Proper 8B A Tale of Two Women

 

 

A Tale of Two Women

In Mark 5: 21-43, we need to remember that Jesus has been on a tireless and relentless pace of activity: crossing the Galilee Lake, encountering and stilling a storm, encountering and restoring a mad-man and thousands of demons on the other side, which demons destroy a herd of swine, thus incurring the wrath of the local population demanding that Jesus leave, leading to a return trip across the lake where there is no rest for the weary – a crowd of people have already gathered to greet him. As the crowd is “pressing in on him,” Jairus, a leader of a synagogue, begs Jesus to help his daughter who is at “the point of death.” Jesus goes with him. In the crowd is a woman who has suffered a discharge of blood for twelve long years. She has spent all her money on physicians, but it only gets worse. She wants to touch Jesus, and does touch the hem of his garment. “Who touched me?” he cries. He feels the power go out of him. “Are you kidding? In this crowd?” reply the repeatedly faithless disciples. But here, let’s let her tell her story, as imagined by Madeleine L’Engle:

 

The Lightning  

When I pushed through the crowd,

jostled, bumped, elbowed by the curious

who wanted to see what everyone else

was so excited about,

all I could think of was my pain

and that perhaps if I could touch him,

this man who worked miracles,

cured diseases,

even those as foul as mine,

I might find relief.

I was tired from hurting,

exhausted, revolted by my body,

unfit for any man, and yet not let loose

from desire and need. I wanted to rest,

to sleep without pain or filthiness or torment.

I don’t really know why

I thought he could help me

when all the doctors

with all their knowledge

had left me still drained

and bereft of all that makes

a woman’s life worth living.

Well: I’d seen him with some children

and his laughter was quick and merry

and reminded me of when I was young and well,

though he looked tired; and he was as old as I am.

Then there was that leper,

but lepers have been cured before –

No, it wasn’t the leper,

or the man cured of palsy,

or any of the other stories of miracles,

or at any rate that was the least of it;

I had been promised miracles too often.

I saw him ahead of me in the crowd

and there was something in his glance

and in the way his hand rested briefly

on the matted head of a small boy

who was getting in everybody’s way,

and I knew that if only I could get to him,

not to bother him, you understand,

not to interrupt, or to ask him for anything,

not even his attention,

just to get to him and touch him…

I didn’t think he’d mind, and he needn’t even know.

I pushed through the crowd

and it seemed that they were deliberately

trying to keep me from him.

I stumbled and fell and someone stepped

on my hand and I cried out

and nobody heard. I crawled to my feet

and pushed on and at last I was close,

so close I could reach out

and touch with my fingers

the hem of his garment.

Have you ever been near

when lightning struck?

I was, once, when I was very small

and a summer storm came without warning

and lightning split the tree

under which I had been playing

and I was flung right across the courtyard.

That’s how it was.

Only this time I was not the child

but the tree

and the lightning filled me.

He asked, “Who touched me?”

and people dragged me away, roughly,

and the men around him were angry at me.

“Who touched me?” he asked.

I said, “I did, Lord.”

So that he might have the lightning back

which I had taken from him when I touched

his garment’s hem.

He looked at me and I knew then

that only he and I knew about the lightning.

He was tired and emptied

but he was not angry.

He looked at me

and the lightning returned to him again,

though not from me, and he smiled at me

and I knew that I was healed.

Then the crowd came between us

and he moved on, taking the lightning with him,

perhaps to strike again.

 

While Jesus tells her that her faith has made her well, messengers from Jairus’s house arrive to announce, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” Try to imagine the look on Jesus’s and the woman’s face at this announcement. He has allowed this unnamed and broken woman to halt getting to Jairus’s house. She, out of desperation, had inadvertently delayed him from attending to the young woman. And now this. “Do not fear; only believe,” says Jesus to Jairus. He allows no one but Peter, James and John to press on with him and Jairus. When they arrive, people are already wailing and weeping in full-mourning. Jesus assures them that she is only asleep. The crowd of mourners laugh at him! As some in the crowd will ridicule him on the Cross. He puts them all out of the house except for the girl’s mother and father. Jesus takes the girl by the hand and says something in Aramaic, “Talitha cum!” That is, “Young woman, arise!” Arise. “Arise,” says the one who soon himself would arise from the dead.

 

The young woman immediately gets up and walks around the room! We are told she is twelve – the number of years the woman had suffered the discharge of blood. Jairus’s daughter is now of marriageable age in that time and place, and the woman in the crowd has been discharging blood the young woman’s entire lifetime. One a daughter of a prestigious family, the other a broken and unnamed woman. Despite an already relentless pace for over 24 hours, Jesus has time for them both. These stories are bound together in Mark for just that reason. Yet, for decades our Prayer Book lectionary had removed the story of the woman with the twelve-year discharge of blood from the Sunday readings so that all we were given was the story of Jairus’s daughter. We might ponder just why. Perhaps those who removed it felt it interrupted the flow of the story. Which in fact is how the life of mission and ministry often is – interruptions are essential to the life of faith. Or, perhaps the editors felt one story was more important than the other. Fortunately for us, the Revised Common Lectionary restored the integrity of the two stories just as Jesus restored the lives of both women – one privileged, the other desperate and even considered “pushy” by some. Determined to see Jesus is more to the point.

 

 As Mark tells the tale, Jesus gives the woman and the girl’s father all the credit – lives are restored because of their faith. Their lives are restored because someone like Jairus goes to Jesus to let him know of his daughter’s need. Or, like the unnamed woman, she knnows her need and goes to Jesus herself, letting nothing get in her way. Two very different women. Jesus gives both his full attention, compassion and power. His lightning.

 

That like the unnamed woman and Jairus, we too might we have faith and recognize our need to turn to Jesus, may God help us. That we might go to him and open the door of our hearts such that Jesus might enter, and be received, and abide eternally with us, as described in these stories of Jairus, his daughter, and the unnamed woman, may God help us. Amen.