Mark 5:21-43
21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?” 36 Overhearing[a] what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.
“Your Faith Has Made You Well”
It is easy, with a text like today's, to make faith something magic rather than deeply human.
The power to heal was not in Jesus garment. It was hidden someplace in what happened between the woman and Jesus. Had she not reached out, she would have never known this healing. Had she not risked doing what was both forbidden and scary, as well as a bit selfish, nothing would have happened.
Miracles happen when we believe in them enough to make them happen. This doesn’t mean we create the miracle; it could mean that we have something to do with creating the possibility of a miracle happening in our lives. The miracle begins with me. I have to want it bad enough to risk doing what is forbidden to get it! The woman made it happen by reaching out in faith. How many miracles don’t happen because we don’t reach out in the same faith?
Don’t wait for God to create a miracle for you and lay it at your feet. Create the possibility of a miracle and lay it at God’s feet. This is what faith dares to do! It dares to believe that God can and will make miracles out of my efforts. God will create the miracle of reconciliation as I
open my heart and mind to being reconciling. God will create the miracle of forgiveness as I confess and become forgiving. This in no way diminishes God’s power. It makes God even more real, and intimate. Not a magician who does things I cannot do; but a Friend who walks with me and enables my life to be a miracle!
“Don’t Be Afraid, Only Believe”
These words could sound superficial to us as well as Jairus - they point to the truth not that God keeps bad things from happening to good people but that God continually makes life out of death, hope out of despair. The miracle is that as we lose life we find it.
To say, “Don’t be afraid - only believe” is not a cop out on real living. To the contrary it is really living and believing that death is not an epilogue at the end of life but an episode in the endless life and is in fact, often the source of new life. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the old, the master calls a butterfly.”
“The Miracle Is Faith”
The issue of this text is faith, not miracles. Faith which dares to trust in the goodness of God against all odds. Which dares to say, “I believe in the sun, even when it is not shinning. I believe in love even when I feel it not. I believe in God even when He is silent.” (Words found on a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany after WWII.)
God is not in the business of producing mass miracles. God is in the business of loving us uniquely, personally, powerfully, so that no matter what happens to us in our lives, ‘his unfailing love and mercy still continue’ and we can live in hope.
To worship miracles is to worship unrealistic expectations. To worship God is to trust God’s
unfailing love and mercy” which can turn the worst into the best - and that is a miracle indeed!
No comments:
Post a Comment