When Jesus had crossed again in a boat and returned to the other side, a large crowd gathered around and welcomed him because they were all waiting for him by the sea. Then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came up because he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying.
When he saw Jesus, he respectfully bowed low before him and fell at his feet. He asked him urgently, “My little daughter is near death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be healed and live.” Jesus went with him, and a large crowd followed and pressed around him.
Now a woman was there who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years but could not be healed by anyone. She had endured a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all that she had.
("Take of the gum of Alexandria the weight of a silver coin; of alum the same; of crocus the same. Let them be bruised together, and given in wine to the woman that has an issue of blood. If this does not benefit, take of Persian onions three pints; boil them in wine, and give her to drink, and say, 'Arise from thy flux.'
If this does not cure her, set her in a place where two ways meet, and let her hold a cup of wine in her right hand, and let some one come behind and frighten her, and say, ' Arise from thy flux.' If these do no good, other doses, over ten in number, are prescribed, among them this:
Let them dig seven ditches, in which let them burn some cuttings of vines, not yet four years old. Let her take in her hand a cup of wine, and let them lead her away from this ditch, and make her sit down over that. And let them remove her from that, and make her sit down over another, saying to her at each remove, 'Arise from thy flux!'"[1])
Yet instead of getting better, she grew worse. (In addition, Leviticus 15:25-27 indicates that the woman would have been ceremonially unclean because of her illness. She wasn’t supposed to be around people. She was isolated, alone, and desperate.)
When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched the edge of his cloak, for she kept saying, “If only I touch his clothes, I will be healed.” (She likely shared the superstition, common in her day, that the power of a person was transmitted through his clothing.[2])
(“She dimly believes that, somehow or other, this miracle-working Rabbi will heal her, but the cure is to be a piece of magic, secured by material contact of her finger with His robe. She has no idea that Christ’s will, or His knowledge, much less His love, has anything to do with it.”[3])
But at once the bleeding stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.[4] Jesus knew at once that power to heal proceeding from him had gone forth. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” (He did it that the woman might confess, so that the power of her faith and the greatness of the miracle might be seen to the praise of God.[5])
When they all denied it, Peter and the disciples said to him, “Master, the crowds are surrounding you and pressing against you and you say, ‘Who touched me?’ “ But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I know that power to heal has gone forth from me.” He looked around to see who had done it.
(Jesus wanted to find her, not to rebuke her, but because she needed to know that it was not her superstitious belief that brought about her healing.[6]) Then the woman approached, with dread and trembling, knowing what had happened to her.
(She may have dreaded His anger, for according to the Law (Leviticus 15:19) the touch of one, afflicted as she was, caused ceremonial defilement until the evening.[7] But Jesus makes the woman clean by his power instead of becoming unclean himself.)
She came and fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth. In the presence of all the people, she explained why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. Jesus said to her, (using a title he uses nowhere else in Scripture), “Have courage, daughter! Your faith and trust have made you well. Go, enter into peace,[8] and be healed of your disease.”
(“He put an end to her fear and gives no cause for her conscience to be harmed, as if she had stolen the gift. He corrects her assumption that she has no right to be seen, and he shows her faith and trust to all to encourage others to emulate her faith.”)[9]
(“He does not say, ‘Understand Me, put away you false notion of healing power residing in My garment’s hem, or I will not heal you.’ He says, ‘Do you think that it is through your finger on My robe? Then, through your finger on My robe it shall be. According to your faith, be it unto you.’[10])
And the woman was healed from that hour. (Since Jesus, a rabbi, has publicly declared to all that she is healed and cleansed, she can truly be part of the community again.) While Jesus was still speaking, someone from the synagogue ruler’s house came and said to Jairus, “Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the teacher any longer.”
But when Jesus overheard this, he told him, “Do not be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.” Now when he came to the house of the synagogue ruler, Jesus did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, and the child’s father and mother.
When Jesus entered the ruler’s house he saw the flute players and the disorderly crowd. There was noisy confusion and (professional mourners, who were paid to attend funerals and express grief over the loss of a loved one). They were mourning for her, weeping and wailing loudly. Jesus said to them, “Why are you distressed and weeping?
Stop your weeping and go away, for the girl is not dead but asleep.” (“Just like he asked ‘Who touched me,’ so the woman could profess her healing before everyone, he said ‘She is sleeping’ so the spectators might testify that she was dead.’”[11] Clever.)
They began making fun of him, (insisting she was indeed dead), because they knew that she was dead. (Then Jesus, who was not interested in a grand spectacle of healing), put them all outside and he took the child’s father and mother and his own companions and went into the room where the child was.
Then, gently taking the child by the hand, he said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Child, arise.” Her spirit returned, and she got up immediately and began to walk around. They were completely astonished at this.
But Jesus strictly ordered that no one should know about this, and told them to give her something to eat (as is recorded happening after Lazarus and Jesus were raised, as if eating proved they were really back[12] and not an apparition[13]). And the news of this spread throughout that region.
Healing Two Blind Men & a Mute Demon-Possessed Man (Mt 9:27-34)
As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, shouting, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” (They remembered the prophets talked about the descendent of Jesse, David’s father( Isaiah 11:1) who would bring healing (Isaiah 42:6-7).)[14] When he went into the house, the blind men came to him. Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”
They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes saying, “Let it be done for you according to your faith.”[15]And their eyes were opened. Then Jesus sternly warned them, on pain of his deep displeasure if they did not obey,[16]“See that no one knows about this.” (But the men whose faith brought them to Christ for healing did not stay with him to learn obedience.)[17]
So they went out and spread the news about him throughout that entire region. As they were going away, a man who could not talk and was demon-possessed was brought to him. After the demon was cast out, the man who had been mute spoke.[18] The crowds were amazed and said, “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel!”
(The Pharisees could not deny the reality of the miraculous works Jesus had done, so they attributed his powers to Satan.)[19] They said, “By the ruler of demons he casts out demons.”
(It’s a foolish and shallow accusation. “Not only did he cast out demons, he also purified lepers, raised dead people, reined in the sea, canceled sins, proclaimed the Kingdom and approached the Father. Demons would never choose to do these things and would not ever be able to accomplish them.”[20])
There’s a lot that could be addressed in these incidents. I’m going to have to pick and choose.
I have often noted that I believe many of the physical stories in the Old Testament (Old Covenant with Moses) are meant to point us toward spiritual realities in the New Testament (New Covenant in Jesus). So, the Promised Land is now the Kingdom of Heaven, etc. Many of the early church fathers saw in the actions of Jesus a similar dynamic. Real things happened to real people, but Jesus was making a spiritually significant point (which to them explains who, why, and how he healed).
Hilary: “The ruler is understood to be the law.”
Augustine: “The daughter signifies the Jewish people”
Cromatius: The entire mystery of our faith is prefigured in the girl: raised from spiritual death to life and immediately begin taking communion.
Chromatius: The mourners are the synagogue rulers.
In other words, this miracle was to show that the law was not strong enough to bring life to God’s people. They needed Jesus. Thus, the faith referenced is faith that Jesus brings salvation. When this happens, the spiritually dead come back to life.
Jerome and Ambrose: the bleeding woman is the assembly of God gathered from the nations.
Augustine: the bleeding woman “signifies the church of the Gentiles.”
In their reading, the Gentiles have been spiritually unclean for a long time. The Jewish people had kept themselves separate and pushed the Gentiles away from their temple and community. Now, Jesus is blessing the presence of Gentiles in his Kingdom. He has healed them and saved them. They may enter into his peace.
There may be something to this approach in that there’s no reason to believe Jesus wasn’t doing things that were more significant than just what happened in the moment. Having said that, I’m not convinced that’s the primary reason he did them, and I think it’s possible to read into these events in a way that makes points that are not wrong – the Gentiles were invited into the Kingdom – but goes beyond Jesus’ intention.
So, file the symbolic approach under “Interesting” as we approach it more literally and compare the record of all the miraculous things we are seeing to see what we learn about Jesus and our faith.
First, the miracles the Gospel writers record tend to be times that make it clear that Jesus is the Messiah the Old Testament prophets predicted. Jesus doesn’t just wave a magic wand for fun when He is doing miracles. He’s making a point by establishing his credentials. I’ve mentioned this quite a few times in our series so far. Jesus is doing things that hyperlink to the Old Testament prophets and their prophecies of a coming Messiah.
Second, the Gospel writers make it really, really hard to create a template for how, when and why Jesus did miracles. The more miracles we see Jesus do, the more I will probably come back to this.
Disciples in the boat: Faith/trust full of fear and doubt. The disciples were amazed when what Jesus did actually worked. It reminds me of the man who said, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”[21]
Demoniac: The demons inside of him had knowledge of who Jesus was, but certainly not faith/trust. The Bible does not record what the possessed man thought about Jesus.
Bleeding woman: Her (apparently) superstitious faith focused on her healing, not the healer. She thought he could do it, but the text does not record that she had faith because she thought he was the Messiah.
Jairus: He had faith/trust in Jesus’ power or miracle-working ability; there is no record that he though of him as the Messiah or followed him. Jesus tells him to have faith, but unlike the blind men, Jairus does not respond that he actually does. Like the disciples, he was also completely astonished when it worked.
Little girl: She was dead, so…
Blind men: They had faith/trust that the prophesied Son of David could heal them. They are the closest in all of these incidents of people who believed Jesus was the prophesied Messiah.
Mute man: We don’t know the status of his faith/trust. Other people had to bring him, and we don’t know if they thought of Jesus as the Messiah or just a healer. Nevertheless, Jesus freed him from demonic possession.
Jesus does not use a template. You can’t magic or manipulate Jesus. Please, be free of the shame and legalism that comes from believing that if you scrunched your face and believed harder, God would do more for you. If that’s where you are coming from, everything that goes wrong is because you or others are weak, and everything that goes well is because you or others are strong. As if God will only work if you earn his attention/care or you’ve reached enough spiritual maturity to deserve his blessing.
The Bible is clear, again and again, that the faith we have is a gift; it’s not something we’ve grown on our own power.
1 Corinthians 12:4,9 “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them…to another faith[22]by the same Spirit… All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.”
Hebrews 12:2 “…looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith…”
John 6:29 “Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe[23] in Him whom He sent.’"
Romans 12:3 tells us that God has given every person "a measure of faith."
You don’t need to have a greater measure of faith than God has given to you. You can’t. I suspect that the faith Jesus commends in the passages today has to do with how people acted on the faith/belief they had been given. It has something to do with doing in response to believing with whatever measure had been given to them. I appreciate this summary from a commentator named Mclaren:
“There can be no faith so feeble that Christ does not respond to it. The most ignorant, self-regarding, timid trust may unite the soul to Jesus Christ. To desire is to have; and ‘whosoever will, may take of the water of life freely.’ If you only come to Him, though He have passed, He will stop.
If you come trusting and yet doubting, He will forgive the doubt and answer the trust. If you come to Him, knowing but that your heart is full of evil which none save He can cure, and putting out a lame hand-or even a tremulous finger-tip-to touch His garment, be sure that anything is possible rather than that He should turn away your prayer, or His mercy from you.”[24]
Let me mess up the template even more. The apostles did miracles, but we know of no instances in scripture where apostles used healing for each other. Paul didn't heal a fellow traveler (“I have left in Miletus sick”)[25], and rather than heal Timothy he tells him to take a little wine for his stomach (1 Timothy 5:23). Paul talks about an infirmity he had that he asked God to heal, and it was not healed. Paul did not beat himself up for a lack of faith; he saw in this a reminder from God that God’s grace was sufficient.[26]
Perhaps the early church fathers were on to something important in their symbolic readings. In addition to establishing Jesus as the Messiah, perhaps Jesus did physical healings as a way of pointing to power he had to heal people sick and dead in their sin and bring them back to spiritual life. Maybe that was always the point; “by grace are you saved through faith.”[27]This was always the primary message of the apostles, whose miracles established their credentials as ambassadors for a spiritual Kingdom on behalf of Jesus.
Bottom line: I wonder if the faith/trust Jesus is affirming here has a lot to do with running to God and not away from Him in the midst of the storms of life.[28] The disciples themselves will learn that not every storm in life ends calmly on this side of heaven; all but one were martyred. John the Baptist is about to find that out for himself. And when John asks, “Are you sure you’re the one?” Jesus simply points to his resume. Yes, he is.
An important aspect of faith is believing that, perhaps in this world but surely in the next, God will calm any storm that comes our way. Jesus has shown that all things are under His feet. To quote Tim Keller, there will come a day when all the bad that has been done to us will be undone.
Third, the compassion of Jesus should inform us: “Daughter.” “Child.” This is emotional and relational language. Jesus cares. I believe these miracles were intended primarily to establish that Jesus was, in fact, the long awaited Messiah that the prophets had foretold. In his tenderness, you see the compassion, the gentleness, the love of God on display through Jesus.
Yes, there are other times (particularly with the religious hypocrites) when he was blunt and confrontational. We will get to those incidents. But here is gentle Jesus on full display. People aren’t tools or stepping stones or inconveniences or pawns in his chess game or chemicals running around in a bag.[29] People are profoundly important. He addressed a woman he had never met as his daughter. The young girl is treated as equally important as the temple leader. The individuals in the kingdom matter to the King.
Fourth, notice that what begins with new life culminates in new testimony. For the disciples, it was their mission and lives. For the demoniac, the bleeding woman, the little girl, the blind and the mute, it was telling their neighbors.
It’s the time of year when graduates are pondering or panicking about what they are going to do with their life. What’s their purpose? Why are they hear? How can they live a life with meaning?
I can tell you right now the purpose of your life. Well, a purpose, but it’s more important than all the others. Tell the people around you who Jesus is, and what Jesus has done or you. You can do that with a degree or without, in any vocation, married or single, rich or poor.
You can fail on all the lofty earthly goals you had when you were young and still live a rich, profoundly meaningful life that ripples into eternity. Tell people who Jesus is and what he has done for you.
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[1] Quoted from Lightfoot by Geikie, "Life and Words of Christ." Vincent’s Word Studies
[2] Expositor’s Bible Commentary
[3] MacLaren’s Exposotion
[4] Like the demoniac, both stories deal with restoring peace and wholeness to those afflicted in ways that made them ceremonially unclean social outcasts.
[5] Barnes' Notes on the Bible
[6] Expositor’s Bible Commentary
[7] Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
[8] This is not merely “go with a blessing,” but enter into peace, “as the future element in which thy life shall move.” Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
[9] An edited-for-brevity quote from the early church father Chrysostom.
[10] MacLaren’s Expositions
[11] Ephrem the Syrian (306-373)
[12] So noted the early church father Jerome.
[13] Ambrose (339-397)
[14] CBS Tony Evans Study Bible
[15] “According to Isaiah, the messianic age is signified when ‘the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall hear (Is 35:5). These healings are a sign that Jesus is the awaited Messiah, as is the use of the title Son of David by the blind men, which expresses their faith in this truth.” (Orthodox Study Bible)
[16] Adam Clarke: “He charged them severely… to roar or storm with anger… on pain of his displeasure, not to make it as yet public.”
[17] Expositor’s Bible Commentary
[18] “Since the same ailment… appears elsewhere without suggestion of demonic activity (Mark 7:32-33), the connection presupposes a real ability Jesus had to distinguish between natural and demonic causes.” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary)
[19] ESV Global Study Bible
[20] Chrysostom (347-407)
[21] Mark 9:24
[22] “Faith (4102/pistis) is always a gift from God, and never something that can be produced by people. In short, 4102/pistis ("faith") for the believer is "God's divine persuasion" – and therefore distinct from human belief (confidence), yet involving it. The Lord continuously births faith in the yielded believer so they can know what He prefers, i.e. the persuasion of His will (1 Jn 5:4).” (HELPS Word Studies)
[23] Vincent's Word Studies “Faith is put as a moral act or work. The work of God is to believe. Faith includes all the works which God requires.”
[24] MacLaren’s Exposition
[25] 2 Timothy 4:20
[26] 2 Corinthians 12:9
[27] Ephesians 2:8-9
[29] The view of Anthon Cashmore. https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/cashmore/