Jesus the Healer - January 23
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 41, 52; PM Psalm 44; Isa. 48:1-11; Gal. 1:1-17; Mark 5:21-43
In today’s passage from Mark, one of the leaders of the synagogue, Jairus, is in desperate need of healing for his daughter. He falls to his feet and begs Jesus for mercy for his daughter. He pleads with Jesus. “Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well and live.” Jesus follows and another woman comes who has been suffering and she is healed as well. She seeks Jesus out in the crowd, pushing through with fear and trembling.
In this story, it is not just the hemorrhaging woman and Jairus’s daughter who are suffering. Jairus is as well. He suffers from watching his loved one become ill. Jesus’s healing is not just for the unwell people, but for the people who love them as well. Jesus actually takes the father and the mother, and the text says, “the others who were with them.”
One simple observation would be that when faced with hardship, illness, or tragedy, there are two potential outcomes to our faith. Our faith can grow, or it can lessen. This is my pastoral observation of life in general. I have witnessed several people in two decades of ministry, who have drifted away from faith when something painful happens in their life. The loss of a loved one, an illness or suffering of a beloved spouse or friend. These kinds of losses can have an impact on an entire community.
However, the opposite is also true, that often one’s faith can be deepened. Rarely, does a person seem unchanged. In both instances in Mark, a woman who is in pain, and a father and mother who are distraught for their daughter, find their lives changed. The pain and fear for their child have driven them to know Jesus in a way that hadn’t before. It is the beginning of a new understanding of God’s love, Jesus who comes to be with them in their distress, who takes their hand and leads them into caring for their daughter.
One of the beautiful things about being in Christian community, is the reality that others have faith too and they teach us, and guide us, and lift us up when our faith isn’t as strong. Most Sundays have us begin our statement of faith with the words, “We believe.” It’s not an ‘I’ statement, but a recognition that we are part of something larger. We get to have our hands taken and led to something that we might not always be able to claim on our own, just like Jesus guiding the family and others to see their beloved child. In community, we teach each other, we play a role in shaping the faith of others.
This is the fundamental difference between growing in our faith or losing it altogether. To look and see God at work in the people around us can make all the difference in the world. When faced with what we don’t understand, trying to look in the pew next to you, in those gathered behind and before you, who are praying with you and for you. It matters. It’s God showing up as God always does.
Just as it was for Jarius, God’s healing happens when we see God at work in our lives, leading us to be with us, no matter what it is we are to face.
John
Questions for Self-Reflection: Are there moments that you have felt closer to God or father away? What about moments when your faith was deepened?