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Helping Hands: “Touching” Encounters with
Jesus
A sermon by Dr. Scott Spencer
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Mark 5:21-43
A tale of two women—two very different, but
equally desperate women.
One is a youth from a respectable
Capernaum family—the “little daughter,” as the text says (although she’s 12
years old) of the local synagogue leader, Jairus. But daddy’s “little girl” is
dying, and there’s nothing he can do about it but plead for Jesus’ mercy and beg
Jesus to come to his home. Jairus’ position and piety, whatever wealth he
has—amount to very little in the face of his daughter’s life-threatening
illness.
The other woman in our story is
clearly older and of lesser social status. She may have once had some wealth
and privilege, but over the years—12 years actually (the same span Jairus’
daughter had lived)—she’d become destitute, spending every last penny on doctors
to alleviate a chronic bleeding condition—but to no avail.
Mark doesn’t discuss her family life, but it’s
possible that her irregular “flow of blood,” as it’s literally described,
rendered her “damaged goods” as far as marriage and child-bearing were
concerned. Perhaps she’d been married at one point but now was divorced or
widowed.
We don’t know for sure, but she seems on her
own when she presses through the roadside crowd to get to Jesus. A woman on the
streets—does she even have a home to invite Jesus to? A loving father and
mother to care for her, like the 12-year-old daughter? Not that we know of.
It’s up to her to get Jesus’ attention.
A tale of two women (and a father
and mother of one of them) frustrated, frantic—at the end of their ropes and
hopes . . . .
Except for one last hope—not a medical
“professional,” but a traveling teacher and folk healer. Other so-called
“healers” had no doubt passed through town over the years—and turned out to be
money-grubbing quacks (common in the ancient world). But maybe this new Healer
Jesus is worth a shot: he’s gaining quite a reputation for really helping
people; he seems different than the others, not least in the fact he doesn’t
charge for his services.
As it happens, Jesus indeed helps both women.
Their differences in age, status, and illness don’t matter. As their weakness
meets Jesus’ power, he freely cures them and restores them to new life. These
women come to share a great healing bond with Jesus, the Great Physician.
But they are bound together by more than just
the fact of their healing by Jesus. They are also linked by a similar method
of healing—specifically through physical contact with Jesus. Healing flows
through touch, through hands-on experience.
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus accomplishes his
restorative work through two primary means. One—he simply speaks a helaing
word, and it is done. On occasions the diseased person is not even present. Go
home and you’ll find your servant or your child healed, he says.
But at other times Jesus becomes more
intimate—he combines talk with touch—he touches Simon Peter’s
feverish mother-in-law and cools her temperature; he touches a leper and
“cleanses” his damaged skin; he touches a blind man’s eyes and opens them to
sight; he touches the side of a wounded soldier’s head and restores his severed
ear. As the popular contemporary gospel song exclaims: “He touched me and oh
what joy that floods my soul. Something happened and now I know. He touched
made me whole.”
And he touched both afflicted women in our
story and made them whole. Although that’s not exactly correct, is it?
The element of touch is critical in both cases, but in special ways. In one,
the bleeding woman is made whole not because Jesus touches her but because
she touches him. The initiative is all hers.
And in the other case, Jairus’ daughter is not
just made whole—she’s made alive again! By the time Jesus gets to her, she’s
died. Jesus takes her by the hand and says, “Talitha Cum” in his native Aramaic
tongue, meaning, “Little girl get up”—as if she’d been sleeping—but it was a
deep “sleep” no one expected her to wake up from.
These “touching” encounters call for careful
examination. But then, most “touching” incidents merit close consideration. If
you will forgive the bad pun, the issue of touching is a “touchy” subject that
must be “handled with care.” We teach our children that there’s good touching
and bad touching, appropriate and inappropriate.
We all know something of the comforting and
soothing power of touch. A mother’s loving embrace and gentle pats of the back
when we’re crying—there, there, it’s all right; or her tender touch on the
forehead when we’re running a fever. A friend’s reassuring hand on the
shoulder—it’s OK, I’m here for you—or clasping our hand and intertwining our
fingers—it’s more than OK, I’m here with you; we’ll make it through this
together. The warm, healing power of touch—almost as if revitalizing energy
flows through the hands and fingertips.
But there are boundaries and limits. I need
my space. I need to cool off—Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me that way! Touch
can cross the line and become invasive, exploitative, even destructive. Bare
hands can hurt and kill and take up all sorts of weapons of personal and mass
destruction.
Good touch, bad touch, and all kinds of touch
in between. What kinds do we have in our story? Good touches—yes, ultimately,
resulting in restoration—but not simply good touches. There are some
rare elements and rough edges to these touches we need to appreciate. If I may
put it this way—one touch is impossible (or seems that way); the other is
imposing . . . . more than a little presumptuous, intrusive.
First, let’s consider Jesus’ impossible
touch of Jairus’ daughter.
Jairus first approaches Jesus about his little
daughter who is very sick—“at the point of death” he fears, but still holding
on, if only by a thread. He begs Jesus urgently: “Come and lay your hands on
her, so that she may be made well, and live.” Jairus believes in Jesus’ healing
touch—but there’s no time to waste.
Jesus heads toward Jairus’ house—but doesn’t
get there as quickly as we expect. A crowd presses all around him slowing his
progress, but more than that, one particular woman stops Jesus in his tracks
with her touch of him. We’ll talk more about her touch in a moment—but for now
we simply note its diverting effect.
Everything stops. The plot suddenly shifts to
this bleeding woman’s case for several verses, while Jairus’ little daughter is
left lying in her sickbed. Has she been forgotten, dropped from the story?
No, but something does happen in the
meantime. When Jesus finally resumes his course toward Jairus’ home, some
friends of the family come and report that while Jesus was tending to the
hemorrhaging woman—Jairus’ daughter had died. One touch precludes
another. Though she didn’t intend this, I’m sure, the bleeding woman’s hand
winds up blocking Jesus’ progress and preventing him from getting to the little
girl in time. The woman becomes whole, while the girl passes away.
That would seem to end the matter. No need to
touch the daughter now except to bury her. No need to bother the Teacher
anymore, they say.
But Jesus doesn’t mind being “bothered” by
human burdens—however heavy and intractable; overwhelming and impossible
they might seem.
If he’s “bothered” by anything in our story
it’s the great “commotion” of despair he observes when he arrives at Jairus’
house. What’s with all this “uproar”? Jesus queries. The term suggests a
tumultuous upheaval, akin to a “riot.” What’s with all the drama? No need for
such histrionics. The matter is in fact not settled. Death does not have
the last word or last hold. Jesus takes the deceased daughter by the hand,
snatches her from death’s cold clutch, and raises her to new life.
You want to talk about crossing
the line—this is as extreme as it gets—crossing the line between life and
death. Jesus’ hand, Jesus’ touch, reaches across that most ominous and
cavernous chasm between vitality and mortality.
Does that mean he goes around
touching every corpse he finds and bringing them back to life? No—resuscitation
is the rarest type of miracle he performs—only three reported cases throughout
all four gospels: Jairus’ daughter in Capernaum, a widow’s son in the village
of Nain, and Lazarus in Bethany. That’s it among the doubtless thousands who
died in Jesus’ land over the course of his ministry.
Jesus knows the deep suffering and
loss of death and doesn’t have a magic wand or Midas-like touch instantaneously
zapping death into life. He himself will experience death—fully, pain-fully.
But he will experience it as both God and Man, as both infinite Creator and
finite creature—the mystery of the Incarnation we spoke about last week.
A mystery ultimately leading to the glorious
resurrection of Jesus’ body—but not at the immediate moment of death.
Those murky three days between crucifixion and resurrection should not be
ignored, however little we know about them. They speak somehow to Jesus’
presence and struggle within that uncharted borderland between life and death.
He lives and dies and lives again on the threshold, on the edge—drawing us to
the light of resurrection.
We can glimpse the light at the end of the
tunnel—but we’re never quite sure how long and winding and precarious the tunnel
might be. But of this we can be sure: Christ is there reaching out to us,
holding our hand every step of the way.
Yeah though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will not fear for thou art with me.
An impossible touch—raising the dead
to new life? No, not impossible. With God all things are possible. But
they’re not always predictable or even preferable by our standards. We cannot
force or manipulate God’s hand. God’s ways are often not our ways. God takes
our hand and leads us; we follow in faith and hope—that’s the deal.
But does that mean, however, we’re completely
helpless and passive in this arrangement? Not according to our other “touching”
story—which, significantly, does not feature Jesus’ touch but rather a woman’s
touch of Jesus—an imposing touch he’s not expecting.
This woman had battled her terrible bleeding
condition for 12 long years. By that time she might have been tempted to resign
herself to her miserable fate, throw in the towel. That’s enough. But she
doesn’t do that. If anything her long-suffering makes her all the more
determined. She’s got nothing to lose.
Learning that Jesus is passing
through town, she doesn’t bother to make an appointment, to go through proper
channels, to ask if he could give her a few moments of his time. She plows
right through the crowd, approaches Jesus from behind, and touches his garment
without his invitation.
And something marvelous happens—more than she
dared hoped for. “Immediately,” Mark tells us (sometimes everything can
change in an instant), her bleeding stops. What a reversal—after 12 years
of incessant suffering and spending everything she had on inept physicians, now
suddenly she touches Jesus and gets precisely what she needs. The flow of
power from Jesus’ body stops her flow of blood. His dynamic in-surge stops her
anemic discharge.
What joy and relief she must have
felt. No doubt—but not before she felt fear and trembling.
The woman’s touch first heightens the story’s tension rather than relieves it.
She doesn’t just take her healing and go merrily on her way. Jesus won’t allow
it.
As the woman’s touch stops her
disease, it also stops Jesus’ progress. He suddenly whirls around and demands to
know: “Who touched me?” The disciples reply, “You’ve gotta be joking,
Jesus. A whole throng is clamoring for you, grabbing at you, wanting a piece of
you. Everyone’s touching you—that’s who.”
Yes, but someone touched me in a poweful way;
someone extracted something from me. And I want to know who it is.
I think Jesus is surprised and somewhat
annoyed. This has never happened before. This is the only Gospel incident where
someone detonates his healing power—without his offering it, without his
permission. And that distresses him. In a sense Jesus is not completely in
control here. Someone has invaded his personal space and taken something vital
from him.
“Who is it? Who touched me? Let the thief
show him- or herself!” This is a tense moment. And the woman knows it. She
can’t hide from someone this mighty. So she throws herself at Jesus’ feet,
spills out “the whole truth”—in fear and trembling. She’s scared to
death. She took a big risk in pushing through to touch Jesus. Perhaps it
backfired. If this Holy Man has so much power that it radiates through his
clothing, you don’t want to upset him.
What’s Jesus going to do now? He listens to
her story and says to her—listen—“Daughter.” Ahh . . . there’s the icebreaker.
Once Jesus hears the full story, he’s “touched” by it, impressed by it, even,
impressed by this woman. As passionately as Jairus cared for his little
daughter, Jesus embraces this woman as his “daughter” in the family of God. And
what an admirable, faith-full daughter she is. “Daughter, it’s OK. I understand
now. Your faith—your bold and brazen faith—has made you well. Go in
peace and remain healed of your disease.”
This scene brings to mind one of
Michelangelo’s most famous paintings—the Creation of Man on the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel. He portrays God as a powerful, muscular figure with long flowing
gray hair and beard, reclining on his right side with his left arm around a
womanly figure—possibly Eve. But his face is turned the other way, with his
right arm and right index finger fully and tautly extended toward Adam.
Adam’s also reclining and reaching back toward
God with his left hand and index finger. The two fingers—the Creator’s and
Adam’s—almost touch, but not quite. A tiny, but definite gap separates them.
God desperately wants to make contact. Every fiber of God’s being is charged
with desire and energy to reach Adam. But for Adam’s part, his posture is more
casual, his look lazier, and his wrist and finger extended toward God are
limply bent.
If Adam would just perk up a little and
straighten his wrist and finger, the vital connection would be made with the
life-giving God of the universe. God is so determined, so close, so willing—but
Adam must make the final move.
Like the woman in our story—nothing
half-hearted or limp-armed about her pursuit of Jesus. He’s right there on the
road with her. She will not miss this opportunity. She can’t get to his arm,
his hand, or his finger—but his cloak is good enough.
And, so, the invitation for us this morning is
simply this: Whatever your need today, God in Jesus Christ is close, close by,
persistently reaching out to you. Won’t you reach out to him, take his hand,
his finger, his shirt—whatever you can grab onto. In bold and brazen faith,
latch on to our marvelous Creator’s sustaining strength and power, and go in
peace. Amen and Amen.
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