The Woman Who Interrupted a Miracle (Mark 5)

Jairus gets the appointment; she gets the interruption. Mark 5 braids two desperate people together: a synagogue ruler with a dying twelve-year-old daughter, and a woman who has bled for twelve years, spent everything she had on doctors, and only grown worse Mark 5:25-26 English - ESV. He approaches Jesus openly, by name and office. She approaches from behind, planning to steal a healing and disappear.

Her plan works, medically. She had heard the reports, came up behind him in the crowd, touched his garment, "and immediately the flow of blood dried up."Mark 5:29 English - ESV Twelve years of uncleanness, poverty and isolation end in one unnoticed second. Leviticus 15:25-27 English - ESV Except it does not stay unnoticed. Jesus stops the whole procession, with Jairus's daughter dying by the minute, and asks, "Who touched my garments?"Mark 5:30 English - ESV

The disciples think the question absurd; the whole crowd is pressing him. But Jesus distinguishes between the crowd that presses and the one who touches. And the woman, knowing what had happened to her, comes in fear and trembling, falls down before him, and tells him the whole truth. The healing was private. He insists the restoration be public.

Then comes the sentence she had no right to expect: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace." Daughter. It is the only time in the Gospels Jesus addresses anyone that way. She came to take a cure anonymously; she leaves with a name, a family, and her story dignified in front of everyone who had counted her untouchable. The interruption was not in the way of the ministry. It was the ministry.

Figure Dressed in Priestly Garments. The hem of a garment the woman in Mark 5 reached for from behind.

And Jairus, forced to wait while the worst news arrives from his house, is learning the same lesson from the other side: this Jesus is not managed by urgency. The chapter ends with a twelve-year-old girl alive and a twelve-year-ill woman whole, both called daughter, neither an interruption after all. Mark 5:28 English - ESV Mark 5:34 English - ESV

Mark 5 Berean Standard Bible - Bob Souer