Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

This Week’s Primary Text: (Mark 5:21-43)

I think the following questions will help you get a lot from this text this week.  I share some of my personal intersection with the text below. Tip: I get the most from each week’s text by making time to read it slowly every day, with plenty of time, solitude, and silence to sit with it, write down some thoughts, be still enough to give the Spirit a chance to nudge me, etc.  Give it a try!

Jairus

·       What courage was required to humble himself to go personally and beg Jesus for help?

·       What was he advocating for? Given Jesus’ response, how does this inform our prayer life?

·       What restraint was necessary when Jesus stopped to help the unclean woman?

·       What was Jairus’ process in this healing story beyond the initial request?  How does this inform our imagination going forward?

·       How did you think he felt about the private audience v. crowd?

·       How did he feel about interacting with an unclean woman?

 

Hemorrhaging Woman

·       How do you suppose the woman’s poverty shaped her vision of herself? How might that have impacted her courage to seek healing? 

·       What impact do you think being ostracized from the faith community had on her sense of self and over all wellbeing? 

·       What courage was required for her to risk offending such an anointed one as Jesus?  What do you suppose went through her head?

·       What was she advocating for?  How does that inform our prayer life?

·       Why didn’t Jesus take credit for the healing?  How do we understand it?

·       What courage was required for her to wait for what was next following her immediate healing?

·       Would healing have happened even if her physical issues continued?

·       What did Jesus’ addressing her as “Daughter” communicate to her, to the disciples, Jairus, the crowd, us?

 

Jesus

·       What do you suppose was the primary purpose of including these two healing stories in Mark’s Gospel?

·       Why did Jesus tell the crowd not to follow to Jairus’ home?

·       Why did Jesus use the phrase “rise up” among so many other options?

·       Why did Jesus tell the Jairus’ parents not to tell people what happened?

·       Jesus’ pause created another healing in restoring the relationship that had faded.

 

Me

·       Where am I too proud to pray for help? Where am I too self-loathing to pray for help?

·       Why is courage required in the asking as well as in the surrender to what’s next?

·       What else might be healed beyond the issue I am praying for?

 

Wow!  What a rich story!  So much here to chew on that helps me see humanity more clearly as well as the nature of God as it worked through Jesus.  I have been thinking a bit about barriers to asking for help.  Jairus’ pride certainly was an obstacle; his humility in asking Jesus for help likely raised some eyebrows and helped build the crowd.  The woman’s low self-esteem was equally challenging to overcome – how many of us do not feel worthy to ask for help in some way?  At least for myself, I recognize that I am both Jairus and the woman – there prideful parts of me and there are also parts of me that I am not proud of – both keep me from reaching out to others and God.  

            Another piece of this has to do with the timing and the length of the encounter between Jesus and the woman.  Imagine if Jesus and Jairus were just 100 yards from his home where his daughter lay dying – just a couple of minutes away.  Imagine Jairus’ impatience and frustration at being slowed down – I would be!  Imagine the emotion he felt when he got the news that they were too late – was he angry for a moment?  What if they had not stopped for the woman?  I would be beside myself with a huge, messy ball of emotion.  Post-resurrection of his daughter, I wonder if he circled back to that scene.  I wonder if it dawned on him that Jesus called her “daughter”, and that she was as valued as his own little girl.  I wonder how humbling that must have been, as well as eye opening, mind blowing and heartwarming.  I imagine the same must have been true for the healed woman.  Jesus took time for her, did not reject her, and even called her daughter.  What a radical shift in perspective.  They looked at themselves, God, and each other differently after that.  How could they not?

            

Some pretty good quotes...

 

“You are never really well, just less sick.” – 70-Something-Year-Old Man

 

 

One who does what the Friend wants done

will never need a friend.

 

There is a bankruptcy that is pure gain.

The moon stays bright

when it does not avoid the night.

 

A rose’s rarest essence

lives in the thorn. – Rumi

 

 

Our suffering in this life may be unspeakable; we may feel ourselves to be completely isolated and alone, but in truth God is with us.  Not assuaging or canceling the pain but inhabiting it – and thereby transforming it. – Deborah Smith Douglas, “Enclosed in Darkness,” Weavings

 

 

Psalm 130

1 From the depths of despair, O Lord,
    I call for your help.
2 Hear my cry, O Lord.
    Pay attention to my prayer.

3 Lord, if you kept a record of our sins,
    who, O Lord, could ever survive?
4 But you offer forgiveness,
    that we might learn to fear you.

5 I am counting on the Lord;
    yes, I am counting on him.
    I have put my hope in his word.
6 I long for the Lord
    more than sentries long for the dawn,
    yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.

7 O Israel, hope in the Lord;
    for with the Lord there is unfailing love.
    His redemption overflows.
8 He himself will redeem Israel
    from every kind of sin.

 

Mark 5:21-43 (NLT)

21 Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake, where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. 22 Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, 23 pleading fervently with him. “My little daughter is dying,” he said. “Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so she can live.”

24 Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him.25 A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. 26 She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. 28 For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.”29 Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.

30 Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

31 His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

32 But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. 34 And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”

35 While he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him, “Your daughter is dead. There’s no use troubling the Teacher now.”

36 But Jesus overheard[a] them and said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just have faith.”

37 Then Jesus stopped the crowd and wouldn’t let anyone go with him except Peter, James, and John (the brother of James). 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw much commotion and weeping and wailing. 39 He went inside and asked, “Why all this commotion and weeping? The child isn’t dead; she’s only asleep.”

40 The crowd laughed at him. But he made them all leave, and he took the girl’s father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying. 41 Holding her hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means “Little girl, get up!” 42 And the girl, who was twelve years old, immediately stood up and walked around! They were overwhelmed and totally amazed.43 Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened, and then he told them to give her something to eat.