Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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.””
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, February 4, 2024
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Sometimes, faith on the edge is faith enough.
Have you ever had to run through an airport? Maybe you hit traffic on the drive in. Maybe the security line took longer than you expected. Maybe the airline switched gates on you last-minute and you had to haul your luggage across an entire terminal, jumping on the moving beltways when you could and straining your ears to make sure you heard your new letter and number combination correctly. However it happens, squeezing through the door and into your (hopefully window) seat right before boarding closes always brings a rush of gratitude and relief—a letting go of all of the stress and logistics you know you’d have to deal with if you had missed this flight and had to work out an alternative.
This story from Mark has a definite “running through the airport” feeling to it. It’s saturated with suspense. And that’s because this story is actually two stories.
We open on Jairus begging Jesus to come heal his daughter who is on the brink of death. Time is of the essence here. They have a healthy distance to cover to get to Jairus’s house, and they can’t escape the crowds pressing in on Jesus, trying to talk to him, trying to hear from him and, undoubtedly, asking him for the miracles his public ministry had started to make common knowledge. So they’re moving, but not as quickly as they could be. We automatically begin to wonder: are they going to make it?
All of the sudden, Jesus stops in his tracks. He feels that someone has touched him; he senses some kind of power bleeding out from his body. He turns to the crowds to ask who is responsible, and his disciples respond as if he is crazy. “There are so many people here!” they say. “You’ll never be able to figure it out. Why would you even ask?” Perhaps what they were really trying to say was, “Can’t we do this later? You have a little girl to save. Let’s go!”
But the guilty party comes forward. The woman who had touched them hem of Jesus’s garment admits it and gives Jesus a bit of her backstory to build her case. The text says she tells him “the whole truth.” And Jesus takes the time to listen to her. To reassure her. To affirm her and care for her and formally name a new chapter for her.
Now it’s not the disciples who are feeling rushed—it’s us, as readers! This is nice and all, but why are we getting distracted from our mission? Why are we taking time for anyone but Jairus’s daughter? If we were in the airport right now, we’d definitely be missing our flight. And that’s exactly what happens. Jesus hasn’t even finished speaking with this woman who grabbed his cloak when a handful of town leaders find Jairus and inform him that he’s too late. His daughter has died.
And then, Jesus gaslights the crowd. “What do you mean?” he asks. “She’s not dead. She’s just sleeping.” He takes her hand and tells her to get up, and she does just that, seemingly healed of everything that has kept her bedridden for all this time.
The characters in this passage were living with stressors much more intense than a flight schedule. Jairus had a sick kid, and this unnamed woman had suffered from a life-altering hemorrhage for 12 whole years. Their desperation drove them to frenetic, impulse encounters with Jesus—encounters where they were on the edge. Encounters where their faith was on the edge. (The visual of the hem of Jesus’s cloak—the very edge of Jesus’s person—is so beautiful to ruminate on here.) And in both cases, that impulse is what brought healing. That impulse is what brought new life. Even if Jairus and this unnamed woman weren’t confident in their asks of Jesus, they asked anyway. And it was their asking that did something. It was their faith that brought wellness.
In both mini-stories that make up this bigger one, the end result is great. The unnamed woman is healed of her disease and Jairus’s daughter is brought back to life. But Jesus makes sure that we understand that these miracles are about the journey, and not the destination. Our good news this morning is that faith doesn’t have to look pretty. Faith doesn’t have to be composed. Faith can be visceral and messy and erratic. Faith can be desperate and awful. Faith can be grasping at straws and teetering on the edge. Because with a God as loving and merciful as ours, faith on the edge is faith enough.
