Sermon Tone Analysis

“The Power and Compassion of Jesus”

Mark 5:21–43

As Jesus moves about He leaves behind him a trail of transformed scenes and changed situations—fishermen no longer at their nets, sick people restored to health, critics confounded, a storm stilled, hunger assuaged, a dead girl raised to life.

Jesus’ presence is an active and instantly transforming presence: He is never the mere observer of the scene or the one who waits upon events but always the transformer of the scene and the initiator of events.

W. H. Vanstone

Two contrasting segments of society.

An outcast woman who had been suffering a disastrous hemorrhage for twelve years.

· The hemorrhage rendered her ceremonially unclean in Jewish society (Leviticus 15:25–27), which meant that she was a transmitter of uncleanness to all who came in contact with her.

If she touched her husband, he was unclean.

If she touched her children, they were unclean.

If she touched her friends, they were unclean.

If she touched a stranger, he was unclean.

What was life like for her?

There was no way to become ceremonial clean.

By the way, that law of seven days of cleansing ritual was designed by God to be an illustration of what sin does.

There were lots of symbols in the Old Testament, in the ABCs of God’s disclosed revelation.

And one of them was that the laws of clean and unclean were symbolic ways to demonstrate how sin soils, defiles and corrupts.

It was just a constant, constant, constant reminder.

This woman never was able to rise beyond that.

Constantly, ritually defiled, unable to touch anyone without passing on that defilement, according to the Old Testament.

· If she had been married, she was likely now divorced from her husband.

· She was ostracized from normal society and debarred from worship in the synagogue and Temple.

· Her desperate situation had driven her to pursue medical help, and “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors.

[1]

In another place, the Talmud recommended that the afflicted woman carry a barley corn which had been taken from the droppings of a white she donkey!2

Very likely this woman had tried some of these remedies, but to no avail.

Mark says she “had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse” (v.

26).

This wretched woman was broke, cut off from home, society, and religion, and in declining health.

She was at the bottom![2]

A man of wealth and prestige

There was the prominent family of Jairus, leader of the synagogue.

Many scholars believe he was the head ruler of the synagogue.

If so, he was president of the board of elders and responsible for the conduct of services.

He was a man of wealth and prestige.

But he was in equally great need: his twelve-year-old daughter lay dying.

She had been the joy of his life—“his only daughter,” says Luke (8:42)—and now that joy was about to be snuffed out.

Parental love leaves a parent wide open to towering joys and to the deepest sorrow.

Some of us have known what it is like to see a convulsing child and wonder if he was going to make it.

We would do anything to save our child.

Jairus probably thought, “Take my life, not hers.”

Jairus and his wife were desolate—at the very bottom.[3]

Opposite Ends of the Economic, Social, and Religious Spectrum

The two main characters interacting with Jesus here occupy opposite ends of the economic, social, and religious spectrum.

Jairus is a male, a leader of the synagogue.

· As a man of distinction, he has a name.

Jairus has honor and can openly approach Jesus with a direct request, though he shows the greatest deference.

· By contrast, the woman is nameless, and her complaint renders her ritually unclean.

She is walking pollution.

Her malady therefore separates her from the community and makes her unfit to enter the synagogue, let alone the temple.

She has no honor and must slink about and approach Jesus from behind, thinking that she must purloin her healing.

· Jairus has a large household and is thus a man of means.

The careworn woman has become destitute because of her medical bills.

Her complaint makes childbearing hopeless and marriage next to impossible.19

The only thing that these two persons share in common is that they both have heard about Jesus, they desperately desire healing, and they have run out of options.For twelve years the girl and the woman had led such different lives, but now adversity had bound their souls unaware together, and they were both to be recipients of God’s life-giving power.[4]

Dovetailing the Stories

Bring together two dissimilar individuals reveals that being male, being ritually pure, holding a high religious office, or being a man of means provide no advantage in approaching Jesus.

Being female, impure, dishonored, and destitute are no barrier to receiving help.

God always takes the side of those who have been denied rights and privileges, the oppressed and poor.

In God’s kingdom the nobodies become somebody.

In other words, the only thing that avails with God and Jesus is one’s faith.

Health, wholeness, and salvation are not extended to just the lucky few who already have so much of everything else.

But neither does Jesus set the lowly over against the lofty.

Faith enables all, honored and dishonored, clean and unclean, to tap into the merciful power of Jesus that brings both healing and salvation.

All are equals before Jesus.

CHRIST AND JAIRUS

Mark 5:21–24 (ESV)

21 And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea.

22 Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet 23 and implored him earnestly, saying, “My little daughter is at the point of death.

Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.”

24 And he went with him.

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him.

Background

Jesus was back at the shores of Capernaum, which he had left a few days before to escape the crowd.

In between, he had calmed the stormy sea and delivered the demoniac’s stormy soul.

Now a vast crowd had swarmed to the shore to greet him and see what else he might do.

It was a noisy, jostling, dangerous crowd, just as before.

One can only imagine what the crowds were like in a situation where there were no hospitals, there was no effective medical care and the person that they were surrounding could actually heal them from any disease and every disease in a split second.

Jairus had not been known to be friendly toward Jesus.

Jesus was an outsider and had even been accused of heresy by many.

His previous use of the synagogue had proved controversial.

Moreover, Jairus was the leader, not Jesus.

Yet, now he was coming to Jesus.

Even more, he was bowing in humility, pathetically pleading with all he had for his little daughter.

This was amazing indeed.

But we must not mistakenly think Jairus had become a devotee of Jesus or that he was a man of great faith.

The simple fact was, he was desperate.

He had heard of Jesus’ miracles (maybe had even seen some) and possibly had talked to some who had been healed.

He was not sure about Jesus, but Jesus was his only chance.

Jairus was like so many of us in our coming to Christ.

It was not his love for Christ that brought him.

It was not what he could do for Christ.

It was his need.

It was his desperation and a glimmer of hope.

Despair is commonly the prelude to grace.[5]

As they went, “[a] large crowd followed and pressed around him” (v.

24).

It must have been excruciating for Jairus as he and Jesus were slowed down like an ambulance in heavy traffic.

There was no ill meant.

It was just that no one wanted to miss a thing.

Then, to Jairus’ dismay, everything came to a sudden halt.[6]

CHRIST AND THE WOMAN

There was another needy person there that day, an unknown woman with a hemorrhage