Today's gospel reading is Mark 5: 21-43. On his way to see Jairus' little girl who is very sick, Jesus' garment hem is touched by the bleeding woman, who is healed.
I noticed something this week I am not sure I have seen before (a bad memory makes every old thought a new discovery). What I have not remembered seeing before was the connection between the little girl and the healed woman. The girl-twelve years old (but wait, weren't 12 yr old girls back then considered of marriageable age?). The woman-had suffered 12 years from bleeding. The girl. at the age when the ways of women come upon little girls, at the marrying age. The woman, enduring an illness that I would associate with the ways of women. Little girl and hemorrhaging woman both healed.
One coming of age, and we often think of the other as an older woman. And each were healed--but with very different circumstances. The father of one begging Jesus to come to his house...a presumptuous thing for a father to do, but this leader-father was desperate, so desperate he risked who he was for what his little girl needed. The other one, in the huge crowd surrounding Jesus managed to find a way to barely touch him out her need for one who would do what no other could do.
Both women, both in desperate need. One was healed "along the way" ---Jesus had no real intention to heal this woman--she was healed because of her need, not because of any special attention paid to her by the crowd or the disciples or even by Jesus. His pure love and will for everyone in that crowd was for wholeness in spirit and in body. This man Jesus, so full of that love and healing, that if anyone in faith and need came to him, there need not be any intention for that love and healing on his part. His very being was so full of that goodness that the mere touch of one in need was met bythe emanation of his power, mercy and grace.
The little girl's healing came by means of a very different way. The woman's healing came "on the way to someplace else." She sort of snuck up on Jesus' power. Jairus, the leader type that he was, came boldly and begged Jesus to go with him . The little girl had special words spoken over her and the Lord took her hand; Jesus had to clear the house of all those grieving--her death was attended by lots of folks.
Different ways of healing. That is a real thing for me. Even in my one life, there have been many different ways that the love and healing power of Jesus have come to me. I am not required to have a set way to come to Jesus with my need; and Jesus does not always come to me as I would expect. All I need to do is to honestly know my need, and to believe.
When I look at the painting above of Jesus raising Jairus' daughter, I wonder what we would see if we could see just behind John, the young disciple, just outside the door. Would there be a woman, so recently freed from the bane that had plagued her, a condition that made her unable to move around with any ease for fear of the blood? I wonder if we would see her there laughing and dancing and raising her hands in praise. I wonder if she was ready to shout out, "Little girl, he's here! He heals! He loves! He's real! Come out and play and sing and dance, for the world is saved!" This of course the girl would do, after she eats her lunch, as Jesus has instructed. And the woman and girl, bound together by their special encounters with the Great Physician, romp and frolic and play and run and jump and dance, dance, dance all the rest of their lives and continue now in heaven still rejoicing. Maybe, just maybe, so.
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