“The Hemorrhaging Woman and Jairus’ Dead Daughter”
Mark 5:21-43
6/28/09
Physicians and prescriptions are literally
life-savers. From treating such minor things as seasonal
allergies to treating life-threatening illnesses such as cancer,
doctors and the medications they prescribe do a lot to lessen the
suffering in our lives, taking it away altogether in some cases,
prolonging our lives in others. Still, as Mark writes concerning
the woman in today’s Gospel text, there are some who suffer for
years under many physicians as they try one treatment after another
with no success. In the end, physicians and drugs can only help
so much. At best, they simply put off the inevitable, making us
as comfortable as possible until death ultimately has the last
word. No earthly physician or drug has ever nor will ever be able
to cure that problem, as death is the wages of sin. And since
everyone sins, everyone dies.
But today’s Gospel text shows us that there is
a special Physician, sent to us from heaven, who has the cure (better
yet, is the cure) for both sin and its wages - our Savior, Jesus
Christ. And here He demonstrates that as He heals the
hemorrhaging woman and raises Jairus’ daughter from the
dead. In doing so He teaches us that if we cling to Him by faith
these healings will be ours someday. For those who trust in Jesus
as the cure for sin and its consequences, there will come a day when
doctors and drugs will no longer be needed and there will be no more
death. It will be the day when Jesus takes us by the hand and
says “Arise!” And we will come forth from our graves
and live and reign with Him for all eternity.
All this because of the cure that Jesus has worked
for us through His suffering and death. This cure is free to us;
it costs us nothing. But it cost Jesus His life. He worked
the cure for sin by taking it and its consequences upon Himself in
order to take them away from us. Isaiah speaks this way when he
says of Christ, “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows.” He did that for the hemorrhaging woman in
today’s account. In the O.T. this woman would have been
declared unclean because of her discharge of blood, and according to
God’s Word, if anyone touched her in her state of uncleanness he,
too, became unclean. And so, by touching Jesus, this woman
transferred her uncleanness to Him. Not only that, but she also
transferred her bloodiness to Christ. The clean, holy, sinless
Son of God gets dirty and bloody when He comes into contact with those
who are unclean - that’s you and me and all sinners. But
that’s exactly what Jesus was sent in the flesh to do - to take
your uncleanness away from you onto Himself, so that He might wash it
away with His blood. That washing occurred on the cross and then
was applied to you in your Baptism. There the cleansing blood
which Jesus shed on the cross cleansed you from all sin. There in
your Baptism Jesus touched you like He touched this woman; there He
spoke to you as He spoke to Jairus’ dead daughter, and you were
healed, you were raised from the dead, and now you’re saved; now
you live.
The result of this healing touch of Jesus in the
woman’s case was that her uncleanness - the flow of blood - was
removed and she was cured. But by curing the effects of her sin,
Jesus showed that He had also cured the cause. He had proven this
on another occasion when a paralytic was brought to Him for
healing. Jesus first told him that his sins were forgiven.
When the religious leaders balked at this, Jesus showed that He had the
power and authority to do such a thing by curing the disease that sin
had caused - the man’s paralysis. That Jesus is the cure
for suffering and death proves that He is also the cure for their
source - sin. The woman’s healing was a little preview of
the complete healing that all who are in Christ will receive when He
raises us from the dead.
The raising of Jairus’ daughter was a preview
of this raising. Here, too, Jesus had become unclean by touching
the little girl’s dead corpse. He took her uncleanness upon
Himself, just as He had taken the woman’s uncleanness upon
Himself. But just as her flow of blood would become His flow of
blood on the cross, so this little girl’s death would also become
His there. The Lord died the death of this little girl, as well
as yours and mine, so that He might overcome it with His
resurrection. Because He would arise from the dead, He was able
to say to this girl “Arise!” which is the same thing He
will say to all who belong to Him on the Last Day. What Jesus did
for Jairus’ daughter is a preview of what He will do for all His
children when He comes again for them.
With these two miracles, Jesus shows that He is the
cure for sin and its wages, so that all who trust in Him, as both this
woman and Jairus’ daughter did, might experience perfect healing,
not only in their bodies but also in their souls, at the resurrection
of the dead on the Last Day. Until then, this gives us great
comfort in the face of the death of a loved one in Christ or in the
face of our own death. Jesus teaches us here that we don’t
have to mourn as the unbelievers do when suffering and death come our
way. Though everyone at the house was weeping and wailing, Jesus
had told Jairus not to fear at the news that his daughter was
dead. When He told everyone that she was only sleeping, suddenly
their mourning turned into ridicule. They knew the difference
between being dead and being asleep. Death is a permanent
condition from which no one can be awoken. And yet, Jesus refers
to the death of His own as sleep. He does that because for those
in Him, for those who have received His cure for sin, death is no
longer a permanent state. It’s just a sleep from which they
will awaken when He returns. It also implies that we’re
still alive after we die, since God is the God of the living, not the
dead. And so, death is no longer something we have to be afraid
of, nor do we need to mourn for those who have died in Christ, as if
that’s the end for them and we’ll never see them
again. The Apostle Paul writes, “But we do not want you to
be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not
grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that
Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with
Him those who have fallen asleep.”
Still, we may wonder why the Lord allows those who
are His to die at all, now that He’s already given them the cure
for sin. Since in our Baptism He’s cleansed us of all
unrighteousness and raised us up with Him to newness of life, why must
we still suffer and die? The raising of Jairus’ daughter in
the Gospel according to St. Mark reminds us a bit of the raising of
Lazarus in the Gospel according to St. John. There Jesus heard
that Lazarus was sick, but decided to stay where He was a couple more
days, giving Lazarus just enough time to die. Here Jairus begs
Jesus to come heal his daughter who is sick, but instead of speaking a
word right then and there (which He could have) Jesus takes the time to
walk with Jairus to his home. Not only that, but then His journey
is interrupted by this woman whom He takes time out to help. The
result was that Jesus didn’t get to the girl in time and she
died. Why did He let this happen, both to this little girl and
also to Lazarus?
First, He wanted to teach us that He is the cure for
death. We’re all going to die. Even Jairus’
daughter and Lazarus too would die again. They lie in their
graves to this day. But by raising them from the dead the first
time they died, Jesus showed that death was not final. We die,
because death is the wages of sin. But in Jesus death itself now
has been put to death. Jesus says, “I am the resurrection
and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he
live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never
die.” In Jesus’ death and resurrection, both the
little death of our bodies and the big death of hell have met their end.
We will never die the big death, that is, we are not
going to be separated from God’s love and suffer eternally under
His wrath in hell. We will, however, still experience the little
death, the death of our bodies, not only because that’s the
consequence of sin, but because we Christians have been baptized into
Christ’s death. With Him we die to sin and the lusts of our
flesh. That goes on daily as we live in repentance.
That’s the Holy Spirit having His way with you as He crucifies
you with Christ, the end of which will be your own death. But He
does this not to destroy you, but so that you might live. Baptism
has its end not in your death, but in your resurrection. In
Baptism you have not only been crucified with Christ, but also raised
with Him. You have eternal life now, even though your body is old
and decaying, and you will have a new glorified immortal body the day
that Jesus takes you by the hand and tells you to arise, never to sleep
the sleep of death again.
Until then, Jesus tests your faith to see if you
will continue to trust in His promise to heal you. The woman with
the hemorrhage believed that by merely touching Jesus’ garments
she would be healed. The garments of Jesus here may be compared
to His Word and Sacraments. Our Lord clothes Himself with His
Word, Baptism, and His Holy Supper. That is where He has located
Himself for you; that’s where you’ll see Him; that’s
how He comes to you and brings His healing touch to you. The
woman’s clinging to the garments of Christ is a picture of a
Christian clinging to these means of grace. With her we can say,
“If we touch even His garments, we will be made well,”
because to take hold of Christ’s Word and Sacraments is to take
hold of Christ Himself, who binds Himself to these things.
Now, the woman did this in secret, thinking that
neither Jesus nor the crowds would notice. But Jesus didn’t
want this miracle to remain a secret. It’s not that He
didn’t know who had touched Him. He wanted to show forth
this woman’s faith as the kind of faith that pleases Him, the
kind that clings to His promises and as a result receives the healing
it expects. And so He exposes her and sets her forth as a model
believer, saying to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well;
go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
And He says the same thing to you who trust in Him
as this woman did. Your faith in Him has made you well; go in
peace and be healed. Jesus didn’t praise the woman’s
faith because it was so strong or because she had more of it than you
might, but because of whom her faith was in. The woman trusted in
her strong Savior, Jesus Christ, not her faith. And that’s
the kind of faith that the Lord wants to work in you through the
sickness and dying that you experience in this life. When this
hemorrhaging woman and this sick and dying little girl are you, He
wants you to cling to Him by faith, trusting in Him as the cure for sin
and its wages, and holding onto His promise that death for you is only
a sleep from which He will awaken you when He comes for you on the Last
Day. Jesus has died to sin and risen to life so that you might
die and rise with Him, in order to live and reign with Him now and
forever. Amen.