now, he lived for many years after.
It is not always as dramatic as this. But as Christians we can be sure that God does care for us, and no illness is so insignificant that it does not concern him; and none so terrible that he cannot lay his hands upon us and give us aid.
Of course, the mere mention of one successful healing, conjures memories in many of the loss of a loved one. When I was in Clinical Pastoral Education at the University of Kentucky Medical Center, something happened that fixed my attitude about these terrible losses, too. I was standing over the bed of a friend who had had a stroke and had lost a leg in the process. I was watching interns pick bone chips out of the socket of his hip. I made myself watch because I wanted him to know that I still accepted him as he was. He did not know me. At some point in the course of the procedure, I became angry. I walked out of the room into the hall, and I cried out to God on behalf of many. I said, “O God, do you care? Do you feel our pain?” My answer came in the words of a hymn:
“Amazing love, and can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me.”
God does care. In the person of his son he entered our world to let us know of his caring, and to give us a future and a hope. God knows our pain. God knows your pain and your disappointment, and God is ready to help. May illnesses are not, “unto death;” and there is a remedy, even for the illness that is.
FINIS