Stroll through Scripture for Sunday January 28, 2024

Based on Mark 5:21–43

This week’s gospel could be considered a sandwich reading. There are two stories — one inside the other. The inside story helps us understand the surrounding story.

The first story is of Jairus and his unnamed sick daughter. Jairus is the leader of the local synagogue and in Mark’s account he is named. We can venture that Jairus was well known and respected in Capernaum, where Jesus came back to after healing the Gerasene demoniac on the other side of the sea right before this story in this same chapter of Mark.

What is striking are the similarities of these stories. Jesus gets out of a boat in each story and a man immediately approaches Jesus. Earlier in chapter five, the man is unnamed and an outcast from society. In this story, the man is named and most likely held in high regard. Both come to Jesus and drop down before him seeking help. Both the outcast and the respected recognize what Jesus is capable of.

And then we have this interlude — a large crowd gathers around Jesus, slowing him down considerably. You can almost feel the anxiety that Jairus must have felt. And an unnamed woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years enters the scene. The fact that she is bleeding makes her ritually unclean and anything she would touch would become unclean as well. She’s in the crown and it seems safe to say that she probably inadvertently touched many people as she was trying to reach Jesus. But by touching Jesus’…