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Today’s Gospel (Mk 5.21-43) is one story woven from two. It’s essential to Mark’s style, this technique. He uses it no less than nine times in his Gospel. The pattern is distinct: one story begins, another intercedes, then the initial story resumes and concludes. At the Gospel's end (Mk 15:40-16:8), the devotion of the women at the cross and tomb is momentarily interrupted by Joseph of Arimathea’s request to bury Jesus' body. Similarly, at the Gospel's heart (Mk 11:12-21), the clearing of the temple interjects the cursing and subsequent withering of the fig tree. These are not mere stories within stories; rather, they are merged to form a singular, searching narrative, producing an effect greater than the sum of the literary parts.
In the current passage, the narrative opens with Jesus' return from the far side of the Sea of Galilee where he had exorcised a legion of demons from a man. (The man’s name was not Legion!) As soon as his boat touches the shore, a vast crowd gathers around Jesus, thronging him in desperation. Mark focuses our attention on one among them, a synagogue ruler named Jairus.
It’s easy to forget how magnetically Jesus drew people to himself, not by force of his charisma or “personality” but through an irresistible compassion, which radiated from his presence—his countenance, his eyes, his voice, his tone, his touch, his demeanor, his bearing. Inhaling, he breathed in the darkness and poison afflicting those who met him. And with every exhale he breathed out light and mercy. As Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis says, “All human suffering gravitates toward Jesus as iron is drawn to a magnet. Wherever he passes, he attracts brokenness and misery to himself… Out of him, unceasingly, go forth goodness, healing, and compassion. Into him flow the wretchedness and affliction of man.”
Mark does not give us the name of the woman who interrupts the rush to Jairus’ house. He only describes her condition:
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.”
We are left with unanswerable questions. What has caused her bleeding? What has she heard about Jesus? Why is she so sure touching his clothes will make her well? Why does she approach him from behind? Perhaps, as is usually suggested, she is ashamed of her impurity. Perhaps she’s moved by compassion for the ruler and his daughter, and does not want to delay Jesus. Regardless, she does reach him, touches him, and is healed in the touching.
She knows it immediately. So does Jesus. “Who touched me?” The disciples are incredulous, but Mark wants us to see that Jesus has sensed a truth lost on everyone else. “He looked all around to see who had done it.” Eventually, moved by the desire in Jesus’ gaze, the woman stepped forward, confessing “the whole truth.” Jesus’ response is astonishing: “Daughter, your faith has made you well…”
Even as these words linger in the air, evil news arrives: the ruler’s daughter has died. Overhearing the sorrowful whispers of the servants, Jesus immediately reassures Jairus, urging calm: “Don’t be afraid; only believe.”
Why does Jesus care so much about faith? Because faith is finally nothing but his grace given to us as our own, given to make us graceful as he is. Acting in faith means embracing our dignity and accepting our responsibility as Christ’s friends and conspirators, living in alignment with the inmost truth of our being. So, St Aphrahat the Persian, in his fourth Demonstration, sings:
So let us draw near then, my beloved, to faith, since its powers are so many. For faith raised up [Enoch] to the heavens and conquered the deluge. Faith causes the barren to sprout forth. It delivers from the sword. It raises up from the pit. It enriches the poor. It releases the captives. It delivers the persecuted. It brings down the fire. It divides the sea. It cleaves the rock, and gives to the thirsty water to drink. It satisfies the hungry. It raises the dead, and brings them up from Sheol. It stills the billows. It heals the sick. It conquers hosts. It overthrows walls. It stops the mouths of lions, and quenches the flame of fire. It humiliates the proud, and brings the humble to honor.
Does Jairus’ faith hold? Yes. How do we know? Nothing is said about his thoughts or feelings. Because he does not rush ahead of Jesus, but comes with him to the house. Does the healed woman go with them? Or does she rush off to share the glad news with her own friends and family? Mark does not say. She merges back into the background of the text that casts the rest of the story into bright relief.
Arriving at Jairus’ house, Jesus and his companions are met with pandemonium. He questions the mourners—“Why are you weeping and causing such a scene?”—and declares that the child is not dead but merely sleeping. “And they laughed at him.” Their laughter echoes the ancient laughter of Abraham and Sarah, a paroxysm of disbelief born of the fear to trust in a promise seemingly too good to be true. Jesus puts them all outside. Then he, Peter, James, and John, along with the child’s parents, enter the room where the child had been laid.
The woman who had suffered for twelve years with hemorrhages, the woman he had called daughter, had reached out in faith to touch him. Now, he reaches out to Jairus’ twelve-year-old daughter, takes her by the hand, and speaks the words of life: “Little girl, arise!” And she does.
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Literally, this passage affords us a vision of Jesus, his tender mercy and fiery attentiveness. Mystically, it draws us into the field of his presence, transgressing the boundary between what happened then and now, rending the veil between the text and our lives. Interwoven as they are, these two figures—the nameless woman and the nameless girl, one suffering a slow death, the other abruptly taken by death, both named “Daughter”—become for us a single figure, two facets of our reality.
The Gospel tells us that Jesus, upon arriving at Jairus’ home, entered “where the child was.” This phrase is peculiar and profound, heavy with meaning, and it echoes an earlier line from the passage: “My little daughter is at the point of death.” Where was the child? At the point of death—a place we cannot go, a realm unreachable for us unless Jesus leads us to it.
The woman who pressed through the crowd to touch the train of Jesus’ robes reflects our mature, active, world-facing self. She reminds us that we have agency, that we can and should take responsibility for our lives, actively drawing near to God, claiming for ourselves the closeness we are meant for. What she does shows us that grace is not merely bestowed upon us, but it delivers and demands our cooperation and participation.
The little girl represents our primal, hidden self, a self secreted away, deeply wounded. What happens to her reminds us that we are never truly in control of our lives. We are thrown into existence. We hurt because we have been harmed. Before we sin, we are sinned against. As we grow older, the child within remains a child. And the first wounds we suffer are the last to heal. If the child is not healed, if it is not brought back to life and nourished, we will continue to bleed out—growing worse despite our best efforts and no matter what we spend or what help we seek out.
The trouble is, we cannot reach the place where the child is, the point of death, the time in our past that death came into our lives and harmed us. We cannot touch those original wounds, much less cleanse and cure them. But the child within us is not dead to Jesus. He is the God of the living, not the dead. He knows the child is merely asleep, waiting to be awakened and cared for. He can reach that point of death within us, for he has died and claimed all points of existence as his own. And he can touch and heal our original wounds, bringing life where there was only the shadow of death.
A few years ago, during a trauma intensive, I recalled a moment from my childhood, a wound I suffered that had been bleeding my entire life (all twelve years, so to speak), even when I wasn’t aware of it. The director urged me to pray over the memory, asking Jesus what he wanted to do with it and with what had happened to me. I did, and I suddenly saw myself as a child sitting alone on the back pew of the church where the trauma had occurred. Immediately, Jesus appeared—and he looked ridiculous. He came toward me acting the fool, leaping over the carpeted pews, dancing and laughing. He bounded back to me and held out his hand, waiting for me to take his, and said: “This place is not haunted for me.”
This is the good news: this place—the secret place in which your innocence is hidden, shut-in, entombed—is not haunted for him. He knows where your child has been left. He knows not only how to reach that place, not only how to raise up that child, but also to give you back to yourself.
As that happens, you will not be able to keep yourself from singing, through tears,
You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead;
you restored my life as I was going down to the grave.You have turned my wailing into dancing;
you have put off my sack-cloth and clothed me with joy.Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing;
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever.
Amen.
Such a crafted picture of the healing of the ‘child’ & as a dear friend spoke out, when the child inside is healed, the adult can stand up.
Thank you for these beautiful, inspiring and healing words. Tears and song.