Healing touch of the Master

Dear Friends:  In preparation for this week's message, please take a look at Mark 5:21-43; although not all of this is part of the lectionary reading for this week, the reader really needs it all to get the jist of what is going on.

 

The story is a shorter narrative inside a longer narrative.  The shorter narrative concerns a woman who has a long-standing bleeding problem, and she seek out help from Jesus.  But this has another story wrapped around it, namely, the story of Jairus, whose little daughter is deathly ill.  He too needs the healing touch of the Master.

 

Both stories are a study in contrasts.  Jairus is an important and respected figure in the religious community.  The woman is an outcast, poor and without a supportive family structure.  Her bleeding ailment makes her religiously unclean, so she is cut off from all contact with others.  Jairus is a strong leader; he strides right up to Jesus to ask for help.  The woman merely reaches out to touch the hem of His garment, all the while trying to be secret about the whole thing, because she is unclean, and cannot touch another person.

 

But both have a need.  And both have the faith enough to seek Jesus out, and they both receive the healing touch of the Master.  The best way to follow the story line here is to watch the hands of the people involved.  They go from the outstretched, needy, begging hands of Jairus asking for help, to the fearful touch of the woman afraid of getting caught but still needing the Master, to the compassionate hands of Jesus placed upon the woman and then Jairus' daughter.  If we watch the hands we see out own story.  We see that in desperation, or in any situation for that matter, when we reach out to Christ in faith, His compassionate touch is always there to bring healing to our lives.

 

But there's still more to the story.  Come join us on Sunday, and we'll talk about it!