⁷If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. ⁸You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. ⁹Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. ¹⁰Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. ¹¹Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

²¹When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. ²²Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet ²³and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” ²⁴So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. ²⁵Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. ²⁶She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” ²⁹Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” ³¹And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” ³²He looked all around to see who had done it. ³³But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ³⁴He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

³⁵While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” ³⁶But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” ³⁷He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. ³⁸When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. ³⁹When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” ⁴⁰And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. ⁴¹He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” ⁴²And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. ⁴³He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Can't you see the headlines if these two stories from the Gospel According to Mark were printed in one of those tabloid magazine that you find in the racks at the checkout lines of grocery stores? "Shameless woman's miracle cure at the hands of local rabbi!" "Bearded ascetic miraculously brings dead child back to life!" Editors of such magazines have long ago concluded that any story with a headline containing the words "miracle" or "miraculous" is a guarantee to raise the sales of any given issue by one-third. For our copy we first have a woman with a terribly debilitating illness who's spent every last cent she had on quack doctors, mail-order remedies, and herbal diets, and she's had no relief. Our next story features a leader of the synagogue (maybe we should use the term "Judicial Council member" or "General Church bureaucrat") who, in the face of his daughter's mortal illness, despairs of the resources of official religion, and turns for help from this maverick faith healer.

Much more is involved here than first meets the eye. These aren't just two "happily-ever-after" stories. Both this little girl and the woman with the hemorrhage will eventually die, as the other people Jesus supposedly cures will die – as Jesus himself will die. The real antagonist that Jesus overcomes in these stories is not illness, but a couple of things a whole lot more fatal: ostracism and despair. The focus of these stories is not on the value of health, but a far more radical affirmation of the innate worth of every human being.

In these two healing stories that the author of Mark's Gospel has woven together, he means to show us a Jesus for whom healing isn't just an isolated incident; it's a way of being – a way of life. Jesus doesn't heal like the professional priests of his day: intoning pleas for heavenly pharmaceuticals through the smoke of an animal sacrifice sizzling on the altar, then claiming to wait for a divine voice to thunder down a prescription. He stops in his tracks in the midst of a crowd to engage a woman, scorned as "unclean," by treating her like a member of his own family. At that very moment she ceases to be a nameless outcast and becomes, instead, a faithful daughter. The physical cure, supposedly, happens instantly; but the real miracle (as far as I'm concerned!) was that Jesus turned to face her. Think about it: he was the first person to engage her in any sort of meaningful relationship in twelve years! A furtive touch leads to a relationship that gave her a renewed sense of shalom: wholeness, well-being, health, …peace. From her status as an object of revulsion, she could now freely acknowledge herself to be who and what she instinctively knew she was all along: a daughter of Israel and a faithful child of God.

That's a totally separate story that our gospel author seems to have purposely planted right in the middle of another one to make the point about his understanding of Jesus and his ministry. Jesus even presumes to enter the intimacy of a synagogue official's home to reach out and touch the hand of a sick child – again, a purposefully blatant violation of the rules that have established the boundaries of ritualistic purity.

We don't need to look far to find this nameless woman in our own culture. We have our own code for defining what makes someone unclean, unfit to be embraced or even touched. Like the religious leaders of Jesus' day, we too have established doctrines and principles of acceptability, standards that all too often limit the healing grace of God. It is precisely the people who've been unfairly judged as "unclean" in our society who most need the loving outreach of our church. That single mother who looks to baptize her child, that gay man with AIDS who's been turned away by every other church, that divorced person who needs to grieve and heal in a context of Christ-like community: do they experience blessing, or rejection, as they reach out for a life-giving embrace? If they are rejected, in whose name does that happen?

I think it would be right for me to assume that, at some time or another in our lives, every single one of us can remember a moment when something deep within us was touched, when we sensed communion with an essential spirit and strength – even if it were only with life itself. In moments such as that we burst beyond the structures of pain and self-doubt, and come into touch with the power of God.

To bless someone else in such a way as this means to leave a little bit of yourself behind. To bless someone in such a way as this means to leave some of your own personal energy and power, your own love and acceptance behind – even then to send it on ahead to the next town, as it happened when Jesus' reputation began to precede him. So I love this stunning moment when the woman with an uncontrolled flow of blood creeps up behind Jesus and touches the hem of his garment! According to the story the connection between her and Jesus is so powerful that Jesus senses a rush of emotion – as if something powerful flowed from him to her. He had blessed her, and they both felt it.

I like to think that at her touch Jesus also felt something coming into him. He felt her blessing of him. Can you imagine what it must've felt like after a hard week of ministry, pushed and jostled by crowds, to brush past at least one person with such faith that she was willing to violate the law by simply touching the hem of his garment? I think she left a part of herself with Jesus, and he left a part of himself with her. Wouldn't any one of us want to learn how to bless like that?^³

1 Our first reading is part of Deuteronomy's further explication of the commandment to "remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy." The intention of the principle actually brings clarity to the ways in which the author of Mark's Gospel shapes the ministry of Jesus as bringing us close to the "reign of God." In the deuteronomistic understanding God created the Sabbath – the 7^th day, the 7^th year, and the year of the "jubilee" – as a way for people to be released from their debt. During sabbath time we're meant to remember the great redemptive acts of God. So the Sabbath is to proclaim an end to "business as usual" in all kinds of ways, a time to free people of all manner of burdensome social conventions and economic systems that, at most other times, keep them marginalized. The "poor" here, then, aren't just those without wealth or property, but all who would be labeled as "outsiders" by most members of the community.

2 Just as the poor ought to be seen as members of the community – part of the family – Jesus includes an outcast woman simply by calling her "daughter." These people, then, are not outsiders; they're one of us. So other than these so-called "miracle stories" being told in order to authenticate Jesus' "divine authority," they're also meant to undermine the conventional wisdom of the day which instructed people, in so many different ways, about who were the "haves and the have nots." Just as an example, this is what the Bible had been teaching about hemorrhaging women, like the one in our gospel story, before Jesus came along:

²⁵If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. ²⁶Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her impurity. ²⁷Whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. ²⁸If she is cleansed of her discharge, she shall count seven days, and after that she shall be clean. ²⁹On the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two pigeons and bring them to the priest at the entrance of the tent of meeting. ³⁰The priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement on her behalf before the LORD for her unclean discharge.

Lev. 15: 25-30

It's in your Bible!