“Little Girl, Get Up”

Mark 5:21-43; II Corinthians 8:7-15; Psalm 130

Psalm 130

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord .

² Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

³ If you, O Lord , should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

⁴ But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

⁵ I wait for the Lord , my soul waits, and in his word I hope;

⁶ my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.

⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord ! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.

⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

²¹ When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. ²²Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet ²³and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”

²⁴ So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. ²⁵Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. ²⁶She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” ²⁹Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” ³¹And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” ³²He looked all around to see who had done it. ³³But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ³⁴He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

³⁵ While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” ³⁶But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” ³⁷He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. ³⁸When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. ³⁹When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” ⁴⁰And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. ⁴¹He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”

⁴² And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. ⁴³He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

⁷ Now as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you—so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking. ⁸I do not say this as a command, but I am testing the genuineness of your love against the earnestness of others. ⁹For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. ¹⁰And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something— ¹¹now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means. ¹²For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has—not according to what one does not have. ¹³I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between ¹⁴your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. ¹⁵As it is written, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

The Sermon

It was worth leaving a large crowd that had gathered around him to go and heal a girl.

Not to most of the culture. Not to all members of that society. But to him, the healing of a girl was worth it. It was more than worth it.

My plan for this part of the sermon was that I was going to go through a bunch of examples of how in Biblical times, the value of a woman was often measured only in regard to her value as the potential, for all practical purposes property of a husband.

Girls were permanently left out of a personal stake in the system by the clear lines of inheritance—oldest male, then second oldest male, then third, etc.—and of course the authority of the marriage customs.

You may remember that the penalty for a man who violated a woman was that he had to marry his victim; at no point in that tragedy is her viewpoint taken into account, which makes it both a human tragedy and a travesty of justice.

So I was going to present kind of an overview of how in Biblical times it was hard for a female to publicly embrace her own identity as a worthy human being, made in the image of God—and then I was going to illustrate how Jesus spoke to women, healed women, and regarded their humanity as a given.

I was going to point out how radical an approach that was, in the Biblical world.

And then I happened to notice an undated article on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) website about what they called “raunch culture.”

“There are numerous ramifications of this omnipresent cultural trend that objectifies women… Women may choose to engage in raunch culture, but young girls emulate the…images to which they are prematurely exposed. This year the American Psychological Association released a report [which] explores how this phenomena [sic.] results in negative cognitive, emotional, mental, and physical health consequences…

“Girls increasingly tend to internalize the valuing of image over spiritual, emotional, mental and social prowess. Consequently our youngest women are encouraged by the culture to narrowly define themselves [by how they look, and narrowly define their future endeavors based only on hoping to be appealing to someone else, not by their own dreams and abilities]. It jeopardizes female children’s development of healthy body image and has a detrimental impact on self-esteem...

“Developmentally young girls and young women are susceptible, especially when adults fail to equip them to differentiate between the fantasy lives of celebrities and the real-life consequences of [those celebrities’] lifestyles…

“The Church has a responsibility to make the leadership development of girls a priority…We must offer examples of femininity not conformed to worldly expectations. Through our efforts, may girls embrace [a different idea of womanhood, so that] they will hear and see what it means and requires to be a woman of God.” [1]

I don’t think you need to be a radical feminist to appreciate the sentiments in that article.

But more to the point, I don’t think we need to go back 2,000 years to imagine a time when not everyone regarded girls and women as fully functioning human beings, fully entitled to the respect that is due everyone who is created in the image of God.

Maybe it took a parent to trust the truth of that reality.

Jairus was a leader of the synagogue, and the synagogue had not proven to be universally accepting of Jesus. But he was also a father, and his daughter was lying near death.

And to Jesus, it was worth leaving a large crowd that had gathered around him to go and heal a girl.

As if to underscore the point, on the way there, again a large crowd was pressing in on him.

Bear in mind that among the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if John is identified as the eagle because his eloquent words seem to soar through the heavens, Mark is the lion: he seems to like to sneak up on you and pounce with ferocious power. There are no unnecessary words with Mark. It’s by far the shortest of the four gospels because he just doesn’t decorate it. His grammar isn’t very good, and his sentences just tend to go noun, verb, noun, and every couple of verses he’ll toss in the word “immediately.”

But all of a sudden, here Mark starts to sound like Luke, the physician, who half the time when he’s introducing a character seems to want to give you the stat sheet with their full medical history. But listen to how Mark introduces the latest, seemingly incidental character:

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.”

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord …

I wait for the Lord , my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”

She came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak.

Immediately the hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

Usually when Mark talks it’s more like, “there was a blind guy and Jesus touched him and immediately he was healed.”

But something must be very important here for Mark to linger over it here like this, like he wants us to be sure to notice something. She’s a woman, with a woman’s ailment; there are no “gender role” observations to make about how she acts or what her motivations are, or what she has been socialized to do: there’s a physical problem—a “female problem,” as they say when they ask me not to ask any more questions about their upcoming trip to the hospital—and she knows who can heal her.

She won’t even trouble him by potentially making him uncomfortable in that society by asking him, an adult male, to have face to face communication with an adult female.

Immediately aware that power had gone out from him, Jesus turned around and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

He was on his way to respond to a father who is desperately seeking the help of the one person he believes can save the life of his daughter; and on the way, a woman comes to him for healing—and he says, your faith has made you well.

What she had, what she brought—her faith—had value. Jesus used the gifts of a woman to give her healing and restoration.

So much for regarding half of humankind only in light of how they can potentially serve the other half.

While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?”

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord .

Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications…

My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

And Jesus said to Jairus, “Do not fear, only believe.”

When they came to the house, having come this far with the father, now he brought in the father and mother, and a small inner circle of his disciples, and went in where the child was.

He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”

And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). And they were overcome with amazement. And as he had been doing after every miraculous healing, according to Mark, he ordered them that no one should know this, and he told them to give this girl, in whom you can kind of imagine he may have had maybe some little degree of pride, something to eat.

Let us affirm today the individual gifts and value of all women and of all God’s people. This is not a political statement, unless you want it to be.

As for the gospel of Christ, the new reality is that “second class citizens” are no less subject to healing than anyone else. And there is a new recognition of an eternal truth: that when it comes to the gifts God has given to God’s people, there are no second class citizens.

We are all subject to healing so that we may all serve all God’s creation.

As Paul said, “It is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, ‘The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.’”

Because anybody can hurt.

And everybody can be healed.

And everyone—all of us—are called to serve.

[1] “Recognize the Threat of ‘Raunch Culture’” http://www.pcusa.org/womensadvocacy/raunch.htm