Canvey Methodist Church Bible Study- Tuesday 29th June 2021.
In Need of A Faithlift?
On Sunday last, I was struck by the responses of Jairus, the synagogue leader and the lady with the haemorrhage in their encounter with Jesus; how each exercised faith, and what each might have learned from their experiences on that day. Therefore, at the risk of some repetition, perhaps we can dig a little bit deeper into this matter of exercising faith as we look once again into Holy Scripture and at this incredible day.
But first, here is another faith stretching incident that happened to the disciples of Jesus.
Luke 8:22-25; Jesus Calms the Storm
22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.
24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”
He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.
In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”
Comment?
Would we have reacted any differently?
Imagining myself amongst the crew of the vessel described above. Would I have been any less terrified by the storm and the huge waves? I have to say that, I would have been amongst the first of those disciples waking up Jesus from his well earned slumber to save the day. My faith would have been in need of a boost alongside theirs.
What Jesus taught them during his time with his disciples is that faith grows, the more it is used. Faith grows when we see Jesus in action.
On another occasion as reported in Matthew 17:14-20, Jesus healed a young lad that the disciples had been unable to help.
Matthew 17:14-20,
“14 When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before him. 15 “Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. 16 I brought him to your disciples, but they could not heal him.”
17 “You unbelieving and perverse generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to me.” 18 Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed at that moment.
19 Then the disciples came to Jesus in private and asked, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” [21] [a]
Comment:
Faith, it seems,like the kingdom of God may start off small, like a mustard seed, but can nonetheless have great results.
The key is that it needs to be exercised like muscles in the body. The more our physical muscles are exercised, the stronger they grow. The more faith is exercised, in the small things, the easier it gets to trust God for the greater things.
And so to the passage from Mark 5:21-43 that we heard on Sunday, about Jairus and the Lady with the hemorrhage.
Gospel- Mark 5:21-43. New International Version
Jesus Raises a Dead Girl and Heals a Sick Woman
21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” 24 So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”
31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”
32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
35 While Jesus was still speaking, some people came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”
36 Overhearing[a] what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
37 He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. 38 When they came to the home of the synagogue leader, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. 39 He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep.” 40 But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). 42 Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. 43 He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Footnotes
a.Mark 5:36 Or Ignoring
Comment:
This exciting, “drama filled” account got me thinking about how most people are when it comes to exercising faith? We may know people, who we may think look to have “cracked” the exercising of faith discipline in an effortless way; who seem to have the Aurora of being super saints who on the surface of things remain spiritually focussed and completely calm under all circumstances.
However, there may be others that we have come across whose faith exercising experience is a little more variable.
I suspect that the truth is that all of us are forever growing in this grace of exercising faith and that we never stop learning.
Is it also perhaps the case that some things are easier for us to exercise faith about than others. For instance, is it easier when we are praying for more general things at a distance, like praying for world peace or for the well-being of the nation or for our local communities than say, praying for more faith stretching things like when something specific crops up such as when we are facing a new job interview or examination, a family member who is ill, sudden redundancy, receiving bad news about the death of a friend or loved one, perhaps when we are asked to step out into a new church venture, or having to cope with the consequences of lockdown either personally, or as a church with all the bills still needing to be paid. Or maybe when someone we know has been given a terminal diagnosis or news of a long term health condition; When they are faced with extremes of need or circumstance, we may find that navigating our way through the crisis or situations stretches our faith to limits that we have never experienced before. My guess is that some of us will have walked this road already or even may, even be walking it now.
Last Sunday’s gospel reading was about two people who exercised faith in Jesus in just such a crisis. Maybe we can learn more about exercising our faith from their experience.
We may remember their stories from our Sunday School days as examples of vindicated super faith but in reality these events happened to people who had their faith in Jesus stretched to the limit. In this gospel reading then, we see two accounts of healing; Two desperate people- an ailing woman and a man with a dying daughter- both of whom were in need of Jesus’ healing powers. In both cases, though for different reasons, they were people who were either taken out of their comfort zones, or had them challenged for being too comfortable within their comfort zones.
As I read the text it occurred to me that whilst such comfort zones (the known well trodden paths) might seem to be safe spaces that help us to be at ease, in reality they may also become like silos in which we become trapped, complacent and unwilling to see what else God may have for us as possibilities to explore. Perhaps we all need an occasional faith stretching event to help us grow spiritually; to take us out of our comfort zone and to throw us fully into the arms of Jesus.
By way of a little background, this account is recorded not just in Mark 5:21-43, but also in Matthew 9:18-26 and Luke 8:40-56. It is about the resurrection of a man’s daughter and the healing of a woman who was bleeding. However, digging down a little into these events, it is also about a man who must have been really frustrated when it appeared that Jesus did not care or seem to give his situation the urgency he thought it warranted. It is also about a woman who was a cultural outcast and invisible to her wider society, finding herself the unexpected center of attention and then finally completely freed of her debilitating health condition!
These events occurred after Jesus and his disciples had left the region known as the Decopolis (or area of the 10 towns) and returned to Galilee (see map below).
Jesus in Capernaum, Galilee.
You may recall that earlier Jesus had escaped the crowds in Galilee by sailing to that region and it was whilst he was in decopolis that he expelled a legion of demons from a man and 2,000 pigs ran into the Sea of Galilee and were drowned. It was here also that the people asked him to leave, and so He did, sailing by boat, back across the lake, into Galilee . However, what he found there was that the crowds had already arrived and quickly found Him. (Mark 5:21). No matter where Jesus went in Galilee there were crowds waiting for him!
(Luke 8:40). And when they saw Him, the people surrounded Him, so Jesus lingered for a while on the seashore. It was whilst there, speaking to the people in the crowd that the synagogue official named Jairus found Him. In his role in the synagogue Jairus would have been very prominent in the community. He would have been a layman with responsibilities to direct the worship services in the synagogue. But when he saw Jesus, he did not act like a proud man. Instead, he humbled himself, not only kneeling and bowing before Jesus, but imploring and begging Jesus to come to his home and heal his daughter. He was desperate and he deeply loved his daughter who we are told was twelve years of age at the time and was his only child (Luke 8:42).
Here was an example of a man holding a high position, putting all of that to one side out of love and desperation for his beloved daughter who was at the point of death.
One can only imagine what the crowd was thinking as they watched one of their synagogue leaders kneeling and begging. If he was loved by the people, then they might also have felt great compassion for him.
Jesus listened to Jairus and responded. He got up from the ground, and started to follow the synagogue leader to his home with the crowd following too, (Matt 9:19, Mark 5:24), jostling and pressing in from all sides. It was amidst this pushing and moving throng that the unnamed woman moved forward, wrestling to find the courage to reach out to Jesus. Neither Jesus, the disciples, nor Jairus knew that this lady, who had suffered for twelve years with a hemorrhage, was about to interrupt their “journey of mercy” to heal Jairus’s daughter. For Jairus, knowing that time was of the essence to his daughter's very survival, what was to follow must have caused him intense anguish and great frustration. As the crowd slowed their progress, Jesus unexpectedly stopped and asked who had touched him as he sensed that power had left him in the healing of another person. But who were they and where were they?
We don’t know whether anyone in the crowd actually saw the woman touch Jesus' cloak and we don’t know very much about this lady other than that she suffered from this constant bleeding condition that she did not have the confidence to ask for help face to face! Very likely her condition forced her to live a solitary life, perpetually ceremonially unclean, and unable to participate in normal life. We are told that she was now materially poor, having given all of her money to physicians who could not heal her and who had made promises that they could not keep. We are told that she suffered “much” from these “physicians” only to get worse and not better. This woman had been abused and robbed in the process!
Notice too, that as this lady approached Jesus, the crowd for its part, was so intent on looking at Jesus, to see what he could do for them, that to them she was invisible and passed unnoticed.
In my mind, this raises the question if we too could ever be in danger of being so focussed on seeking the Lord to meet our needs, that we fail to notice the spiritual and material needs of others?
This account then is a timely reminder that we also must be ready to see those who Jesus sees.
When eventually the sick lady came forward, she fell down at Jesus’ feet and explained why she touched His cloak. While we are told what she said, it is clear from Jewish law that her particular touch had ceremonial consequences because neither she, nor indeed any woman who had a flow of blood, were supposed to touch another person. (Leviticus 15:25-33). The Mosaic law said that a woman with a flow of blood was unclean while the flow continued and that she was not allowed to attend the temple worship or participate in social life. No one could touch her, and she could not touch anyone. It was only after seven days after the flow of blood had stopped and after she offered a sacrifice of two pigeons, that she could return to normal life. This poor woman therefore had been a social outcast, or completely unclean, for twelve years! Yet, she had touched Jesus’ garment in violation of the law. Therefore, she had good reason to be fearful. She had violated the law, and according to Jewish custom made Jesus unclean. She must have been in great emotional anguish, fearing rejection. She might have been afraid that Jesus would undo the healing.
But Jesus did no such thing but instead said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.” Mark 5:34 (NASB)
In so doing, Jesus forgave her and finally told her that her faith had made her well and that she was free to leave. What must have been an agonising delay to Jairus was a source of new life for this lady.
All of this was good news for her but frustratingly bad for Jairus. His daughter close to death, and then this delay in bringing her help.
And then the unthinkable happened, the devastatingly bad news arrived in the form of a messenger from Jairus’s house, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the Teacher anymore?” Mark 5:35 (NASB)
Whilst Jairus had good reason to give up all hope at that point, Jesus in overhearing this report, responded, “
Do not be afraid any longer; only believe, and she will be made well.” Luke 8:50 (NASB)
Arriving at Jairus’s house, and leaving the gathered mourners outside laughing at the prospect of a dead person being healed, Jesus took the girl's parents Peter, James and John and the brother of James into the house and entered the girls bedroom.
Taking Jairus's daughter by the hand, Jesus said to her, “Talitha kum!” (which translated means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”) and immediately her spirit returned, and she got up and began to walk. All were quite understandably astounded. Mark 5:40b-4 (NASB)
Conclusion
What then might be learnt from and applied from this experience of Jairus, his daughter, and the lady healed by touching Jesus cloak?
I would suggest that Jairus discovered an important truth. He discovered that God does not ignore our requests. He is not deaf. He does not sleep nor slumber. In fact, He knows all about your prayer and mine before we even ask. Yet, delays seem often to be a part of God’s plan. Often we must wait for an answer.
And indeed, Yes, sometimes His answer is, “No!” To our prayers! Also, God will often care for others while He is caring for us. Sometimes He must alter circumstances to answer our prayers. Sometimes He waits for us to yield or to submit to Him. God will sometimes wait for us to stop making our demands. He will wait until we are willing to do whatever He wants. Sometimes He will wait until we have given up and everything seems dark and lost, just as Jairus experienced. Then He will respond when the only thing left is to trust in Him. Then you might hear the words, “Only believe!” He seeks our submission and dependence upon Himself.
The Woman with the flow of blood discovered that she was not invisible to Jesus. She had feared rejection but instead found affirmation and healing. She may have been ceremonially unclean to everyone else but this dear lady was not unacceptable to Jesus.
Jesus had few comfort zones and was no respecter of the sociocultural or religious barriers of his time. He broke taboos and conventions so that he could meet people who reached out to him across those social and cultural barriers and addressed their needs. And he still does.
If God chooses to do something, it is going to happen. God’s timelines and deadlines do not fit onto a planner, and yet still they unfold at the right time, within time.
When Jairus’ daughter died, it looked like the end of hope for her, but then came a new beginning.
For all of us, Covid social distancing may have interrupted our journey of “church life and witness” and we may feel resentful about the past and fearful for the future. But, as we continue to follow Jesus, to see those that he sees, and in stopping to help along the way, no delay is wasted but is itself with our stretched faith applied, transformed, by God's touch and perfect timing, into remarkable blessings, new shoots of renewed life and new hope. For us therefore, let’s all walk on with Jesus together into the tomorrow that he has planned.
May God bless us all as we grow our faith by exercising it in small and large ways.
God Bless you all.
Colin