Touching Lives with Love
Mark 5:21-43
by Rev. Randy Quinn

It’s easy to identify with the principal characters in our text for today.  Every parent can imagine the sense of fear and worry in Jairus’ voice as he pleads with Jesus to make his daughter well.  She is at the point of death, and he has most certainly tried everything he could to make her well – but still she is dying.

And we can easily identify with the agony he must have felt when the news came that she had actually died and so there was no more need for Jesus to come.  (In fact, we may find ourselves perturbed that Jesus stops to help someone on the way – thus slowing down his arrival and allowing the girl to die!)

It’s hard not to empathize with Jairus and his personal crisis.

It’s harder to empathize with, but we can still imagine the plight of the unnamed woman.  She has been experiencing a flow of blood for twelve years.  That means she has been living in exile for twelve years because the religious laws did not allow her to interact with anyone in the community of faith until she was well.

We don’t know how old she is.  She could be in her thirties, a young woman who could not start a family when it would have been appropriate to do so.  She could have been in her fifties and missed the birth of her grandchildren.  She could be in her seventies and missed her husband’s funeral.  We don’t know how old she is, but if she has been separated from her community for twelve years, we can be sure she missed some important events in the lives of her family and her community.

Understandably, it says she had sought medical attention.  She wanted to return to her family, to her community.  But first the blood must stop flowing.

Now, at first glance, the unnamed woman in this story has very little in common with Jairus.  Not only is she a woman and he a man, she has also been treated as a pariah because of her infirmity while he has received the nodding approval of everyone in the community.  She is one of the many “invisible” people in society that no one notices while he was a person that everyone acknowledges as they pass him on the street.  It is not much of a stretch to say that people went out of their way to avoid her while people went out of their way to greet him.

She is frail, he is powerful.

But don’t be fooled by first appearances; they both have much in common, too.

They are from the same town.  They were both raised in homes where God is worshipped and glorified.  They were both Jews by birth.  And they are both in a state of crisis – she because of her own infirmity, he because of his daughter’s.

We don’t know for sure what he has done to help his daughter, but it’s hard to imagine any father not seeking help from wherever he could find it – and since he was a man of influence, it’s probably the case that every medical expert has already been consulted.  And we know that the woman spent her last cent on doctors that made her worse rather than better.

Many of us can remember times when we were in a similar crisis.  It may have been a situation related to our own health or the health of a loved one.  But it may also have been a crisis at work.  Or maybe it was a close relationship gone sour.  Some of us have struggled with mental health issues while others have struggled with financial worries.

Not many of us go through life without some point at which we have pursued every available option – from expensive treatments to extensive research, from expert opinions to exhausting regimens.

Like both people in our text, we have all come to the point where we see our own need for Jesus and our dependence upon God.

Unlike us, however, both the frail woman and the powerful man take a great risk in reaching out to Jesus.  The unnamed woman enters a crowd, knowing that she is unclean and could be punished for being there without warning everyone of her status.  Meanwhile Jairus, the man of respect in the community, defers to Jesus in a way that gives tacit approval of Jesus and his ministry, something that may diminish Jairus’ own standing in the community.

And finally, both of them know the power of touch:  Jairus asks Jesus to come and touch his daughter while the woman reaches out to touch Jesus.

It is the touch of love, a love that reaches to both the well off and the cast off.

They may appear to be as different as night and day, but in fact they have as much in common as dusk and dawn.  Both of them are loved by God, and in that sense, if in no other, they are very much like us.  Their stories remind us of our own need to reach out and touch Jesus, to “put our hand in the hand of the man who calmed the waters” (as the folk song says it).

So, today I am going to offer a visible reminder of the truth that Jesus is no farther than your arm’s reach.  I am going to give each person here a piece of a hem, a symbolic reminder of the hem of Jesus’ robe that the woman touched that day.  (I had someone sew them together and cut them in small sections for us.) 

Put it in your purse or put it in your pocket.  And the next time you sense a potential crisis, any time you feel inadequate, whenever you feel the need for the assurance of God’s presence, simply touch this hem.  Touch this hem and remember that God alone can heal.

You see, both Jairus and the sick woman were seeking a cure.  What they received was so much more.  When he heard that his daughter was dead, in fact, it seems as though Jairus is no longer interested in Jesus – because he was after a cure.  But Jesus did more than offer a cure – he restored his family to wholeness when he raised her from the dead.  And the woman tried to sneak away after being cured of her disease but Jesus insisted that she be healed as well, that she be welcomed back into the community of faith as a daughter, a sister, a mother.

Each of us will leave this place with a piece of his hem today.  We are all included in the family of God.  We are not given the promise of a cure, however; rather we are given the assurance that we are made whole by the power of God.

You see, Jesus is still touching lives with love – including yours.  All we need to do is to reach out and touch the hem of his garment.

Thanks be to God.