The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
Mark 5:21–43
Mark the Evangelist uses a very special literary technique, sometimes called interpolation, inclusio, or chiastic structure, but more commonly referred to as a Markan Sandwich. A Markan Sandwich is when Mark takes one story, cuts it in two, and stuffs another story in between the two halves. One story, the one at the beginning and the end, is like the bread of the sandwich, and the story that is in the middle is like the meat of the sandwich.
The reading from the Gospel of Mark this morning is the quintessential example of a Markan sandwich. On the outside, the bread part of the sandwich, is the story of Jairus’s daughter, and how Jairus seeks out Jesus to come and heal her. The story in the middle, the meat of the sandwich, is the story of the bleeding woman and how she touched Jesus’s robe and was healed.
And there is a clue that Mark doesn’t put these stories together by accident. There is a clue that Mark really is being intentional about putting these two stories together. And here is the clue. How long had the woman been bleeding? Twelve years. How old was that girl when Jesus brought her back from the dead? Twelve years. That’s the clue that Mark gives us. There’s no reason to tell us at the end of the story how old that girl is. There’s no reason except to tweak our memory, to let us know that something different is happening in this story, that the two are inseparably linked, that they interpret each other. That little detail, twelve years, holds it all together. Some people call it the Markan toothpick.
So how is it that these two stories, which Mark has sandwiched together, how is it that they speak to each other? What can we learn from the one that helps us understand the other in a way that we wouldn’t have if they were separated?
In the first story, we have Jairus. He is a man of means. He is the leader of the synagogue, which means that he is one of the leading men in town, one of the primary benefactors of the community. He enjoys at least some wealth. He has servants. He is important enough and wealthy enough that professional mourners show up at his house without being invited. People know who he is. They respect him.
All that is to say that Jairus is used to getting his way. Like all native Galileans of the time, his power and liberty are limited by the Roman occupation of his homeland. But as one of the leading men of the community, chances are that he is fairly cozy with the Romans. Wealthy people don’t typically become revolutionaries. Wealthy people typically prefer the stability that keeps their own fortunes intact.
Jairus, this man of means, has come to Jesus seeking healing for his daughter. He does humble himself before Jesus, and pleads with him to heal his daughter. So they head toward Jairus’s house.
And right there, in the second paragraph, is where the first story is interrupted by the second. This is where we get the meat of the Markan Sandwich. The new protagonist is a woman. We are never given her name. This unnamed woman has been suffering for twelve years with continuous menstrual bleeding.
Now, this is a medical concern. Bleeding is painful, and it is a continual drain on the body’s resources. But in the world of ancient Galilee, it’s not the medical concerns that are the biggest problem. According to the Bible, anyone who comes in contact with blood is ritually unclean. While someone is bleeding, they are not allowed to participate in the religious and social aspects of the community. She can’t, for example, go to the synagogue, where Jairus is the leader. Not only that, but if she comes into contact with anyone else, that person will also become ritually unclean. They will not be able to visit the synagogue without first performing rituals of cleansing, and those rituals can take some time to perform.
What this means, then, is that this woman must be a social pariah. It’s one thing to have to stay away from other people for a few days out of every month and to have to perform a cleansing ritual before going back out in public. It is quite another thing to be perpetually unclean. According to the Bible and custom, she is essentially never allowed to come into contact with anyone. Certainly she would not have been able to marry, if for no other reason than that she would not have been able to bear children. It’s hard to imagine her being able to find any means of employment, either. She is an outcaste. She has no way of ever making herself clean or ever reentering society.
Mark tells us that this woman had tried to find doctors who could cure her. She had visited many of them. They took her money, but she didn’t get better. In fact, Mark tells us that the doctors’ treatments actually made her worse.
Twelve years. It must have been difficult even to survive for that long in her condition. If anyone did want to help her, they would have to make the choice to become ritually unclean for a certain period of time in order to do that.
I should clarify that being ritually unclean does not mean being evil. Today when we talk about being unclean in a religious sense, we’re usually talking about sin. If someone commits sins that remain unforgiven, that might make them unclean. And certainly in Jewish practice, committing sins can make someone impure. But coming in contact with blood is not a sin, it’s just an impurity. It’s impure because it is out of place. Blood is supposed to be inside the body, so blood that is outside the body is impure and transfers its impurity to anything it touches. And, the thought goes, you can’t present impure things to God. They have to be purified first before it is proper for them to be in God’s presence. People wouldn’t be avoiding this woman because they thought she was a sinner, just because she was ritually impure. Certainly some people must have thought that for a woman to have no relief from bleeding for twelve years, she must be cursed, and if she were cursed, she must have done something wrong, but there isn’t a direct connection here between impurity and sin. They are different concepts.
So here is this woman who is ritually impure, and she knows that she is supposed to stay away from other people, but she is desperate. She is twelve-years-of-living-as-an-outcaste desperate. She sees Jesus, and she sees the crowd packed in around him, and she thinks, “If I just touch his clothes, then I’ll be healed.” I always think that’s an interesting detail, that Mark crawls inside the woman’s mind and quotes her thoughts for us.
In any case, that’s exactly what happens. She touches his clothes, and she is immediately healed.
Jesus can tell that something has happened, that power has gone out from him, but he doesn’t know exactly what has happened. So he looks around trying to find the person who touched him. His disciples think he’s crazy, because everyone is getting jostled by the crowd, but Jesus persists in looking for the one person who’s touch was different than everyone else’s.
The woman is terrified. She knows that she has done something wrong. She wasn’t supposed to touch Jesus, because she would make Jesus impure if she did. She wasn’t even supposed to be in the crowd. And so she throws herself on his mercy.
While she’s there cowering on the ground, Jesus simply says, “Daughter, your faith has healed you.” Greek, by the way, uses the same word for heal that it uses for save. So Jesus could just as easily be saying, “Your faith has saved you.” Jesus doesn’t even take credit for the healing. But he does call her Daughter, he acknowledges her as kin, as a member of the community, and she had not been a member of the community for twelve years.
So, that is the end of the middle of the story. We are done with the meat of our Markan sandwich, and it is time to get back to the bread.
Some of Jairus’s people show up with the news that Jairus’s daughter has died. We aren’t told how Jairus reacted, but it is clear that his servants don’t believe that Jesus can do anything to help someone who has died. But Jesus jumps in to say, “Don’t be afraid. Just keep on having faith. Keep on trusting.” The crowds and the mourners don’t think Jesus can do anything, either, so Jesus throws them all out. He goes into the room with just the parents and his three closest disciples: Peter, James, and John. And in that room, with no fanfare whatsoever, with no spectacle, he raises that girl from the dead. She was twelve years old.
Twelve years. And a very different life those two women had for those twelve years. The girl grew up those twelve years in a posh house with servants, and plenty of food, and clothing, and money, and respect. The woman lived those twelve years on the margins of society, desperate, barely scraping by, not even able to visit the synagogue that Jairus ran. Jesus gives them both the same thing: healing, salvation, wholeness. And for both he identifies the same prerequisite: faith, belief, trust. Where there is faith, there can also be healing. And there is nothing so bad that it cannot be taken to Jesus. These are the messages of the Markan Sandwich. Trust in Jesus, and know that there is nothing that is so severe, nothing that that is so shameful that he cannot address it.
The bleeding woman takes a risk in seeking out and touching Jesus. She knows that the rules of ritual impurity dictate that if she touches him, her impurity will transfer to him. But somehow, she believes, that something else is possible. And, in fact, it is. She audaciously touches him, and the thing that she believes, that perhaps no one else believes, comes to pass. Her status as ritually impure does not pass to him. His healing power transfers to her. And they are both made well, and clean. She could have hidden away in shame. That’s what society expected from her. But she didn’t. She was bold. And her boldness led to healing. Physical healing, yes, and also social healing. She was restored to the community.
We have different ideas today about what might make us unclean, or shameful. But there are still things about ourselves that we may not be proud of, things that we don’t want other people to know about, things that keep us hidden away. Sometimes we feel like we need to hide those things even from God. But Jesus shows here that we do not. Whatever we think about ourselves is unclean, whatever we think makes us unworthy to approach God—it doesn’t. Jesus’s goodness is overwhelming. There is nothing we can take to him that will contaminate him. Jesus’s light is brighter than any darkness we might try to hide.
Neither is there anything that is big, too audacious for God to address. Jesus’s healing power can even overcome death. Sometimes we think that our problems are too big for God. They are not. Conversely, sometimes we think that our problems are too small for God. They are not. Whatever it is that you facing, whatever struggle you are dealing with, regardless of its size or character, there is nothing that you cannot take to Jesus.
Now, does that mean that every time we pray for healing, that we will experience it in just the way that we hope. No. Pain and illness are part of the human condition. Without them, we would not be human. Jesus, too, experienced pain. No doubt he also experienced illness. If he had not, he would not be human.
Even when we do not get what we want from God, in the way that we want it, we know that God leaves no prayer unanswered. If God does not offer strength of one kind, God will offer strength of another.
Regardless of how likely we think healing might be, we should still be bold enough to pray. That’s what the stories of these two women teach us. Where there is faith, there can be healing. And no problem we have is too big for Jesus. Thanks be to God.