Quiet Desperation Mark 5:21-43

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”

― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

-Desperate people find healing as they place their faith in Jesus.

I. Desperate People Seek Jesus vv. 21-26

As our story continues, Jesus encounters two very different people with distinct circumstances, but one commonality: They are desperate for a hope that only Jesus can fulfill.

First, we meet Jairus, the lay ruler of the local synagogue

Most likely, he is associated with the Pharisees, but he has a problem: His daughter is sick

On the arrival of Jesus, Jairus lays aside any sense of pretense or pride and falls down at the feet of Jesus, begging Him to heal his daughter.

Hers is a sickness that will soon lead to death, no one else can help. Only Jesus can fix this and now He has arrived on the scene

Likewise, we meet an unnamed woman in the crowd.

Her situation is quite different; she has an issue with persistent bleeding, most likely uterine in nature

This has put her in an impossible situation:

She is ritually unclean and cannot enter her assigned portion of the Temple to worship

She is socially unclean and is cast away from other people

She has spent all of her money pursuing physicians who have been unable to heal her

Each of these folks is facing a desperate situation that is only growing worse. Now they are turning to one that they believe can help

I think we can find something incredibly moving about Jairus and the unnamed woman; they have a singular focus on Jesus.

They come to Him in an act of faith that He can heal where others could not

How does Jesus respond to their faith?

A company called BeAnotherLab believes that virtual reality (VR) "shouldn't give you heaven, but hardship." According to a story in Wired, this company believes that VR shouldn't be just about swimming with sharks or racing cars but about giving people a taste of adversity. So they let a VR wearer interact with real events while someone else experiences the action virtually. The group has created shared experiences that range from being a Sudanese refugee seeking asylum to living with physical disabilities.

Cofounder Philippe Bertrand says, "CGI works, but you don't need a machine to feel empathy. Just look the person in the face and talk with them." The story gave a poignant example of a dancer in a wheelchair getting around New York City. The story ends, "When users sat in a chair, headset on, and manipulated a joystick, the dancer moved her wheelchair in a corresponding way; when users looked in a virtual mirror, they saw her face. But when they moved their legs, hers stayed still—which was by far the most moving part of the whole experience."

II. Jesus Makes the Unclean Clean vv. 27-34

First, we see the woman reach out and grab the hem of His garment, simply touching the cloth

This may seem odd, but there is a beautiful hope present in her

She believes that there is some healing power in Jesus that make broken things whole and make the unclean become clean

However, this is contrary to everything that we know:

For the unclean to become clean, something must become dirty in its place!

Yet Jesus, cleanses the woman without becoming unclean Himself in the least

There is a power and holiness in Him that changes everything; she is immediately healed

Jesus acknowledges what has taken place and seeks the identity of the woman who touched Him.

She comes forward from the crowd in another act of faith

She trusts that she can come to Him and find mercy and acceptance in His presence

Jesus honors that faith and lets her know that this faith has made her whole

Jesus’s words here are transformative: He is not just offering a temporary healing. He is making her whole through this healing and she will continue in that state

This is what Jesus is offering to us. He will make us clean and we will continue to “be healed”

The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest fresh water outlets, after the Amazon and the Congo. The headwaters emerge from a glacier high in the western Himalayas, and then drops down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh.

But sadly, the Ganges has also long been one of the world’s most polluted rivers. The river is befouled by poisonous bi-products from hundreds of factories and towns. Arsenic, chromium, and mercury combine with the hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow into the river on a daily basis.

But despite countless studies and evidence proving the river's polluted state, environmentalists have gained little traction in cleaning up the river. Why?

The Ganges River is a sacred waterway worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to purify the soul, and to cleanse itself. A recent article in National Geographic explains: “There is this belief that the river can clean itself. If the river can clean itself, then why should we have to worry about it? Many people say the river cannot be polluted; it can go on forever.”

III. Jesus Makes the Dead Come to Life vv. 35-43

Tragically, in the interim Jairus’s daughter has died

The people who come to Jairus tell him not to bother Jesus any further

Jesus has a completely different take: He invites Jairus to reject fear and to believe in the power of God through Jesus.

As you could imagine, this brings a lot of mockery and questions

The request seems far too great for any teacher to answer!

Can the power that makes the unclean become clean make the dead come to life? It can!

Jesus enters the house of Jairus and takes the girl by the hand

This is a little surprising, because it should make Jesus “unclean” by ritual standards

Just as the cleanness that flowed of Jesus made the woman whole, the life that flowed out of Jesus made the girl live.

These are important moments and they give us a clue to the power that is present in Jesus

He makes dead things live again

He makes unclean things become clean

He is worthy of our desperation!

Tonight, we have the opportunity to come to Jesus just as Jairus and the woman in the crowd did and share in their same hope by the same power!

1000 Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching The Power of One Person

In the 1920s, a sociology class at Johns Hopkins University made a study of children in deprived neighborhoods in Baltimore. They identified two-hundred children who appeared doomed to spend years in prison. After twenty-five years, another study was made to discover what had happened to those particular children. Surprisingly, only two were incarcerated. As these men and women were interviewed over and over again came the name of their teacher, “Aunt Hannah.” The sociologists were correct in their predictions. By all indications the children would be dregs of society; but there was an intervention, Aunt Hannah, an elementary school teacher who loved them.