Fear, Faith, and Healing Sermon, Part 1
Rev. Meighan Pritchard
Here’s how the sermon today is going to work: I will start us off by unpacking this rich and resonant text (the English major in me is delighted), and then Adina will pick up with what this scripture might have to say to us in this service in 2026.
And here’s our vocabulary word for the day: intercalated. The writer of the Gospel of Mark loves to make intercalated texts, which means that their structure is like a sandwich. You start with one slice of bread, then you add some filling made out of something different, and then you slap on another slice of that same bread. In the case of this reading, we start with Jairus, the head of the synagogue, pleading with Jesus to heal his daughter. That’s the first slice of bread. Then we switch to the woman with the hemorrhages. That’s the filling. And then we go back and finish the story of Jesus healing the sick girl. Second slice of bread.
Setting up a text this way suggests strongly that these two stories have something to do with each other, so let’s look for commonalities or resonances or contrasts. Both stories are, of course, about females in need of healing. We know that in that patriarchal system, women were usually shunted to the background, but here they are the subjects. In fact, we see the transition that brings women into focus.
Jairus, a man of importance in the community because he heads the local synagogue, runs up to Jesus and throws himself at Jesus’ feet saying, “Please, please, please, heal my daughter.” He dares to stop Jesus by coming before him and stating his desperate request. Jairus is male; he has standing in the community; he expects to be heard.
The woman with the flow of blood, in contrast, is of course female, and she’s poor. She is considered unclean according to Jewish law and isn’t even supposed to be mingling with people. She’s supposed to stay out of sight. She has spent all her money on doctors but only got worse. And if she’s been bleeding for 12 years, she has such anemia that she would be exhausted all the time. But like Jairus, she, too, is desperate. Only she doesn’t dare even try to get Jesus’ attention. So she sneaks up behind him in the crowd and just touches his cloak.
And this is the pivot point, where females are suddenly front and center. Jesus literally turns around, so the woman is now in front of him. He says, “Who touched my clothes?” And the disciples, as usual not understanding what he’s on about, say the literal answer, “What do you mean ‘Who touched my clothes?’ You’re surrounded by people! Everyone touched your clothes.” Jesus ignores them. The woman now has her turn to fall to Jesus’ feet, just like Jairus, to explain the situation. She is terrified. But Jesus says, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.” And he calls her daughter. He does not castigate her for being an unclean woman touching a man who is not in her family, thereby making him unclean as well. No: he brings her into his family. Daughter, your faith has made you well. He looks her square in the face. He sees her, which may be the first time in 12 years that anyone has truly seen and understood her. He heals her and blesses her. Your faith has made you well.
Perhaps you picked up that the woman and the girl both have something to do with the number 12. The woman has been bleeding for 12 years and finally gets to stop; the girl is 12 years old, which means she’s about to start her monthly bleeding, so she’s almost marriageable age, ready to become a woman, a wife, a mother. But I imagine when you hear the number 12, your thoughts go elsewhere. Maybe the go to the Seahawks. But if we’re talking about the Bible, there are 12 main disciples. There are 12 tribes of Israel. If we step back a bit and look at this story in a larger metaphorical framework, maybe Jesus is talking about healing the 12 tribes of Israel. It’s a thought, anyway.
Stopping to heal the woman has introduced just enough of a delay that we get a news update about the daughter: she has died. But Jesus says to the faither, “Do not fear, only believe.” Like the woman who touched his cloak: she had to be bold and move through her fear, and her faith made her well.
When Jesus arrives at the house, the paid mourners are already outside wailing and making a big ruckus. Jesus says the girl is just sleeping. The mourners laugh at him and mock him. Just as he ignored the disciples when they didn’t get what he was saying, he ignores the mourners and bars them from the room where the girl lies. Don’t need that kind of energy in this healing space. Because the key in both of these healings is belief. “Do not fear, only believe.”
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Fear, Faith, and Healing Sermon, Part 2
Adina Meyer
Jesus sent folks away. In Mark, there’s this almost humorous contrast between these clueless people and this sort of wise, superior Jesus.
Mark often depicts a situation where the disciples don’t understand what’s going on, and Jesus rolls his eyes and says what am I gonna do with these people? In this case, Jesus says, “This girl is only sleeping,” and people laugh, and he sends them away. As Meighan said, “Don’t need that kind of energy in the healing space.”
Jesus tells the father of the dead girl not to be afraid, just believe.
When I worked in Harborview as a chaplain intern, I saw a lot of people who were at the point of death and their families as Christians had heard these words don’t be afraid, just have faith. They were waiting for Jesus to perform a miracle and restore their loved ones to life and health. These were people who had been in serious accidents, had traumatic head injuries and so on. I never saw a miraculous healing happen. Some of my friends from seminary told me that they have seen such miraculous healings, but I haven’t.
This contrast that Mark draws between these people who don’t understand what Jesus is doing, and Jesus himself performing these dramatic miracles—healing a woman who’s had a hemorrhage for years, raising a little girl to life—is a contrast that draws attention to Jesus as an individual.
This focus on the one individual, the Messiah, the son of God, to bring an answer from the outside is a natural human tendency. Just before Jesus ascends to heaven, the disciples ask, “Are you now going to restore the kingdom of Israel?” They—and we—want Jesus to come swooping in and save us. This may lead to a community putting a focus on one person—typically its leader, its pastor—as someone who is going to heal or resurrect us. After all, the word pastor means Shepherd, and Jesus was the original good Shepherd. Jesus at one point feels sorry for a group because they are like sheep who have lost a Shepherd.
Almost exactly two years ago, Keystone had lost its beloved pastor Rich Gamble, who went to Missouri to take care of his mom. Our beloved Meighan Pritchard, Pastor of Prospect, has just announced she will be leaving Prospect shortly. The loss of these beloved leaders can lead to a sense of fear: what are we going to do without this person who is supposed to lead us?
But one thing I noticed about this story is Jesus actually doesn’t go into Jairus’s house alone. He sends the crowds away, he sends the paid mourners away, but he doesn’t send everyone away. He keeps Peter, James, and John, his dear friends, close by him. He doesn’t need a lot of people, but he needs that small community—because faith and healing and miracles come in these small communities.
All three of our little communities, Saint Paul, Keystone and Prospect, are very small churches. It’s a trend happening right at this time. There are thousands of tiny little mainline Protestant denominations operating in churches that were built last century when church was a thing and everybody went to church on Sunday. Keystone remodeled its sanctuary in 1957 and built a sanctuary that would hold 150 people. They turned the 1914 church into a giant learning center full of classrooms for children.
Now we continue to operate these buildings, and we don’t have a lot of children—at least Keystone doesn’t. Our secretary, Lisa, just had a baby and she jokes that she’s been trying to re-populate the children’s program single-handedly.
But seriously, in this consumerist, capitalist society, the number one value is growth—bigness—and so when we see our little tiny church populations, we feel we don’t measure up. We hear all the time about church growth; we hear about these mega churches, super sized, thriving, with dynamic lead pastors and teams of worship leaders and education directors and small groups and Bible studies, and we feel less than—we feel fearful. What will happen to us?
But in this story, Jesus sends the crowds away, and he keeps by his side only those people who are close to him.
Yesterday Keystone had a retreat and about 20 of us went over to Saint Mary on the Lake to have a day of discernment with a wonderful Quaker facilitator named Emily who asked us to consider deep questions like “What is the good news that Keystone proclaims? To whom do we proclaim the good news? How are we already proclaiming this good news? How are we called to proclaim this good news now and in the future?”
The answers were remarkable. The good news ranged from deep theological truths like God loves each and every person to concrete day-to-day pieces of good news like Keystone has a building you can use for your community organizing, for your efforts towards peace and justice. In these small communities, we have found faith; we have found truth, and I believe in these little churches that are very different from each other in character – Keystone, Saint Paul’s, and Prospect—we find more than faith and truth; we find belonging, community, and family. This is the way Jesus invites us and heals us.
After Jesus heals the woman with the hemorrhage, he calls her daughter. He invites her into the family. This woman has been ritually unclean, literally unable to touch anyone without making them ritually unclean. Saint Paul’s serves meals to people, many of whom are deemed un clean – often literally because they are unhoused and have no place to clean themselves up, but also people who sometimes look and act scary, people who nice Ballard neighbors may not want hanging around the sidewalk, but Saint Paul’s calls them to come in and have a meal, and serves them.
The little girl that Jesus raises from the dead he calls “Talitha.” Now this does mean little girl, but it’s really a nickname that a parent would call a child, like “Sweetie, get up.” “Get up, kiddo.” It’s what a parent or grandparent would call a child, so once again, Jesus is claiming this little girl as a family member. Prospect works to prepare backpacks for children to take home with them over the weekend where they might be in a home without much to eat. The backpacks contain nourishing and easy to prepare foods to prevent these kids from going hungry.
Jesus doesn’t act alone, pastors don’t act alone. We need communities around us – communities of people who are like family to us and who will support one another and the communities we serve. The communities to whom we proclaim the Good News. At the end of the day yesterday, Emily, the facilitator, listed all of the ways in which we either already proclaim the good news or ways in which we may next be called, and she invited people to come forward and put their names next to those actions.
The entire day I was a participant with the community rather than the leader, and when it was time for us to put our names up, the only place I put my name was “worship service,” because my primary job that I’ve been called to as pastor is to curate the worship services—but even that I don’t do alone. I have Elliot and Yigit, the deacons, Jo Winston, who curates the physical altar space most of the time, and so forth.
I was deeply moved when I saw each person in the room come forward and write their names by these action verbs, and Emily said these people are responsible for doing these things. She told me, “You don’t have to call them up and tell them oh you signed up for such and so.” She said to everyone, now there’s gonna be either two things: you’re either gonna do it, or you’re not gonna do it, but anybody who put their name up there is responsible to take that initiative.
We ended the day with communion to remind us that we are the body of Christ in these small communities. The ways in which we serve others, the ways in which we proclaim the good news to our communities, will vary, depending on the character of our little community, but we don’t have to look to any particular leader or pastor to bring us there. We’re all in this together.
So I will say to you what Jesus said to these people whom he healed: Family, your faith makes you whole. So kiddo, beloved – get up! Amen.