Proper 8

Mark 5:21–43 (NIV84)

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 rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet 23 and 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 men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher any more?” 36 Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, “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 ruler, 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 walked 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.

If we were all in a room together I would ask you all this question, “Why is healing a part of Jesus’s ministry?”

Right out of the gate, when Jesus starts his public ministry the text tells us he starts traveling around, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing people

Is it just a show of power, some signs and wonders to get people to believe in him and pray a prayer?

Is it just like, “well I can so I might as well?”

Or is there something more to it?

I’m going to argue that healing isn’t PART of Jesus’s ministry at all, it’s the whole thing

Meaning we might answer the question, “what did Jesus come to do?” by simply saying “he came to heal what is broken”

Here is the gospel in a nutshell

A loving God created all things good

But creation turned away from him and is now broken

humankind’s relationship with God was fractured

humankind’s relationship with one another turned contentious and violent

humankind’s relationship with the natural world was corrupted

and every human being’s relationship with self was confused

the world is not as it should be

But God has taken it upon himself to heal everything that has gone wrong

We use different words in the scriptures to point to this healing work

God is RENEWING all things

RESTORING all things

RECONCILING all things back to himself

Even themes that we often center in the gospel, like forgiveness, serve God’s healing work

If a relationship is fractured because of sin, forgiveness is necessary, but it’s not the endgame in itself, the healing of the relationship is. The bringing back together of the two parties in trust and mutual love is the endgame.

So it is with the gospel. The good news isn’t just that we’re forgiven, it’s that our relationship with God is being restored.

Not only that, everything is being restored. Everything his being set right. The cancer of sin in creation is being healed.

So when Jesus goes about proclaiming the arrival of the kingdom and healing people … he isn’t just doing a trick to bolster his fame. He is embodying the heart of the message in real time.

He’s saying, the healing of all things is breaking into this fallen world and it looks like THIS

Here is a taste of things to come

But let me reiterate ... PHYSICAL healing is only part of the equation.

The theme of healing in the scriptures doesn’t always deal with bleeding and broken bones

Psalm 147:3 says He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

Matthew 13:15 Jesus says For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’

The Lord heals hearts and minds.

And in healing hearts and minds he heals relationships.

And in healing relationships he heals families and communities.

God’s healing is holistic, dealing with the whole person and all of life

It deals with the individual and the society

It deals with the physical body, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual

Now how does this inform what it means to be the church

First, it means we should be a people who desire healing and pursue it

Obviously this means that it’s right for us to turn to God for physical healing, both for ourselves and for others.

And we see both in this passage.

We see the woman taking it upon herself to seek the presence of Jesus, believing that if he is willing he can make her well again.

And we see the father seeking the presence of Jesus FOR his daughter.

The only real negative example in this passage is the people who laughed at the idea that Jesus could heal the child

It is true that we are given plenty of examples in scripture and in life where the prayer for physical healing is not answered in the way we desired. And there is no easy answer for “why” that is the case.

We are simply called to trust that God is healing all things and that he CAN bring a taste of that healing into our present

So we seek him for it expectantly

But again, if we think of life holistically, it’s not just our physical bodies that need healing

It’s everything.

So we need to ask ourselves whether we seek God to heal our hearts and minds and relationships in the same way we would seek him to heal our physical ailments.

Do we desire the restoration he brings in our inner life, or is that off limits?

Do we say, God, heal my broken bones and white blood cell count but don’t touch my desires, my fantasies, my grudges, my ambitions?

Would we allow him to reset those bones too?

We need to be a people who desire God’s healing in all aspects of life and pursue it

Second, as we do that, the church should become a community of healing

I do not mean that we are called to be a community that fixes everyone and everything

Because we don’t have the power to do that and things get sideways real fast when a church starts to believe that they CAN fix everyone and everything

What I mean is that we become a people who

receive the wounded

acknowledge our our wounds

and gather around the one who can heal

creating a community that rejects denial and does everything possible to foster the conditions for healing

Let’s look at healing from trauma as an example

We now know that when someone experiences trauma, such as some type of abuse it effects

The physiology, re-wiring their brain

Which effects their bodily responses to threats

Which effects their ways of thinking and emotional responses

Which effects their ways of relating

Which effects their spiritual health, ability to be at rest, receive love, etc.

There isnt enough space here to give a lesson on how the church can be a healing community for abuse victims

And I’m not the expert anyway.

I will link to some resources on Faithlife though.

But at the VERY LEAST, do we WANT to be a safe place for abuse victims to find healing?

Will we be a place where people can experience relationships that aren’t controlling or shaming?

Will they find a place where people listen and validate their pain?

Will they find a place where people are patient with one another, and gracious?

The truth is, no matter what our experiences, if we’ve lived in this fallen world, we carry wounds and defense mechanisms and unhealthy patterns in need of healing.

Will we be a place where we can help each other heal?

When we talk about spiritual formation as a church, we’re talking about healing our inner lives.

When we talk about race we’re talking about healing injustice and division between fellow image bearers

When we talk about the marketplace we’re talking about healing our relationship with money, which is really about healing our relationship with God because we can’t serve two masters

It’s also about healing a society that exploits the poor

When we talk about confessing our sins to one another we’re talking about healing broken relationships within the body

We could go on and on and on because we are a people who follow Jesus and Jesus came to heal what is broken

So the work of healing is what we experience and participate in.

Do we have the tenacity of this woman and this father?

Are we willing to say, “Here’s everything. Please heal it.”