The Holy Ghost of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Mark.
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.
Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jarius by name,
and seeing him, he fell at his feet and employed him earnestly,
saying, My little daughter is at the point of death, come and lay
your hand on her, so that she may be made well and live.
And he went with him, and a great crowd followed him and
thronged about him. And there was a woman who had
had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much
under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was
no better, but rather grew worse.
She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up up behind him
in the crowd and touched his garment.
For she said, if I touch even his garment, I will be made
well. And immediately the flow of
blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of
her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself
that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in
the crowd and said, Who touched my garments?
And his disciples say to him, You see the crowd pressing
around you, and yet you say, Who touched me?
And he looked around to see who had done it.
But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear
and trembling, and fell down before him, and told him the
whole truth. And he said to her, daughter,
Your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed of your
disease and gospel of the Lord. Hey church, will you all pray
with me please? Dear loving God, thank you so
much for all these beautiful faces, all these individuals
that you know and love so dearly.
I pray that your voice, your message for each and every one
of them may resound. In your name we pray, Amen.
Please be seated. Hi everybody.
OK, so when I walk down the street in Seoul, I haven't been
there in a long time, but in South Korea, when I do get to
visit, I often feel like my Americanness shows before I even
open my mouth. I just exude it.
So even if I were to get a haircut in a Korean salon,
dressed in my cousin's clothes and let her put like Korean
style makeup on me or whatever, and, you know, look the part on
the outside, I would still move through space in a way that is
noticeably different. I make eye contact, as Americans
do with passers by, and smile hello.
I take longer strides. I I laugh openly without
covering my mouth. These are small things, but in
that context they make me stand out quite a bit relative to many
of the women around me there. Even today, I can seem bolder,
louder, more physically present. And that's very American.
Here in the States, though, I often find that I live on the
other end of the that spectrum. I tend not to take up a lot of
space unless I make a concerted effort to, like in a classroom
or something. When I cross the street, I
hustle, like my mother does, to make sure that the drivers are
not waiting for me. And I'm always astonished by the
pedestrians that feel the sense of freedom to just like, take
their time, you know, I mean, no judgement.
There's like freedom in that. And I just, I can never bring
myself to walk slowly. I tend to stand on the edges of
a room and have like quiet, one-on-one conversations with
people instead of standing in the limelight.
And if I want to get a word in on like, a loud, boisterous
conversation or debate or discussion, such as at work or
in social situations, I have to, like, really push myself
internally to do that because it doesn't really come naturally to
me. In many ways, I've been
conditioned as an Asian American woman to take a blessed space.
And, you know, there's not necessarily anything wrong with
being deferential and respectful, right?
You know, that kind of posture towards others.
But honestly, I often wish I can feel more comfortable asserting
myself in a room. I find that cultural norms and
stereotypes can be really tricky to navigate, right?
Especially because we carry so many identities with us
everywhere we go. And how we show up depends a lot
on a given context. You know?
We wonder, like, do we feel a sense of belonging here?
How do people see us, if at all? How will we be received in a
space? The fear that no one will notice
us is real and frankly pretty common.
I'm sure many of you in this room have experienced that.
Interestingly, sometimes the deeper fear is actually that
someone will notice us and that what they see will be the very
thing that we work really hard to hide.
The part that we might be ashamed of, the part that maybe
cost us a lot in the past, or that we believe or were made to
believe makes us unworthy of love and belonging.
We learn to disappear not only because the world has ignored
us, but because being truly seen can feel too great a risk.
Sometimes I wonder how many of us carry something like that
today, something we'd rather hide than bring into the light
even before God. So when I read a passage like
this one today, where Jesus makes a point to see and honor
an otherwise unnoticed woman in a large crowd and particularly
moved, I wonder if any of you feel similarly.
I don't think you need to be a woman to relate, right?
Like the shepherd leaving the flock in search of that one lost
sheep, Jesus cares for us as individuals, even when we feel
and are alone. But before diving into the
woman's section, let's situate ourselves in today's passage
from the top. Last week, Father Samuel walked
us through the powerful way that Jesus restores a demon possessed
man on the Gentile Eastern Shore in the region of the Decapolis
and network of Greco Roman cities.
From pig farming, right, all those thousands of pigs to Pagan
practices, this area is beyond what many Jewish residents at
the time would consider clean. And Jesus went there.
He fully healed a man who had been cast off.
Jesus reconnected him to the community and then sent him out
as one of the first commissioned witnesses to Jesus work beyond
the Galilee. That's really cool.
So when Jesus in verse 21 cross again in the boat to the other
side, he's back on the western Jewish side of the sea.
Now here Gyrus holds clout as a synagogue leader.
And despite the great crowd gathered about him, Mark tells
us, quote, then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Gyrus
by name. You can imagine the people
making room for this high position.
Man make way, make way. Tyrus is coming.
We're given his name. And some people in the crowd
likely know it too. So it's all the more
astonishing, right, for the crowd to witness this prominent
man prostrating himself completely at Jesus's feet,
imploring him earnestly, it says, to come to his home and
heal his precious daughter, his daughter Ling, his little
daughter, as it says, who is on the verge of death.
She's like literally about to die.
Gyrus's love for his daughter is evident in the way that he
throws caution to the wind and prioritizes the possibility of
Jesus healing his precious girl right.
Who cares about social pretenses and norms his position when it's
his little girl's life at stake? He has faith that Jesus only
needs to rest his hands on his girl and she'll be made well and
be able to live a full life. For those of us who read the
rest of the story, we know how much more dramatic and
miraculous his visit's going to be.
If you haven't, I encourage you to check it out and come next
week to find out more. But for now, we walk on with
them Now. Before we reach Jairus's house,
we encounter an unexpected story of restoration and Jesus is
unrestricted love for people by sandwiching jars.
The story with the story of this unnamed bleeding woman, Mark
invites us to read them alongside each other.
That's intentional. Just as Jesus crosses back and
forth to engage both the Jewish and Gentile sides of the sea, he
also crosses back and forth across the social landscape,
caring for anyone in need without discrimination.
And in fact, just because Gyrus holds clout doesn't mean he gets
to come first, right? Jesus pauses for this unnamed
woman. And Gyrus, you can imagine, he's
like, we got to go, like right now, right?
He's filled with this desperate urgency, but you know what?
He has to wait. We read in verse 25 that there
was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years
and who had suffered much under many physicians and has spent
all that she had and she was no better, but rather grew worse.
Bleeding for 12 years is already awful, but imagine have you
spent everything you had on treatment at the treatment and
none of it helped, in fact it just made it worse.
We don't know the details of her suffering under all these
physicians, but we know there were many of them and she
suffered much. And considering the crude
medical treatments of the time, we can imagine she must have
gone through some real hardship. And what's more, we know from
Jewish law and Leviticus 15 that abnormally long menstruation and
women deem them impure and untouchable.
Her condition, through no fault of her own, rendered her unable
to bear children and isolated from others, relegating her to
an extremely lonely and painful life.
And unlike Gyrus's daughter, she did not have powerful people to
advocate for her, right? And unlike Gyrus himself, she
doesn't have social capital to part the crowd, right?
Or even being named. Talk about feeling and being
invisible. It certainly puts Mike's own
experiences of feeling unseen into perspective.
At the same time, the starkness of this story highlights Jesus's
boundless compassion all the more.
In verse 27, we see that she is compelled to reach out to Jesus
for healing in response to having heard the reports about
Jesus. Now, this is notable placement
because just in the previous chapter, right in chapter 4,
when Jesus tells his disciples the parables of the sower, he
says to them, quote, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.
And if we remember that story, Jesus's own disciples, literally
right after hearing Jesus explain the parable to them, the
storm happens, they freak out, and Jesus is asleep, right?
So, you know, it's a good reminder to all of us that
understanding who Jesus is and holding a sincere belief in his
promises is less about intellect and schooling, right?
It's more about one's posture and openness to faith.
While admittedly it's can be helpful and interesting to study
scripture, learn about its historical context, maybe read
some theology, you know, none of that's really necessary to have
a meaningful life with Christ. Because Jesus.
Jesus is accessible to everyone. She understands this.
She also likely knows that this crowd is definitely not going to
part for her, right? She's probably become so used to
living on the margins, so used to taking up as little space as
possible, that she wouldn't dare disrupt Jesus journey, let alone
demand his attention the way Jairus did.
Right? She doesn't even strive to touch
Jesus body or ask him to lay his hands on her.
No, she reaches for his clothes from behind him.
But because her faith and his healing power is so secure and
so solid, she knows that even that's going to be enough.
And her faith gives her that boldness to initiate contact.
So as it says, she comes up behind Jesus in the crowd and
touches his garment. For she said, if I touch even
his garment, I will be made well.
And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in
her body that she was healed of her disease.
This healing is immediate. It's whole and it's physically
real. It's not some like metaphorical
healing. Mark gives us a bodily detail.
The flow of blood dries up and she feels in her body that she's
been healed. The suffering that marked her
life for 12 years is stopped at its source.
And Jesus power reaches even the most entrenched places of pain
and suffering. So it's never too late for Jesus
to heal someone. And I ask you to hold that close
today. The embodied nature of this
healing continues in Jesus. It says in verse 30, who
perceives in himself that power had gone out from him.
Now this is a moment where I'm like, whoa, there's some mystery
going on in here. At the very least, it appears
that reaching out to Christ in faith is enough to receive sozo,
which is the word that Mark uses here and threw out all these
intertwined stories of healing. It's worth lingering with this
word for a bit because it's pretty special.
Soso can mean not just to heal, but also to save, to rescue, to
restore, to make well, to make whole.
It's related to the root word for sotair, which is Savior.
So when Mark uses this word in these healing stories, he's not
inviting us to imagine. Jesus says work as merely like
medical treatment, as though here only solving A isolated
physical problem. Although he, you know, fixes
that too. The word opens up a fuller
picture. Rescue, restoration, wholeness
and salvation all held together. These healings, then, are like
microcosms, as you can anticipate, of the grand
salvation that will come through Jesus death and resurrection.
I mean, come on, that's so cool. But they're not only signs,
right? Pointing ahead to the real
salvation later. They're not just like previews,
placeholders. It's not like a waiting game.
In each encounter, Jesus's saving work is already breaking
into the present. And Jesus restoration is not
only promised for someday, it begins now in real bodies, in
real communities. This is true in Jesus time and
it remains true in our time today.
So as we continue unpacking this healing account, I invite you
all today, right to consider what resonance it may hold for
you. Jesus could have rushed ahead to
Jairus's house. After all, Jairus's daughter was
literally on the verge of death. It's pretty urgent.
And I'm sure Jairus was like, eager to like, hustle him along.
But Jesus stops. He turns around in the crowd and
asks who touched his garments. And considering the chaos of the
crowd pressing in on him from all sides, the disciples were
like, what? Like really Jesus?
Clearly they didn't really like, notice the woman, right?
He's like, there's like, so many people here, what are you
talking about? But of course, Jesus knows,
right? And not only does Jesus notice
this woman, he calls her out of hiding.
This is so loving. She's been so careful to make
her need invisible. She came from behind.
She touched only the fabric of his clothes.
And Jesus stops in his tracks and he asks, who touched my
garments? We can imagine the crowd
quieting into like low murmurs as their heads are swiveling
around, right? Looking for this person along
with Jesus. And in this way, Jesus creates
an opening for the woman to be seen, heard and blessed.
I mean, the crowd wouldn't have done that otherwise, right?
By stopping to ask the question and looking around to see who
had done it, Jesus causes the people around him and us to stop
and look too. Both Jesus and the woman know
what happened right? Like she reached out to him in
faith and Jesus power healed her completely.
But Jesus here is intentional and creating space for her to
testify to this herself. So we read in verse 33, the
woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and
trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole
truth. And that fear and trembling does
not mean she's afraid per SE that Jesus is about to shame or
like rebuke her. In Scripture, language like this
often belongs to moments of awe and holy encounter.
She knows something powerful and sacred happened to her.
So she comes forward trembling and tells Jesus the whole truth.
And before anyone can question this woman right, dismiss her or
quiet her, Jesus responds in the most loving way.
He calls her daughter. This is so radical and it's so
powerful. Not only is she an unnamed
woman, but she is a woman who had been rendered unclean and
untouchable for 12 years. She has no advocate, she has no
money, she has no status, and yet Jesus grants her dignity and
belonging by naming her daughter.
And on top of that, He honors the agency of her faith.
He says your faith has made you well.
Go in peace and be healed of your disease.
Notice how tender and dignifying this is.
Jesus doesn't treat her as an object of pity, nor does He
reduce her to her condition. He doesn't even make it
primarily about himself, Guys. He honors her faith, her
courage, her decision to take a risk and reach out when she's
been told to stay hidden and out of the way.
The mysterious detail of Jesus's healing power going out of Him
at her touch emphasizes the centrality of her action.
She reached out in faith, and in that reaching, she received
Sozo, healing, restoration, wholeness, salvation.
And indeed, this invites us to consider the role that our
agency, our free will, plays in our lives.
God grants us the ability to make choices every day, and so
many of us feel helpless all the time, right?
So what informs our choices, guys?
For those of us who profess faith in Christ and the promises
of the Gospel, how does that faith shape what we do?
How does it embolden us to reach out?
How does it help us act even when we're afraid, even when we
have learned to disappear? Maybe the unnamed woman's
faithful act inspires us to reach out to Christ even when we
may have been conditioned otherwise.
That's valuable, but check this out.
It's Jesus's response to her action that inspires even more
right Rather than allowing her to remain invisible, he insists
on bringing her out into the open to be boldly, openly,
freely herself. To declare in her voice the
whole truth of her testimony. And in turn, he calls her
daughter and honors her active faith as what it was has set her
free. And I believe He wants the same
for us. So what are the parts of your
life or world where you need Jesus?
Hiding our struggles doesn't resolve them, right?
We know that. So let's act in faith instead,
right? It could look like confessing an
unhealthy pattern or sin that has been dominating us.
Maybe asking a friend to hold us accountable to an important step
we've been avoiding or putting off.
Reaching out to someone that we've hurt rather than letting
that unspoken continue to fester.
Or bringing painful memories to the Lord, Praying for healing
and freedom rather than continuing to suppress them.
Maybe letting your community know of a need that may feel
shameful to admit, but would be a genuine blessing for them to
help carry for us to carry with you.
So let us not hide. Let's move from just like
surviving to agency. What's the thing you'd rather
keep hidden? What condition in your body,
your relationships, your inner life have you quietly stopped
hoping about? Maybe.
Is there a prayer you've been afraid to pray because naming
the need out loud makes it feel too real or makes you feel too
vulnerable? Do you have a testimony to
share? It might take us a little longer
to experience a full provision of Jesus.
And it took this woman, you know, although I mean, frankly,
she did wait 12 years to get to this point, right?
To be fair. But her story reminds us that
the reaching is worth it because Jesus sees us and calls us in
Hallelujah for that. Amen.