Lord Over Affliction and Death
Mark 5:21-43
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 28, 2015
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text, And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” [And a little while later], “Taking (the girl) by the hand he said, ‘Talitha cumi,’ – ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’”
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
There is a subtle, but extremely important difference between the two basic ways of preaching on this text. Sometimes, it can (wrongly) be preached to make this about the hearer. We try so hard to make it ‘apply to your life’ that the preaching asks you to put yourself in the woman’s or girl’s place. And so, hearers understandably reason, “Well, if Jesus healed them, doesn’t he owe it to me to heal me as well?” And so, we begin to hope that the stories of faith healings are true, or perhaps the trips to heaven and back are real!... all because we have misinterpreted the text. And soon, we become discouraged and despondent… because a loved one falls gravely ill – we call upon Jesus just as the woman and the girl’s father did – yet, death comes and it appears our Lord has not heard our prayers or has been incapable to answer them.
To rightly understand this text, we must keep focused on Jesus, not by asking, “What will this Jesus give me?”, but rather by asking, “Who is this Jesus who has power over even sickness and death, that I too may trust in His will and ways, no matter what befalls me?”
Think of the progression in thought of the past three Sundays. First, we heard that Jesus is the one stronger than the strong man, to plunder the devil’s domain and give life to the Church. Then Jesus spoke parables that gave a classroom teaching of this truth, then put that teaching to practice as he showed his strength over creation and all its forces (namely, wind and waves). Then in Mark’s gospel, an account we skipped over, Jesus shows his strength over the demons and casts them out. And today, he shows his strength over consequences of sin – over illness and physical death itself.
That Jesus is the only one stronger than the strong man is again made clear by the fact that the man who comes to him at the beginning of our text is a ruler of the synagogue. This Jairus ought be depending upon all the things the Jews put their hopes in. Remember they put their hope in YHWH, but only YHWH apart from Jesus. Where is this YHWH to answer Jairus? Jews also put their hopes in the keeping of the Law, but no Law-keeping gave Jairus any hope that his daughter would live. Instead, in a scene that would offend the Pharisees and Sadducees and all the devout Jewish leaders of the day, this ruler of the synagogue comes to the One who claims to be the Messiah. The one the Pharisees want snuffed out, this devout Jew comes to and falls at Jesus’ feet (the Jewish sign of worship!) and implores him to help.
Notice that Jesus goes with him immediately. Jesus hears your prayer immediately, just as he heard Jairus’. We will learn in a minute that Jesus seems to get side-tracked, to be slowed down and interrupted… but such is only our timing, not his. He hears your prayers immediately, even if his immediate response sometimes takes longer to play out than what you would like.
As Jesus goes with him, we think we are going to see Jesus’ power over illness in the healing of the little girl. Instead, a woman interrupts the procession to the girl’s side. A long run-on sentence (more clearly seen in the Greek) makes plain that this woman is in dire straits and has been a long time: (it says) “A woman
who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years,
who had suffered much,
who had spent all she had,
who was no better but only grew worse,
who had heard the reports of Jesus.”
Like Jairus, this woman had tried everything she had known… in her case, not other religions and the supposed keeping of the Law of God, but medicine and money. But none of it was stronger than the strong man. Death still loomed.
Thus, in desperation, she touched Jesus’ garments… and was healed.
Because of the ensuing delay she causes, we easily hold a grudge against the woman. Jesus was on his way to save a little child; how could she possibly interrupt that mission?!
But, ought we be offended by, impatient with, fellow sinners broken by the Law, now grasping for the gospel? That’s really what has happened in her case, isn’t it? God’s Law had done its work and had proven to her that money, medicine, physicians, society… all of it may help for a time (those are God’s gifts for daily life!), but none of it makes our human condition any better in the long run. That’s the Law’s terminal diagnosis upon us sinners… so that it drives us in desperation to lay hold of Christ.
Many of you know that application of the Law, as you daily deal with consequences of sin, including cancers and afflictions that daily remind you of your mortality and your need for someone far greater… so that you lay hold of Christ. And, for you who are younger, who have not yet recognized your mortality and think you can put off your need for Christ, … if you think yourself invincible and not in need of a savior (that all this church stuff isn’t needed until you get older) keep in mind that you can’t even prevent cavities or allergies or the need for braces or corrective lenses, let alone terminal illness and death. And so, it all reminds us of our mortality and drives us to lay hold of God’s mercy in Christ.
Divine gift that God’s mercy is, it’s also very humbling, isn’t it? The woman in our text fears because she knows that Jesus is aware of her – what embarrassment!, and she tells him the whole truth. He responds not with anger, but mercifully declares her to be healed (in fact, the phrase he uses is perhaps more specifically, “be whole from your disease”). And if you dwell on this a minute, it becomes clear that this is not unlike the miracle of Absolution: We are embarrassed by our sins and want them to remain secret. But, knowing that Jesus is clearly aware of those things we try to hide, we come forward and confess them and make them plain – not because he doesn’t know them, but specifically because He does and there’s no use pretending we can hide them. And so, like the woman before us, we fall down before him and tell him the whole truth. And, in divine mercy, He replies with words of absolution: “Your faith has made you well” – certainly not the quality or measure of your faith, but the fact that you have come to Him, come to lay hold of Him, for there is salvation in no one else; but in coming to Him, such faith in Him has made you well. And so, He concludes: “Go in peace; be whole from your disease.”
That last phrase deserves attention because Jesus implies to the woman that not only was she healed of that affliction for a time, but it would never afflict her again. So it is with the particular sins you confess. Those particular sins and the weight of their guilt will never afflict you again, even if you are tempted to remain (embarrassed) ashamed. They cannot harm you; they have been removed from you and Christ declares you whole; therefore (Jesus says), go in peace.
Now, as in our text, so also in our meditation; it seems all attention has been taken from the little girl. And, we only remember her again when the news comes that she has died. And immediately we feel regret for having forgotten about her. If only we had remembered her. If only this woman hadn’t distracted us. If only Jesus hadn’t been delayed. As Martha said at Lazarus’ tomb, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
But now the question comes, “Why trouble the Teacher any further?”
But, this begs a bigger question: Is Jesus only strong to save the afflicted, but no longer worth appealing to in death?”
Consider the use of some of the other Scriptural references in our service this morning. The beginning of the Old Testament reading is one of the common readings used in hospitals and nursing homes to comfort the afflicted, but over the bodies of the dead (at the funeral, for the comfort of the mourners!) is read the psalm we sung in our Introit. Over the dead, we read,
“I lift up my eyes to the hills,
from where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
The LORD is your keeper,
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil,
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.”
Over the bodies of the dead are those words read… just as the final phrase of that passage (“The LORD keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore”) … just as that phrase is read over the child at the baptismal font. From the font to the grave and beyond, our LORD is strong to save and care for His baptized children. Therefore, though Jairus’ daughter has died, though she lay in death’s grip, though it appears there is nothing or no one strong enough to rescue her from the strong man, there is every reason to call upon the Teacher further.
And, what need to elaborate is there other than consider the crowd’s disbelief of Jesus’ power? The Scriptures sometimes highlight remarkable scenes by very brief sentences. When Jesus went to Lazarus’ tomb, the gospel simply records the remarkable: “Jesus wept.” God wept! And here, when the same God declares that the child would be awakened, the text simply says, “They laughed at him.” Remarkable!
But, with his healing touch and his powerful word, the One strong to save speaks to the dead and the little girl arises. And, because His mission is not one of glory, but of the cross, he charges them to say nothing and focuses their attention on his ongoing mindfulness toward even her simple ‘daily bread’ needs: “give her something to eat.”
Now, back at the beginning of the sermon, I mentioned that there is a very subtle but important difference between reading this correctly and incorrectly. If we judge our Lord by saying, “He did this for the woman; he did this for the little girl. He better do it for me!”… if we judge him in such ways, we have made ourselves Lord over our Lord, as if His will and ways must match our expectations. If we judge him such ways, we doubt and despair when our affliction goes on for a thirteenth year, or when our child dies and is not restored to life before we lay her in the grave. And when we doubt and despair, we grow bitter toward the only One who is stronger than the strong man… and the devil has achieved exactly what he wanted by aiming to twist our interpretation of the text.
Therefore, let us interpret this text carefully and correctly. Jesus again shows that he is the one stronger than sin’s consequences – even affliction and death – just as upon the cross this One strong to save did just that, not only for an earthly lifetime, but for an eternity. It is not through his healing miracles that we should view his love for sinners (the healing miracles show his power!) but through his sacrificial death: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” And again, “This is love… that God first loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” And again, “God showed His love in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.”
And if we see his love for us sinners in his sacrificial death, and if the one who saved us has also proven himself Lord, powerful over sin’s consequences (namely, our earthly afflictions and even our temporal death) then we can call upon him in every affliction, we can cry to him at the death of our loved ones, and in humility we can appeal to His good and gracious will even when we must long for healing or even await the resurrection.
In the funeral rite, the Prayers of the Church include a petition that says, “In the midst of things we cannot understand, help us to believe and find comfort in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
We cannot understand why Jesus sometimes heals us and sometimes does not. We sometimes cannot understand why Jesus allows physical death to have the seeming victory over us, even assigning temporal death to us! – “Dust you are and unto dust you shall return.” We sometimes cannot understand why he has waited nearly two thousand years again to return and raise the dead, especially as we pray, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus;” and He responds, “I am coming soon.” And yet we wait.
Nevertheless, He has proven Himself time and again to be the strong man over wind and wave, over demon and the demonic, over affliction, illness, and death itself. Therefore, we can trust in him. Our help is in the name of the LORD; and in Him we dwell securely, even in the hour of affliction and in the shadow of death.
In the Name of the Father
And of the Son
And of the Holy Spirit.
+ AMEN +
Rev. Mark C. Bestul
Calvary Lutheran Church
June 28, 2015
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