Proper 8B |  Mark 5:21-43

The bow drives into shore and the people flock to them like they’re the Beatles arriving for the first time. Except there’s only one person they want to see. Touch. The hordes of eager fans reach out in blissful expectation. Heal me!

Jesus took to the sea to get away from people. But they keep showing up. On the other side: people. Back to this shore: people are there, waiting for him.

And there’s something about the healing touch. What people have seen of it suggests that this man can touch you and you will be healed. That he will lay his hands upon your head, or breathe upon your face, and whatever ails you will go away.

This is something else. Fandom leads to different action, behavior.

Those hands reach out to be noticed, touched, and to touch, to feel.

There is something much like that teen desire at work here, I think. That sensation of the sensational. There is a strange mix of attraction and desire, of wanting to occupy the same space that mixes our emotional registers. Why cute things cause us to say “You are so cute, I could just eat you up!” Cuteness aggression.

These people are reaching for Jesus and one is so convinced of his unique power, and perhaps the peculiarity of her desire, that she can just touch his coat and be healed. This woman, who has been deceived and swindled by doctors and physicians. People that one of Jesus’s own disciples might know. Or be. They’ve taken her money and offered no relief. And certainly no healing.

Perhaps they share the medical records each time. They determine a list of things it can’t be. Eventually they come with something it could be. Psychosomatic—she’s making it up. One doctor puts it in her chart and from there every one considers the possibility that she’s crazy. Just looking for painkillers.

That’s what happens, isn’t it? When physicians can’t figure it out. Only it is perhaps something like endometriosis. And can be helped. There are things they can do—if they are willing. If they believe the woman’s pain is real.

Jesus would.

Which makes this all the more interesting that he doesn’t get the chance.

He doesn’t need it, even. This woman believes that she can be healed by touching the man’s clothes. Like they vibrate with magic. Like a teen girl touching John Lennon or perhaps David Cassidy or any object of desire would make her a woman in ways that have nothing to do with sex and yet all of that same desire.

She touches his cloak and she is healed like a divine magic trick. In a subversion of the normal way. That’s not how it is supposed to work. He’s supposed to see her, put his hands upon her head or her shoulders, and do something to her, like rubbing mud in the eyes of the blind man. Something like that.

Instead, she touches him and the healing happens without his touching. Like a current running the opposite way, jumper cables attached wrong, but starting the other car regardless.

Her desire heals her. And Jesus almost has nothing to do with it.

The girl sleeps.

Jairus, the leader of the synagogue is among the crowd, he pushes his way to the front, drops to his knees, begging Jesus, over and over

‘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.’

The crowds, the woman get in his way. But Jairus persists. Begs. You can heal her.

Some would intervene, to be helpful, of course.

‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’

A block thrown before his feet.

But Jesus persists. Almost laughing at them.

‘The child is not dead but sleeping.’

Not dead, you say? Now it’s their turn to mock him. It’s a ridiculous suggestion. Why, they saw her with their own eyes! Her lips, fingers had grown cold! She drew her last breath! This man has no business here.

Jesus sent them away, drew the parents with him into the house. He went to the girl and said

‘Little girl, get up!’

And her eyes fluttered open and she jumped out of bed like she’s racing her siblings to get dibs on the TV.

Was she asleep?

It’s a funny question, really. Because most don’t think so. We believe the people who came out before. Jesus performed a miracle. And lied about it. Or…he has a funny way of describing raising the dead.

Maybe he is telling the truth, but that is hardly satisfying.

Perhaps the truth has less to do with factuality of the girl’s relationship to consciousness or what Jesus means by “sleep” and is something far closer to euphemism. Jesus is a puckish protagonist in practice, driving those who choose not to believe as wild as the frenzied masses wanting a piece of him.

Literally wanting a piece. Like seats from a condemned ballpark. A physical memory to keep. Or a piece of clothing, better than a guitar pick—he sweat in this!

It is hard to be ignored.

When you are suffering, longing to be seen, noticed, believed. A single person in a crowd, racing behind the superstar, longing to be seen, or a patient whose diagnosis never comes, but the bills do.

You might want to make things happen. Beg, plead, reach out and grab the coat of a would-be Messiah. Maybe he can help me. Save me or my daughter. Make things right again.

And in these cases, Jesus doesn’t point to his hands. He points back to the people and says to them You made the miraculous happen.