A Sermon on the Healing of the Woman with the Flow of Blood and the Raising of Jairus’ Daughter
Text: Mark 5:21-43
June 30, 2024
“Crossing the Boundaries”
Over the past several weeks, we have journeyed through Mark’s Gospel, and we have seen Jesus as the Man of Authority. He has authority over demons, over the forces of nature… and now, over disease and death.
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus brings new life to two women: one a grown woman and the other a young woman, a twelve-year old girl. And he gives them new life in different ways.
For the woman with the flow of blood, Jesus heals her and so gives her a new life— a new existence, unfettered from the restrictions of her condition. For Jairus’ daughter, Jesus literally gives her new life— he brings her back from the dead.
What connects these two women is the figure of twelve years. The woman has been suffering a flow of blood for twelve years, and the dying girl is twelve years old. Both these events (the beginning of the woman’s bleeding and the birth of Jairus’ daughter) occurred at about the same time. They probably didn’t know each other. And yet, in the providence of God, both women would be healed by Christ on the same day.
St. Mark writes that Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue, approaches Jesus and asks to heal his daughter, who is ill and on the brink of death. Jesus agrees and he and the disciples follow Jairus to the house. But the story is interrupted: There’s a woman who has a flow of blood who approaches Jesus as he’s on the way. In the Greek she’s called literally the bleeding woman, but this is variously translated. Some translations say she’s suffering from hemorrhages, others say that she has a flow of blood or an issue of blood. But the problem is that she is continually bleeding.
She’s not named in the Gospel, but there is an early church tradition that her name was Berenice, or in the Greek, Veronica. And this condition, this perpetual bleeding, was something that obviously was very distressing to her, and not just for medical reasons.
This flow of blood rendered her ritually unclean. In the Torah, a person became ritually unclean if they had contact with things that had to do with life and death. So anything involving giving birth: after a woman gave birth she was ritually unclean. Menstruation made one unclean. If you touch a dead body, you become unclean. And if you’re unclean and you touch others, they become unclean. It’s not a sin to become ritually unclean, but to become clean again you had to undergo a ritual immersion, what they call the mikveh. You must bathe your whole body and then stay clean for seven days. And until you’re ritually clean again, you cannot enter the Temple.
Of course, the problem for Veronica was that because this flow of blood was constant, no matter how much she washed, she could never stay ritually pure for seven straight days. She had this condition for 12 years. What this meant was that she could not enter the temple and partake in the worship for 12 years. That would be like if you couldn’t come to church, if you couldn’t enter the sanctuary and worship and receive the sacraments, for 12 years. That’s what it was like for her.
She must have felt profoundly isolated. Isolated from other people, because if they touched her, then they would become unclean and they’d have to do all this cleansing. She must have felt isolated from her religion and its sacred rites. Maybe she even felt isolated from God.
This condition would have prevented her from getting married – or, if she was already married when the bleeding started, it would have prevented her from having relations with her husband and might have been cited by him as grounds for divorce. And this is something that commentators don’t often mention, but I think it’s significant: if she’s always bleeding in that way, she cannot become pregnant. So not only is she constantly ritually unclean, but she cannot bring forth new life.
So this is a terrible condition, from every angle. There was the constant discomfort, the feeling of uncleanness, the isolation from others and from her religion. It made it impossible for her to marry or have children. She spent all her money trying to be healed, with no success. It has impacted her bodily, mentally, emotionally, socially, religiously, financially. This condition basically wrecked her whole life.
And all this plays into how she approaches Jesus. It’s very different from the way Jairus approaches him. Jairus is a synagogue official. He’s a man of some importance in the community. He just goes straight up to him and says, My daughter at the point of death. Come lay your hand on her and she will live. He goes straight to him. But Veronica does not do this. And we can see why.
Maybe she didn’t want to be embarrassed. There’s a whole crowd around. Maybe she didn’t want to say, Hey, I have this condition. Can you please heal it? That’s a very private thing to be talking about in the midst of a crowd. And then, of course, there’s the thought that if he touched her to heal her, he would become unclean and then he’d have to go through the washing and then he’d be unclean for seven days. So maybe she just didn’t want to take the risk of him saying no.
But we see her great faith in the inner monologue Mark gives us. She thinks to herself, If I just touch his clothes, I’ll be made clean. It’s great faith. She is so convinced of Jesus’ holiness that she doesn’t even need to touch him. She’ll just touch something that’s touching him.
So she goes up behind him and she reaches out in faith and touches the hem of his robe. And immediately she feels in her body that the flow of blood dries up. She’s healed. Twelve years of suffering. Ended.
But Jesus feels the healing too. Jesus feels the inverse of what the woman feels, in that same moment. She felt power coming in to her, but he felt power going out of him.
So Jesus stops and says, Who touched me? And the disciples say, Master, there’s all this crowd around you. A lot of people are touching you. What do you mean? And he says, No, I feel that power has gone forth from me.
Veronica sort of stole a healing from him. She didn’t ask for it. She just reached for it. And she’s afraid that he’s going to find her out and then maybe rebuke her— maybe even take the healing back. But she comes forward and she tells the truth of her condition and of why she reached out in faith. And rather than rebuking her, the Lord reassures her. He says, Daughter, take heart. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Be cured of your affliction.
But then some people come from Jairus’ house, and we hear that his daughter has died. We hear these two statements right on top of each other: “Daughter, your faith has made you well.” “Your daughter has died.” But Jesus reassures Jairus and encourages him to have faith.
Jesus enters the house, puts out the mourners, and invites just a few of the disciples and the girl’s parents into the room where the dead girl is. Jesus takes her by the hand— which would have made him ritually unclean— and says to her, “Little girl, I tell you: Rise.” Not just get up or wake up. “Rise.” The same word used in the Gospel for the raising of Lazarus and for Jesus’ own resurrection. And life comes back into the girl, and she is restored to the land of the living.
…
This is a story about boundaries. There are all sorts of boundaries in our world, and in this story. The boundary between men and women, between clean and unclean, between life and death. And over and over, Jesus crosses these boundaries in his love for others. He does not begrudge a healing to someone who was ritually unclean and on the margins of her world. He takes the dead girl by the hand, which technically made him unclean. And then there’s the ultimate boundary, between the living and the dead. And Jesus was willing to cross that boundary too. He goes over to the other side to snatch the young girl back from the realm of the dead.
This story, and many others in the Gospels, show that Jesus is willing to be “unclean,” willing to associate with sinners, willing to be “contaminated” by the mess of human life— by disease and isolation and death. We see Jesus moving across religious and social barriers to offer his life-giving grace.
This willingness to cross boundaries and become submerged in the messiness of human life is prefigured in Jesus’ baptism, when he is plunged into the muddy waters of the Jordan. And it culminates in his willingness to go into the depths of the ultimate uncleanness: death. Even death on a cross.
This story is a powerful reminder that we should not be discouraged by the boundaries that exist between us and Christ. It is true that he is divine, and we are human. It is true that he is sinless, and we are sinful. But it is also true that the Son of God became human and took our sins upon himself and died and rose from the dead, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
And we must always bear this truth within ourselves when we approach our Lord. We can approach him, and we should not be worried that we cannot be in the presence of Christ because of our unworthiness.
You will not make Jesus unclean. He will make you clean.
You will not make Jesus unholy. He will make you holy.
So approach with boldness. With repentance and faith and love, draw near. For we do not merely touch the hem of his robe. We don’t just touch the outer garment of the merciful Christ. We receive him in the most intimate way possible. We receive his very Body and Blood, his very self, so that he dwells in us and we in him. And when we receive him, we are made clean. And we are brought to life.
And like Veronica and Jairus’ daughter, we too will receive new life… and set forth his praise in gratitude. Amen.
Fr. Lorenzo Galuszka is the vicar of Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman (https://www.facebook.com/saintstephenssherman) and Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Bonham (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561060276714).
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