A Real Miracle

By

Reverend Litton J. Logan

July 2, 2006

Scriptures:

Mark 5:21--43 (NRSV)

²¹ When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. ²² Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet ²³ and begged him repeatedly, “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 So he went with him.

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. ²⁵ Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. ²⁶ She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷ She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸ for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” ²⁹ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰ Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” ³¹ And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” ³² He looked all around to see who had done it. ³³ But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ³⁴ He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

³⁵ While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” ³⁶ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” ³⁷ He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. ³⁸ When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. ³⁹ When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” ⁴⁰ And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. ⁴¹ He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” ⁴² And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. ⁴³ He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Sermon:

          When the modern mind encounters miracle stories in scriptures such as the ones that we have heard read today certain questions arise.  Did this really happen? Do such things happen today?  Do all the miracles in the Bible have the same degree of authenticity?  Is a belief in the supernatural and miracles essential to our Christian faith?  Is our universe controlled entirely by immutable laws or is there some strata of cause and effect that is open and yet undetermined?

♦

Such questions remind me of the story of the Christian woman that had to do a lot of traveling in her business, which necessitate her flying frequently.  However, flying made her nervous so she always took her Bible along to read and it helped her relax. On one such business trip, she sat next to a man who saw her take out her Bible and begin to read.  This fellow gave a derisive little chuckle and went back to working on his laptop computer. 

After a while he turned to her and asked, "You don't really believe all that stuff in there do you?" as he pointed to the bible.

The woman replied, "Of course I do it is the Bible."

He said, "Well what about that guy that was swallowed by that whale?"

She replied "Oh, Jonah. Yes I believe that, it is in the Bible."

He asked, "Well, how do you suppose he survived all that time inside the whale?"

The woman said "Well I don't really know I guess when I get to heaven I will ask him."

"What if he isn't in heaven?" the man asked sarcastically.

"Then you can ask him when you die," replied the woman.

♦

          I don’t think any of us believe in the biblical, miracle stories because we can prove them as fact.  We believe in the biblical, miracles stories because we have personally experienced to some greater or lesser degree God’s healing and miraculous presence in our lives.  I am not talking about good things that have happen to us on occasions that defy explanation so we attribute such things to God’s blessings or intervention.  I am talking about a direct link between our faith in God, our prayers, and real and beneficial results. 

Because we have experienced such a thing in our lives, we are inclined to accept other people’s stories of God’s work in their lives within reason, including the stories in scripture. 

          The right question to ask of these miracle stories we’ve heard read today is not are they factual but rather what did these miracle stories mean to the writer and his first readers?  What do these two stories say about God, Jesus, the listener, or the reader—ancient and modern? How do these stories work in people’s lives to encourage belief and sustain people’s faith in times of crisis and heightened anxiety?

          These are important questions for us today.  What vital truth in these stories meets what need in our lives and works for us in the here and now as we choose our life directions and moral stances?  If we find there is a vital truth in these scriptures for our lives then these miracle stories are more than an ancient record of two supernatural events.  Such biblical stories then become the psychological and spiritual facilitators, which encourages us to flex our faith in seeking mental, physical, and spiritual healing, but these stories also focuses our attention on a far more important fact.  That fact being the true miracle of these stories.  A miracle that you and I live by, second to second.

          You see, I would maintain that the real miracle in these two stories for Mark and his audience are not as obvious as one might think.  In the ancient world, there would have been many stories about holy men with miraculous healings attributed to them floating around.  Devotees and followers of such holy persons would offer such miracle stories as proof that the person they followed was truly holy and powerful.  Not unlike, today, and some of our so-called Christian TV healers.  In this vein, I believe both the ancient and modern fascination with the escapism and pseudo-hope of the supernatural has frequently distorted the word of God and blinded us to the true power and miracle in these scriptures.  I further maintain that the fascination and escapism of the supernatural has impoverished not only our personal faith lives but also impeded the power of the Gospel to transform the world.

          In our scriptures today, we find two stories about two women.  I hasten to add that even though the little girl was only twelve she would have been considered a young woman of marriageable age.

One woman, an older woman, suffered a gynecological condition, probably for most of her adult life.  Not only was her condition painful and unpleasant, but it rendered her and any she touched ceremonially unclean.  She would have been considered somewhat of a social outcast by herself and others even though she seems to have been a woman of some means with all that would imply.  Nonetheless, she still would have been excluded from so much in life due to her condition.

          Can you imagine having to avoid touching loved ones because it would necessitate them taking a bath before they could go to church or hangout with fellow Christians.

          The other woman—a young woman—was sick and later died.  A corpse would also render anyone who touched it ceremonially unclean requiring ceremonial bathing and purification.

          The woman with the gynecological condition had exhausted all the primitive medical efforts of her day in her attempts to be healed.  She had gotten worse over time at the expense of nearly all her financial resources.

          In a last ditch effort, she decided she would go and seek out this itinerant, miracle-working, holy man she had heard so much about from friends and family.  She unobtrusively merges with the crowd of people following Jesus.  Her desire for healing should be seen as an act of desperate selfishness.  She sneaks God’s healing power.   She risked condemnation for her self and ceremonial impurity for others in the crowd as well as contaminating Jesus in her quest for healing. However, such things were the least of her concerns.

          When she touched Jesus with her faithing-intentions, she felt herself healed while Jesus felt healing power drawn from him.  He immediately turned and confronted the crowd. He looked about seeking eye contact or lack thereof with the person who touched him with healing intentions.  Why didn’t Jesus let it be?  Why didn’t he just rejoice in the healing he had affected and go on?  If you look close at the scriptures and not at the miracle, you will see why.

³⁴ He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

We hear this thought reiterated in a negative way in verse 36, as Jesus over hears comments about the little girl being dead and it being unnecessary to trouble Jesus any further.

³⁶ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.”

          Jesus says in effect to the woman that had been healed, Daughter, your faith that God’s power was in me has made you whole; your faith has made you well.  Jesus says to the leader of the synagogue that he is to have faith and his daughter will be well. 

          Mark believes it is very important that his audience understands that Jesus is the Son of God and the conduit through whom God works, but it is their faith, like Jesus’ faith, that triggers the healing, restorative, and encouraging power of God in their lives.

          Now let us look at the real miracle of this story.  Mark’s audience would have been the second, third and no class people of their day. They would have been considered unclean and irreligious.  Jesus extended to such people acceptance and granted them God’s loving and healing power.  Jesus even touched women and allowed them to touch him contrary to the conventions of his day.  He touched the demonic; he touched the dead with God’s loving grace.

          In the miracles Jesus performs, we see Jesus commanding the demons, controlling the forces of nature, healing physical illness and raising the dead.  In doing so, Jesus makes no distinctions between male and female, clean and unclean.  Those who are in pain, sick, troubled or in peril and call upon him, whether out of faith or fear, receive God’s grace through him.  All he asks is, “Do not fear, only believe.”

          Such an understanding would have helped Mark’s audience to see themselves, whether slaves, trades people, or the irreligious by conventional standards as important to God and worthy through their faith to receive God’s loving acceptance, healing, and the abundance of life in the here-and-now as well as in the then-and-there.  God cared about them in what lay ahead of them.

I hasten to point out that Mark’s audience was living under the cloud of impending persecution.  Healing for diseases and disorders, as important as they may have been, wouldn’t have meant much to them if they were dead.

          The fact that they might be put to death had a way of putting bodily infirmities and disorders in proper perspective.  Yes, Jesus healed diseases; yes, he healed various disorders, and commanded the forces of nature.  However, his real miracle for Mark’s audience was that he extended God’s acceptance to the unacceptable.  Jesus the powerful Son of God gave Mark’s audience hope, courage, and strength.  If they, like Jesus, faithfully endure suffering unto death, they will also conquer death. 

Jesus brought and gave willingly the gift of God’s salvation in life and death to all comers regardless of race, gender, or religion.  This is the real miracle in this story.  All people, including you and me, are acceptable to God and God freely gives life and it more abundantly now and forever more to those who call upon God in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  Or, said another way God’s loving-grace unto salvation is a miraculous gift to all who are in the world as Jesus was in the world—loving and trusting God and God’s ways even unto and in death.  Where there was hopelessness there is healing; where there was death now there is life.

          In these two miracle stories, we see that God accepts the unacceptable, God wants all people to be whole and to enjoy life, and God is the God of loving acceptance and hope in the resurrection of the dead.

          Look folks, modern medical science, as well as other modern technological advances work what once would have been called miracles in our lives every day.  Many of us in this congregation to day are here, alive and well, because of such so-called miracles.  However, how many of us are acceptable before God through anything other than God’s love made known to us in Jesus Christ? Who or what among us can give us real hope in this life and in death except God’s truths made known to us in Jesus the Christ?  Please, I beg you don’t sell the Gospel short by becoming overly preoccupied with the escapism of the supernatural at the expense of the practical, every day miracle that you are loved by God, accepted now and forevermore.

          Jesus was ceremonially unclean for having touched these two women.  Yet, contrary to conventional religious beliefs God’s power flowed through him and out into the world across the ages to let the unacceptable, the unclean, the sick, the dying, know that in life and death they can trust God’s love.

          Now, that’s A Real Miracle, which makes all other miracles in scriptures pale in comparison.

          Also, as Christ’s followers, just as we are to expect all sorts of birds to build their nest in our mustard tree plants so should we also expect the desperately selfish to seek to touch us if they perceive that the Christ is in us. Have you felt a desperately selfish touch from someone lately?  Have you felt the trouble heart, mind, and spirit of another touch the hem of your garments lately? If not, I wonder why not.  If so, did you willingly and joyfully share the healing power of the Christ that their faith sought to draw from you?  I hope so, I hope so, because that is one of the greatest miracles of the kingdom—people drawing Christ’s power from one another.