A Story of Two Resurrections

A sermon by Rev Andrew Colman on Mark 5:35-41

Our Gospel reading tonight, or rather our stories from the Gospel, are about two resurrections—two resurrections that could not have been more different from each other. They are told to us in a way that Mark uses to help us understand that he wants us to connect the two stories together—that they inform each other in some way. They are in a bit of a story sandwich - The beginning of the reading is the Story of Jairus's Daughter - which is interrupted by the Woman who has bled for 12 years - and then the reading ends with the second half of Jairus's daughter's story.

It is worth mentioning here that the Woman with the issue of blood has been given a name by the tradition of the church. Though it is not Biblical, some parts of the church have given her the name Veronica.

    And Veronica is actually a very prominent figure in the church come the Lenten season.

    In the old versions of the stations of the cross, not the ones that we use here, but the ones where Jesus falls three times, there is one station where a woman named Veronica comes to Jesus and cleans his face with her veil.

       But more on this later

In our Gospel reading tonight, we meet Veronica and an almost nameless girl. Jairus' daughter. Jairus was the leader of the synagogue. He was not a rabbi or a scribe, but more like how we could think of an admin assistant and lay reader. Someone who has been trained up to run some of the daily prayers and schedule others to do the same. So, if you imagined Sarah, our admin and volunteer coordinator, combined with Danielle and our other lay readers Robin, Beth, Zoe, Krista, Murray, and Chris, combined with the evening prayer team, Helen, Rob, Nancy, Robin - imagine if all of them were one person. If that person was cutting through the crowd to go see this famous Rabbi, people would probably get out of their way!

That is why his name was preserved. He was an important person. And so his daughter too, would have been known. If he was cutting through the crowd saying my daughter is sick; I need Jesus' help - at least some of them would have known her and maybe even helped usher him forward. After cutting through the crowd, probably even "cutting in line" in front of the people who got there earlier to see Jesus, Jairus fell to his knees and begged him, telling Jesus that his daughter was about to die, Eugene Peterson in the Message draws out the urgency like this, "My dear daughter is at death's door." And so Jesus goes with him, cut in line, ushered to the front, or both. Didn’t matter Jesus goes with the heartbroken father.

And then came the Woman who was alive but who was all but dead to society. She had lived the last 12 years of her life a constant loss of blood and spent all of her money trying to find healing and found none - alive as she was she might have felt like more than a ghost.

She was the opposite of Jairus and his daughter. According to the law, a woman would be considered ritually unclean for a length of time even after she had finished her menstrual cycle. And anyone she touched would be considered unclean until the end of that day.

This took any woman out of commission for a significant portion of the month, even when she was perfectly healthy.

But for Veronica, it was so much more

    The power of Sin, caused by the fall, caused her body to betray her.

It was not this Woman's own Sin - let's be clear - there is no suggestion of this woman bringing this on her self in the text in any way whatsoever! None! Let us put that idea to rest. It was the Sin with the Capital S, the Sin that infects and attempts to corrupt every nook and cranny of even our good, our very best intentions: it was that Sin that caused her body to betray her. For Veronica, it is so much more because that betrayal of her body keeps her from functioning within society at almost every level. It has even taken all of her money away from her in her search for a cure so that even small comforts are out of reach. — This is our cast of characters: the powerful man responsible for part of the prayer life of the community, his beloved daughter at death's door, and the despised by society woman who bleeds. For one, the crowds part - the other, they shun.

//Jairus came crying, making a scene, falling on his knees. "Save my daughter, teacher.”//

    Veronica would have had to be as quiet as possible so no one would have recognized her. We heard that she approaches Jesus from behind, all of her words in a whisper, if out loud at all,

"If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." Immediately, her hemorrhage stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.” Another translation puts it the the flow had dried up.

But only she would have known this, no one else. We're told she felt it in her body that she was cured - but only she knew - her stigma would have gone nowhere. Not sure, but maybe this is one of the reasons that Jesus turned around and sought out the person whom he had just healed.

It was not enough that her disease was healed; the the flow of blood dried up. No, there is more to a person than the function of their body.

Jesus turned and found her in the crowd so he could proclaim that she had been healed. He says to her, "go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

The word he uses here for Peace here is the same one we hear when we hear Jesus say these words, "Peace I leave with you; my Peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

And the word for healed carries with it the meaning of wholeness. And he said this for all to hear - /after/ she the disease the affliction had been healed.

Jesus let everyone there know that there was nothing about her anymore that they could use to keep her separate from society.

               She is whole, and she has been granted Peace.

She is no longer a ghost. She has been resurrected - and as tradition would have it - her name is Veronica. And then the scene changes ever so quickly, from wholeness to death. Jairus daughter has died, and the messengers come to tell him not to bother Jesus anymore. There is nothing more he can do.

Jesus essentially ignores this and tells Jairus and a few of his disciples to follow him. He dismisses the mourners and goes in to see the little one and, takes her by the hand and raises her up. Talitha Koum, "Little girl, get up."

And then to make sure that everyone knows that she is alive and not some kind of ghost - and remembering that she would probably be hungry - she had after all been sick to the point of death: Jesus anticipates her hunger and finds her something to eat.

So often we look at these stories and we see the affect of the faith of Veronica and Jairus - her faith made her well and all Jairus needed to do was to believe. And from that faith came the healing. There is, of course, some truth in that - Jesus said it himself.

    But what is also true is that - it is - Jesus who is the healer, and in both of these resurrection stories, he is concerned with more than what everyone around them sees. More than what anyone could have asked for or imagined. He is deeply concerned for the whole person.

Jesus was concerned that Veronica, who stands in for any person who experiences exhaustive suffering, would be seen and accepted back into a life where she could live, and breathe, and flourish, that she might have /the energy/ to come to Jesus during his passion and dry up his sweat and blood.

And for the little Girl, Talitha, he is concerend for something as simple as her empty stomach.

What God is doing in these stories is honouring their whole person. He is giving full dignity to every part of our human experience. Not only the joy of Talitha’s resurection but the hunger after her sickness.

So for the many of us, or in fact all of us who live with broken parts of ourselves, and also live to serve as Jesus did, he is reminding us that It's not just the affliction //it's also how we embrace one another// - its not just that we have life //it's that we are fed that we are nourished.//

And in this world, where it is quite obvious that there are people with afflictions both seen and unseen, in body mind and soul, and hungers both in body and spirit.

Our work is to be the hem of garment through which God's power flows, the people that create a space for Peace, to be the voice that declares that we are all whole, the hand that raises those who are sleeping, and the ones who find the food for the hungry.

God works through the church and through the Power of the Holy Spirit, though each one of us, for each one of us in here - and each out there.

God works through us to embrace and feed every part of creation no matter the affliction that we might find the Glory of God in every story.