NOTES for Mar 5:21-43
21 And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto him: and he was nigh unto the sea. |
22 And, behold, there cometh one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name; and when he saw him, he fell at his feet, |
23 And besought him greatly, saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be healed; and she shall live. |
24 And Jesus went with him; and much people followed him, and thronged him. |
25 And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, |
26 And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, |
27 When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. |
28 For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. |
29 And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. |
30 And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes? |
31 And his disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? |
32 And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. |
33 But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. |
34 And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague. |
35 While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further? |
36 As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. |
37 And he suffered no man to follow him, save Peter, and James, and John the brother of James. |
38 And he cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly. |
39 And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. |
40 And they laughed him to scorn. But when he had put them all out, he taketh the father and the mother of the damsel, and them that were with him, and entereth in where the damsel was lying. |
41 And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise. |
42 And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; for she was of the age of twelve years. And they were astonished with a great astonishment. |
43 And he charged them straitly that no man should know it; and commanded that something should be given her to eat. |
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In the Gospel there is a remarkable account of a "healing inside a resurrection." It is about the raising of the daughter of a synagogue ruler ("the ruler of the synagogue") and, as it were along the way, the healing of a woman who for many years had suffered from an unnamed illness involving bleeding. At first glance these events have nothing in common except that they happened at the same time. In reality, however, they are united by one common feature that is not immediately obvious.
Here is a woman who is afraid to admit that she touched Jesus. Today such fear may seem hard for us to understand, but in those days it was fully justified: the issue is bleeding, and according to the norms of the Torah a person suffering from bleeding is considered unclean; touching such a person defiles. Meanwhile the woman touches the Teacher, risking defiling Him if... if only she is not healed. Here it is either healing, or a very serious offense bordering on a crime. Something similar is true with the ruler's daughter: while a person is alive, he can and should be treated, if that is possible, but if he has died, touching his body defiles.
Traditional Yahwist ideas, briefly stated, come down to the understanding that a person is defiled by any contact with anything that diminishes the fullness of his life. Whenever, in modern language, entropy is visibly triumphant, a person is defiled because participation, whether voluntary or involuntary, in such a process is incompatible with another process that is always unfolding in God's presence: the process of sanctification.
Jesus, however, is able each time to turn entropy back, to force it to retreat, even where it seems to triumph irreversibly, as in the case of physical death. For the Kingdom there is no defilement at all: the very presence of its power, its breath, destroys defilement, making the process of becoming defiled impossible in principle. Such is the surpassing life of the Kingdom that Jesus bears in Himself. The only way to be defiled before Christ and the Kingdom is to remain within the space of one's own deliberate sin, but that is another story.
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