Daily Scripture
Note to readers: During Lent Resurrection joins 300 or more other congregations in Kansas City and others in Hong Kong and Ghana in reading the entire gospel of Mark. To support that goal, some daily GPS readings are longer than usual. Have an extra cup of coffee, or maybe use your lunch break—take the time to read the whole gospel with us.
To watch a video that covers Mark 5:21-43, click here.
Mark 5:21-34
21 Jesus crossed the lake again, and on the other side a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. 22 Jairus, one of the synagogue leaders, came forward. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet 23 and pleaded with him, “My daughter is about to die. Please, come and place your hands on her so that she can be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.
A swarm of people were following Jesus, crowding in on him. 25 A woman was there who had been bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a lot under the care of many doctors, and had spent everything she had without getting any better. In fact, she had gotten worse. 27 Because she had heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothes. 28 She was thinking, If I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed. 29 Her bleeding stopped immediately, and she sensed in her body that her illness had been healed.
30 At that very moment, Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”
31 His disciples said to him, “Don’t you see the crowd pressing against you? Yet you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” 32 But Jesus looked around carefully to see who had done it.
33 The woman, full of fear and trembling, came forward. Knowing what had happened to her, she fell down in front of Jesus and told him the whole truth. 34 He responded, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace, healed from your disease.”
Reflection Questions
A desperate woman had heard about Jesus. He set off, followed by a crowd, to help the sick daughter of a synagogue leader named Jairus. (We’ll see how that came out tomorrow.) The woman’s problem was not just about health. Jewish law saw her as always “unclean,” like a leper (see Leviticus 15:25-27). She couldn’t legally touch anyone; hence her stealthy touch of Jesus’ garment. But “Jesus recognized that power had gone out from him.”
- What a burden of shame this woman must have carried, along with her physical issues. Many people saw ailments like hers as judgments from God (see John 9:2). How do you see yourself? Are there things in your life you’d rather keep hidden? Was Jesus being unkind when he called the healed woman forward—or was he freeing her from shame as well as from her physical disorder?
- Commentator William Barclay found that the Jewish Talmud offered cures for this woman’s illness like “carrying the ashes of an ostrich-egg in a linen rag in summer and a cotton rag in winter; or carrying a barley corn found in the dung of a white she-ass.”* Have you tried to deal with shame, guilt or other pain on your own through self-help “folk remedies”? How can Jesus' love redirect your efforts along more effective paths?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank you for letting your power flow for the fearful, forlorn woman in this story. Even when I’m afraid or ashamed, I ask you for the courage to “touch your garment” for healing. Amen.
* William Barclay, Daily Study Bible Series: The Gospel of Mark (Revised Edition). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976, p. 129.
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