Sermon on Mark 5:21-43
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
Last week we read about Jesus calming the storm as he and his disciples crossed the sea. They were on their way to Gentile territory, and while they were there, Jesus liberated a man who was occupied by a legion of demons. For reference, a legion of Roman soldiers was about 5,000.Jesus let the demons take possession of a herd of pigs who then ran off a cliff. The locals were not pleased that their livelihood had died, and they asked Jesus to move along.
So, when our reading today starts by saying, “When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side,” that’s where he was coming from.
One of the religious authorities, Jairus, rushed to beg Jesus to heal his dying daughter.He “begged him repeatedly,” which is exactly the language used to describe the demons begging Jesus not to send them away. Both physical and supernatural beings were pleading with Jesus for mercy.
Then, another story enters the mix when Jesus was on his way to see Jairus’s daughter. A woman with chronic bleeding braved the crowd with the desperate hope that touching even Jesus’ clothes would heal her.
Jesus commended her truth-telling and trust in him and sent her on her way.
Meanwhile, Jairus’s daughter died.
But Jesus asked Jairus to trust him too.
And amid the wailing of the people at the house, Jesus took only his most trusted disciples and the Jairus and his wife to see the body. Jesus took her hand and lifted her up, restoring her to life. He told the amazed parents to feed her and went on his way.
Three strange and surprising stories.
The recipients of Jesus’ care represent a vast variety of people.
The demon-possessed man was a Gentile, completely outcast from society. He was desperate.
Jairus’s daughter was young—twelve years old—with a powerful parent advocating for her and many people grieved by her death. They were desperate.
The woman had been bleeding as long as Jairus’s daughter had been alive. She was impoverished aftersearching unsuccessfully for a cure. She had no one to advocate for her. She was desperate.
In these three stories, the characters are very different, but their desperation is the same.
And Jesus restored all of them to new life.
Jesus showed the breadth of his mission by showing mercy to individuals.His mission included Gentiles, those oppressed by demons, privileged people like Jairus’s daughter, those overcome by death, the impoverished and forgotten, those plagued by illness.
Jesus cared for all of them and cared for them wholly.
The word for “being made well” throughout this passage is sozo, which could be translated as “save,” “heal,” “preserve,” or “rescue.”All forms of well-being are brought together in this one word. There is a glorious conflation here of salvation, healing, and wholeness.
That can get us into dangerous territory if we mistakenly think that illness or disability is a sign of God’s disfavor or someone’s sinfulness. Let’s agree that’s an unloving and discriminatory perspective that needs to stay in the Middle Ages.
God loves all people. All bodies are made by and loved by God. Sometimes people don’t receive a cure in this life. That doesn’t make them any less worthy of love. I don’t know why people suffer. Any trite explanation for the world’s suffering is inadequate for the realities people face every day.
But we see in this passage that Jesus doesn’t care only for people’s souls getting into heaven. We see that Jesus cares about people’s bodies and their lives on earth.
He didn’t just say, “I’ll pray for you,” or “You’ll get a new body in heaven” or “God needed your daughter as another angel.” He restored their bodies. He brought the people in our stories well-being in this life.
Our society often ignores people’s bodies.
We’re taught to ignore our needs.
Children are taught very early to sit still and suppress their bodies’ need to move.
Diet culture has us ignoring our hunger cues and fixating on making our bodies as small as possible or requiring our bodies to conform to a certain mold.
Many people’s bodies are treated as disposable or an inconvenience: unhoused people, newly arrived immigrants, disabled people, seniors, and the list goes on.
Christianity has a history of leaning into the idea that our bodies are bad—full of evil urges, sinful desires, and selfish interests—and only our souls are good. You can find this idea especially in the New Testament letters.
But it’s important to remember that the earliest Christians thought Jesus was going to come back right away, so it was unnecessary to worry about our bodies or about the future.
It's also important to look at the whole of scripture and remember who made our bodies and the world we live in. We have a loving God who chose to take on a human body and live the fullness of human life alongside us. We have a savior who brought sozo to many and inspired his followers to carry on that lifegiving work.
God cares about people’s bodies, not just their souls.
And so, we should care about people’s bodies too, including our own.
We care for people’s bodies by feeding them and their families through Caring Hands. We care by sending fans to the ELCA Youth Gathering for survivors of natural disasters. We care for each other’s bodies through our prayer chain and checking in on how we’re doing.
Our Sabbath theme helps us to care for our bodies too. We’re rarely at our most generous and caring when we’re run off our feet. Sabbath rest restores us to well-being.
We’re “the church that feeds people body and soul.”
What are you hungry for?
What are our neighbors hungry for?
How is the Holy Spirit filling us with new life?
Last week’s reading was about trust—the trust the disciples had to learn to put in Jesus, who commanded the wind and the sea.
In this week’s reading, Jairus and the woman with the chronic bleeding put their trust in Jesus—that he could bring new life.
And Jesus showed his faithfulness to all of them.
We’re about to sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” a beloved hymn for many.
I have found it to have the most meaning when sung in difficult times. It is, after all, based on our reading from Lamentations this morning, a piece of scripture written by our ancestors in faith in exile, wondering why God had let them be defeated and taken into exile and had not rescued them yet. They longed for sozo, for God to “save,” “heal,” “preserve,” and “rescue” them. Though sozo is Greek, not Hebrew, the longing was the same. Save us, God!
What did they remind themselves of in their time of despair? God’s faithfulness.
Though our reading says that it’s good to wait quietly for God, God is surely big enough to handle our times of lament, our shouting and wailing. The book of Lamentations also includes plenty of that. We can bring God all of our big feelings.
In their time of trial, our ancestors in faith also remembered God’s faithfulness.
Our God, who is with us in the storms of our lives, created and loves all of us, including our bodies and those of all our neighbors. God saves, heals, preserves, and rescues.
As we remember God’s faithfulness to us, our community, and the world, let’s sing “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”