Reach

Mark 5:21-43

Today we join Jesus as he disembarks from the once storm-tossed boat and steps onto a beach that is quickly crowded with people. His reputation as a teacher and a healer precedes him, and everyone who is able comes rushing to meet him, craning for a glimpse of this mysterious man. Among the throngs of people is a local leader, a faithful and important man with a distinguished sounding name. Emerging from the crowd, Jairus throws himself at the feet of the acclaimed stranger with healing hands. Over the shouting and the cheering and the jostling of the crowds, Jesus hears this man’s desperate prayer. “My little girl. My child. She is going to die. Lay your hands on her, and save her.” Jesus hears him, and they move through the crowd together. 

As they go, the crowd follows, flowing through the streets and growing larger and pressing in closer to see Jesus. One person in that crowd of many had been suffering for a long time. She had a condition that was consuming her resources, her well-being, her life. Like so many who suffer chronic illnesses, she had been to every doctor, tried every risky and costly remedy. She had done everything she could do, until this famous healer arrives in her town. In the streets outside her home, people are shouting and cheering for the man who has healed lepers and made the blind see and given new legs to those who could not walk. She has tried everything, except this. She has nearly lost her hope, until she sees him. The hope that is in her wells up and causes her to reach for him. She touches the edge of his clothes, barely in reach. As simple and as sudden as that reaching, she is changed. Her body is made well, her pain is gone. 

Jesus is surrounded by throngs of people who are vying for him, for his attention and his teaching and his power. There are many in that crowd who will ask for his healing. There is one little girl who’s life is in immediate danger, the one he is walking toward with intention. But, even in the immediacy of that need, the overwhelming racket of the crowd around him, the press of bodies and hands and voices that deafen and distract his disciples, Jesus stops. He asks “Who touched my clothes?” Jesus felt someone reach for him. He felt someone in pain. He healed her before he even saw her, but he looks for her anyway. In this scene of chaos, rushing toward a home full of fear and grief and imminent death, Jesus stops to look for the person who reached out to him in hope. The disciples are incredulous, questioning the sanity of their friend whose very body was being overwhelmed by grasping hands from every angle. His disciples saw a whole crowd, but Jesus felt a single lost sheep.

The woman who has been healed could have disappeared into the crowd. She could have run, reveling in the new life she has been granted. But she doesn’t. She sees Jesus turning, searching the crowd, and she reaches for him again. She pushes herself forward through the crowd to fall at his feet as so many have done, and she tells him the truth. She tells him the whole truth, the truth of her illness and her suffering and the healing she has received from him. Her private illness has always been public, a cause for isolation and poverty. Her private act of faith, her reaching out, now made public in confession. She shakes, she’s afraid, having felt his power when she reached for him. But Jesus reaches back. Extending a hand to her, he calls her daughter. He calls her family, and tells her that she is safe. “Your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” With disciples and synagogue leaders and crowds urging him forward, Jesus still stops to make the connection, to look into the eyes of one who had been ignored. Jesus sees this daughter who has been healed bodily, and puts her heart and soul at peace.

We could easily see this woman’s story as just a brief interruption, a narrative blip in the miraculous story of Jesus raising a twelve year old girl from the sleep of death. After all, the woman has lived for 12 years with her illness, while this young girl’s life is about to be cut way too short. The little girl’s father asked for help, while the woman chose to reach out from the anonymity of the crowds. Jesus could have gone ahead to the house and cured the little girl instead of raising her after she’s already died. If the woman was already healed merely by touching him, why would he even need to find her? Aren’t there more pressing matters at hand?

This moment, this pause in the action, tells us several things about Jesus. This interaction shows us just how powerful Jesus’s incarnate presence on Earth really is, how much impact his body makes on those who encounter it. The power that courses through Jesus’ body is such that just to reach for him, just to touch the hem of his clothes, is life-changing. Just to feel that power is enough to mend the broken things inside us. But Jesus never uses that power quite the way his followers expect. God’s priorities are not always ours. 

By the time Jesus and his entourage reach the doorstep of Jairus’s home, the mourning rituals of burial have begun. Relatives and community members are gathered outside the home, wailing and weeping and grieving the death of the young girl. An unlucky emissary has already informed the bereaved father, telling him not to trouble Jesus any longer. Our savior’s response is again that angelic assurance- Do not be afraid. Believe. Unrelenting even as onlookers laugh in his face, Jesus brings the distraught parents and some close disciples to the bedside of the little girl. Reaching down to her just as the healed woman reached out to him, Jesus lifts the child up with words of firm affection- Little girl, get up. Before the tear-filled eyes of her parents, this 12 year old girl rises from her deathbed and stands on her own two feet, a miracle. As Jesus sought first to connect with the woman he had healed before sending her away whole, Jesus stays with this reunited family and insists that they share a meal, an embodiment of the renewed connection and a foretaste of the meals he would share with his friends after his own death and resurrection.

Jesus shows us in these moments what it means to connect, to heal and be healed. Rather than triaging, rather than worrying about divided attention or effort versus reward, God looks at people. God looks for the people who are reaching. God looks for the people who aren’t. God’s attention is not exclusive to those that the world deems most important or immediate. God walks through the crowd of thousands and feels the needs of every single one. God looks at this world of billions and hears every cry of grief and joy, sees every hand reaching out. God always reaches back. The body of Jesus, the Body of Christ, is powerful enough to feel and heal and connect with every single one. Reaching out to brush the edge of Christ’s body can heal diseases of the body, mind, and soul. The outstretched hands of Christ can raise what was seemingly dead into newness of life. That is our birthright as the people of God. That is our responsibility as baptized Christians. We are called to be Christ’s body in the world, reaching out and reaching back, healing and being healed, connecting with one another and with the divine love that sustains us. Jesus has given us two calls today. Go and be healed. Get up and be healers.