Sermon — June 30, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
These two stories of healing couldn’t be more different from one another; but when you get down to it, they’re exactly the same.
Jairus’s young daughter is in an acute crisis, near the end of her life; the woman who touches Jesus’ cloak has been suffering chronically for longer than Jairus’ daughter has been alive. Jairus comes openly to Jesus before the crowd. The woman approaches surreptitiously. He begs him over and over to heal his daughter, she reaches out without saying a word. He’s is a prominent member of society, a leader of the local synagogue, with messengers and mourners waiting back at home; she comes to Jesus alone and bankrupt, and the only social contact we hear about is with the physicians, under whose care she’s suffered much.
Their circumstances and their behaviors couldn’t be more different, and in fact they find themselves somewhat in competition. After all, when Jesus and Jairus set out for Jairus’ home, to heal his daughter, there’s no time to lose. She’s at the point of death. But the woman touches Jesus’ cloak, and she is healed, and Jesus turns aside. “Who touched my clothes?” he says. (Mark 5:30)
And I can only imagine how Jairus must have felt, just in front of him, leading the way to his daughter’s sickbed. He’s rushed out to find Jesus, and he’s found him; even better, he’s actually convinced him to come heal his daughter, and now Jesus has stopped along the way to ask, “Who touched my clothes?” in the middle of a crowd. Even the disciples are amazed— “Look at all these people,” they say. How could anyone know? (5:31) But the woman comes forward and falls on her knees. And Jesus blesses her and sends her along her way. (5:34)
Mark doesn’t tell us what’s going through Jairus’s head. But we can guess. If Jesus needs to stop and heal somebody, fine. But why the conversation? Why the delay? This woman’s sickness is important, for sure, but not urgent, not like his daughter’s illness; and yet Jesus takes his time, and I imagine Jairus somewhere between impatient and afraid.
And his worst fears are about to be realized, because while Jesus is still speaking, while he is still stopped along the way, someone comes bearing a message from Jairus’s house. “Your daughter is dead,” they say. And Jairus, who was full of words at the beginning of the story, begging Jesus repeatedly to come heal his daughter, is left speechless as his relief turns into despair.
But Jesus simply says, “Do not fear, only believe.” (5:37) He sends away the crowd who follow him, and the crowd of mourners. And despite their incredulous laughter at the idea that the child who has died while Jesus dilly-dallied on the road is merely asleep, he says to her, “Get up.” And she does.
This is a long story, and it’s full of strange and enticing details. There are so many questions that you might want to ask. What does it mean to say that Jesus’ healing power can simply flow out of him, that miracles can happen without his knowledge just because someone touched his cloak? Why does Mark record what Jesus says to the girl in Aramaic, Talitha cum, while translating the rest? Why does Jesus do everything in secrecy, sending away the crowd and the mourners and telling the family and the disciples to tell no one what they have seen? What’s up with the snack at the end?
If you step back for a minute, you might ask a bigger question. I said that the two healing stories couldn’t be more different, but at the heart of things, they’re really the same: Two stories about desperate people putting their faith in Jesus. This isn’t faith as a statement of belief, a collection of well-thought-out ideas about God and the world. This is faith as the last desperate act of someone who’s tried everything else. This is the trust that his help might make a difference. Jairus is so convinced that Jesus can save his daughter, in fact, that he gives up his last chance to see her alive to come and find him.
And the faith of these two people seems to be the catalyst for the healing that comes. “Daughter, your faith has made you well,” Jesus says to the woman he has healed. “Go in peace, and be healed.” (Mark 5:34)
If only it were so easy for us.
The connection between healing, faith, and prayer is one of the most difficult ones in spiritual life, in my experience. We want to pray for healing, for ourselves, for other people, for the world. We want God to act, to cure us of our ailments whether they’re physical, or psychological, or spiritual. We wish we could just reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ cloak, and be healed. And sometimes, remarkably, it seems that we are healed. I don’t know about you, but I really have seen examples of this kind of change. Sometimes that means recovery from an illness or injury in a way that baffles doctors’ expectations. Sometimes it’s recovery from an addiction that seemed impossible to shake. Sometimes it’s a sudden about-turn in life, that can only be described as a divine intervention.
But then, there are all the other times. All too often, the healing that we pray for doesn’t come. Our sick friend gets sicker, no matter how hard we pray; or our seemingly-healthy friend is suddenly at the brink, at the very moment when things seemed like they were finally looking up. And the more we hope for a miracle, the more we pray for healing, the stronger our faith that God will surely help, the worse it feels when nothing seems to change. Like Jairus, we’re left holding the disappointment and frustration that comes when our hopes for something better are dashed.
And I think we find ourselves in this second situation more often than not. The story of the New Testament is the story of miracles that come one after another. The story of Christian life is a story of prayers that seem to go unanswered.
But if the story of Jairus’ daughter tells us anything, maybe it’s that sometimes, it’s just too soon to tell.
If you pause the story when Jesus sends away the woman who’s been healed, Jairus’s mission has been a failure. He thought his prayers were being answered, he got his hopes up, but God didn’t answer soon enough. Jesus delayed, and his daughter died, and the healing that he hoped for never came, and the story ends with grief.
But the story doesn’t end there. Within minutes, everything has changed. Jairus’s daughter is alive. She’s walking around, and having something to eat. His prayers were not unanswered; they just hadn’t been answered yet, and God was doing something that Jairus hadn’t asked for, something that he probably hadn’t even imagined was possible.
That’s the challenging hope of the Christian faith: God’s response to our prayers for healing is never “no,” but sometimes it’s “not yet,” and sometimes “yes” doesn’t come this side of eternity. Because we know, after two thousand years of Christian life, that we don’t get to have Jairus’s miracle in the quite the same way. We say every Sunday that we believe in the resurrection of the dead, but we don’t mean that that will come in this world. Like Jairus, we will see the people we have loved and lost again, but in the world to come. The pain of loss and grief are just as real for us as they were for him on that long walk home, and our grief lasts much longer. But given the choice between two worlds—the world in which God doesn’t answer most of our prayers, and the world in which God just hasn’t answered them yet, I know which one I’d choose, any day.
I don’t know which prayers of yours need answering today; where you need God to do something that hasn’t happened yet, where you need something to change in yourself or someone else, but the change has not yet come. I don’t know where your soul “waits for the Lord, more than watchmen for the morning.” (Psalm 130:5)
But I hold onto the promise that’s at the heart of Christian hope: That there is a God who loves you, and who cares for you, a God who is answering your prayers, even if you can’t see it happening yet; that there is a future in which our divisions will cease and our pain will end—that however long the night is that we spend in weeping, joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:6)