Sermon Thanking God for Healing Mark 5:21-43

Sermon Preached on  June 27th  at Stockbridge Presbyterian Church

Mark 5:21-43    Common English Bible

21 Jesus crossed the lake again, and on the other side a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. 22 Jairus, one of the synagogue leaders, came forward. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet 23 and pleaded with him, “My daughter is about to die. Please, come and place your hands on her so that she can be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.A swarm of people were following Jesus, crowding in on him. 25 A woman was there who had been bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27 Because she had heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothes. 28 She was thinking, If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed. 29 Her bleeding stopped immediately, and she sensed in her body that her illness had been healed.30 At that very moment, Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”31 His disciples said to him, “Don’t you see the crowd pressing against you? Yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 But Jesus looked around carefully to see who had done it.33 The woman, full of fear and trembling, came forward. Knowing what had happened to her, she fell down in front of Jesus and told him the whole truth. 34 He responded, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace, healed from your disease.” 35 While Jesus was still speaking with her, messengers came from the synagogue leader’s house, saying to Jairus, “Your daughter has died. Why bother the teacher any longer?””36 But Jesus overheard their report and said to the synagogue leader, “Don’t be afraid; just keep trusting.” 37 He didn’t allow anyone to follow him except Peter, James, and John, James’ brother. 38 They came to the synagogue leader’s house, and he saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “What’s all this commotion and crying about? The child isn’t dead. She’s only sleeping.” 40 They laughed at him, but he threw them all out. Then, taking the child’s parents and his disciples with him, he went to the room where the child was. 41 Taking her hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Young woman, get up.” 42 Suddenly the young woman got up and began to walk around. She was 12 years old. They were shocked! 43 He gave them strict orders that no one should know what had happened. Then he told them to give her something to eat.

This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks Be to God. 

HOPE

It is an interesting way of being and a state of living. We hold on to hope and pray in hope and live in hope for so many things especially things that are beyond our immediate control. 

Jarius held on to a great hope to leave his dying daughter in order to find the last hope for healing her illness. He knew he had no control over his daughter's situation, he alone couldn’t do any more for his little girl than to risk leaving in order to save her life. 

The woman who reached out to Jesus was leaning on her last and only hope to get relief from what kept her from her community. She probably hoped that she wouldn’t be seen, recognized, or stopped as she hoped her bleeding would stop in order to be restored back to health and her community. 

This scripture is filled with holding to hope, the interruptions of life, and of course incredible healing stories of Jesus that shows authority and healing power that seems separate from anyone else. 

In reading this scripture my mind automatically goes to the hope and healing story that seemed unexplainable and unimaginable outside of the spirit of God’s intervention. 

While in seminary there was a Korean family that experienced incredible pain, hope, and the power of healing. The wife of a classmate was pregnant and then a miscarriage began to occur and in that her body went into septic shock. The medical team spent a lot of effort to help this woman. All the while the body of Christ at the seminary and from her Korean church family went to prayer. They prayed at her bedside, at the hospital, at the seminary, at the churches, through the day and through the night. And then the miraculous was happening. This woman’s life was spared, the medical team had to remove her hands and her feet but through the gift and grace of God she came through and was able to learn how to function again and come home. She was an inspiration to our whole community. Her husband and family lived into the role of Jairus as they advocated for her to live and be reunited with her husband and son. The seminary community was in awe and filled with a renewed sense of spirituality as we learned that sometimes God’s answer to healing prayer is to heal the body as well. 

HEALING

What does it mean to be healed? 

When we go to God in prayer for healing God answers in a way that we desire. 

Jairus, an impatient, persistent father wants to make sure his daughter is healed before it is to late and Jesus allows for a crisis to shift focus for a minute and care for something else. I would probably be a lot like Jarius who is impatient, for good reason to protect my children and their future well being. But Jarius didn’t fully grasp the power of Jesus and the ability to do something so miraculous. He underestimated even in his great work of faith to go out to get Jesus to attend to the needs of another. 

The hemorrhaging woman had lived a life of quiet patience out of necessity; her body was probably weakened by the 12 years of bleeding. She had no advocate for her medical needs, she mustered up all she had in order to slither through the crowds with faith that just touching the hem of Jesus’ garment would make her well. It probably felt like a last ditch effort in some ways for her physical healing to take place. 

The woman and the little girl are parallels of people as they cross paths with Jesus, the great physician and healer. For both of them it was the last and only hope for healing of the physical needs on earth. As long as the little girl was alive, this woman was bleeding. 

As much as this story was about the physical healing of the girl and the woman it is about the wholeness that comes from Jesus through faith and redemption. 

There are many types of healing answers to prayer. We are called to go before God in prayer for healing. In our prayer we hold on to hope that the prayer will be answered as we desire but we are called to something more than our direct desires. God answers prayer in God’s perfect timing and through the mystery of life. 

The answer to prayer that is automatically filled with praise and thanksgiving is the physical healing that occurs. The healing stories in scripture fill us with hope that God is able and will directly heal the needs of our body. 

I am cautious of the miracle healing prayers. It was hard for me to simply pray for the physical healing of the family of that woman mentioned earlier as I prayed, like others for the peace of her family, for the well being of her surviving child and husband. God heard all our cries and didn’t choose to save some and not listen to others who are asking for healing. 

I have seen and been part of an incredible physical healing story myself. One night after worship a member asked me and the other pastor to pray over his knee. It was in terrible pain and there was impending need to do medical intervention and it was effecting his whole being. I knelt next to him, put my hand on his knee and prayed, listened to the prayers of others and listened to God’s gentle push of my hand on his knee. That morning was the day my grandmother went to be with the Lord after three hard years of illness. Her pain and suffering was no longer. She had lived through her goals of seeing me be ordained and days after my cousin received his Eagle Scout she gave her last breath. It was the same day my heart was broken that I held the knee of another and prayed. 

A week later his knee was better and he was able to function again. He had also heard that the day I prayed for him was the day my grandmother passed and was honored to have my presence. 

Healing can also be one that is the peace that surpasses all understanding that comes from God alone when going through pain and suffering. 

Healing comes in the repairing of broken relationships with self, others, and God. 

Healing can come in the mental breakthroughs of pushing past the immediate pain in order to achieve goals set my medical authority and family advocates in order to function better in mind, body, and spirit. 

Healing can be emotionally driven as we go to God in prayer to heal ourselves or someone we are advocating for and the Spirit guides us to be present with someone. The Spirit guides us with the right words to say or the heart to say something bold to our loved one that is hurting. 

Healing can come in the wholeness of a person. It may not be a physical healing but what if in going to God in prayer the answer was about the wholeness of the person, the wholeness of your own life, or even the wholeness of a family or community. 

As we have prayed for the healing of our world through this pandemic we are learning about being a community in new ways. We are innovating and reinventing ourselves to live with compassion and mercy. We are learning to listen to the needs of others that may be different from our own needs and how we receive care. 

Holding the Holy 

Jesus broke boundaries in this text. As one that knows the law of the standards of holiness and being unclean he takes on the culture and the ways of being and lives out the reality that caring for those in need is bigger than any holiness code. The people of God are holy, even in death, even in dying. 

The woman reached out and touched the garment of Jesus from the crowd, she held the holy in her hands and felt her illness go, Jesus in turn felt power go from him and stopped everything to address her in person. Jesus wanted her to know that not only has she been made well in body but she is to be restored to wholeness to her community, to her self, to the world. She is daughter of the living God and her suffering in body and in mind can be redeemed and restored to wholeness in Christ. 

We are called to be like this woman, to reach out to Jesus in faith and allow him to address us and make us restored and redeemed as daughter, a son, a child of the living God. 

The father of the dying girl was able to be there to see an outcast reach out and be healed. He tried to hurry along Jesus to get to his girl before it was too late and was greeted by mourners crying out at her death. Jesus stated she was only sleeping and reached out to her holding the holy in her and restored her life in telling the little girl to get up and not only did she get up but was ready to eat, a sign of wholeness as any of us knows when we are in pain and suffering the desire to eat is a struggle. 

We are all called to hold the holy in each other as we lift others in prayer. As we praise and thank God for the healing power that we have experienced in ourselves, in others, and even when that healing comes with the end of pain and suffering in this world. There is the holding of the holy when healing of broken relationships are restored. 

Jesus heals us in miraculous ways. Sometimes that healing is noticeable and direct and sometimes the healing is indirect and unseen. Jesus calls us to continue to hope, be healed by the power of the Spirit, and hold on to the holy through him in our relationship with God in prayer and in our relationship to others in response to God in prayer.