Mark 5.21-43
The key to this passage is the verse immediately before it.
Having loosed a legion of demons from a Gerasene, Jesus commands the otherwise unnamed man, “Go home and to your friends, and tell them how much the LORD has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” The former demoniac in fact sets forth for the Decapolis where he proclaims— note his redaction, “how much Jesus had done for him.” It is the only instance in the Gospel of Mark where the Evangelist applies to Jesus the term reserved exclusively for Almighty God.
Thus, the passage across the Sea of Galilee is the fulcrum of Mark’s Gospel. In Christ's encounter with the Gerasene demoniac, the Evangelist unveils surpassingly more than the authority of Jesus over Satan and his minions.
When Jesus and the twelve return from the far side of the sea, a throng surrounds them on the shore. As the crowd presses into him, a nameless woman creeps close, bearing a sickness no could see. While Jesus follows the fearful father to his dying girl, the woman approaches him from behind, covertly squeezing herself through a blockade of shoulders and sandaled feet. Anonymous amidst the thrum of desperate need and idle curiosity, she stretches out her hand, as if to pick his pocket. Her fingertips cross an invisible threshold, as though she has passed through the Temple Veil. Instantly a discharge of power leaks from him. His body— contaminates seems the wrong word— her body. And she is healed.
See:
The nameless woman’s touch confirms the former demoniac’s speech.
This Jesus is God “deep in the flesh.”
This is the key to this story — indeed it is the key to all our stories.
Jesus is God deep in flesh.
Joseph Awuah-Darko is a twenty-eight year old artist from Ghana. From one of his nation’s wealthiest families, Joseph grew up in a mansion in Accra where his father kept a stable of horses imported from Argentina. Joseph was educated at elite schools, pampered by private maids, and fed by professional chefs. As a young adult, the self Joseph projected out into the world through his social media channels reflected this charmed life of privilege. His Instagram featured perfectly framed and meticulously filtered photographs of himself enjoying life.
But then eight months ago, just days before believers would sing “Joy to the World,” Joseph announced on Instagram that his public-facing self was false. For over a decade, he had been hiding a sickness no one could see— keeping it concealed because of its stigma. Joseph Darko does not have a unremitting bleed. He has an unrelenting chemical imbalance in his brain. In December on Instagram, he announced, “The weight of my invisible affliction has become unbearable.”
To the camera, his face wrenched in pain and his eyes soggy with tears, he said, “I’m just so tired. The chemical imbalance in my brain and living with bipolar disorder…I’m just tired. Yes, I’ve thought about this for a long time. Yes, I’ve talked it over with my friends and fiancé. I wake up every day in severe pain. And even when there are highs, the lows are unbearably bad.”
And then the apparently happy artist announced his desire to die, detailing his plans to relocate to the Netherlands and pursue medically-assisted suicide.
In the body of his social media post, Joseph cited the journalist Joan Didion in his farewell message:
“In her 1967 essay “Goodbye to All That,” Joan Didion writes, “I hurt people I cared about and insulted those I did not. I cried until I was not even aware that I was crying.” Words have never resonated with me more deeply. Unlike Didion who was a staunch atheist, I am someone who grew up Christian. So taking this step to share my decision to pursue euthanasia as a personal choice was tough, even taboo. I am not saying that life isn’t worth living. I am saying mine has become impossible. Bipolar exacerbates all this.
My decision may cross a taboo. But I am willing to touch what is forbidden. I’m ready to go home to God— I can’t think of a greater adventure.”
Joseph Darko streamed his suicide note on a Friday in Advent.
Instantly, a former model from Cameroon, a woman named Candace, reached out through the thicket of comments and replies. “Dear Joseph,” she wrote, "I want to honor the deep pain, courage, and vulnerability you have shared.”
But then Candace quickly pivoted away from Joseph and towards this audience. Bracketed by square purple icons of the cross, she attempted to grasp ahold of Joseph by issuing an exhortation:
“To my fellow Christians reading this: I humbly and urgently invite you to lift Joseph in prayer. Let us intercede for him, asking for the miraculous healing of his heart and mind. Joseph, as someone who has overcome years of mental health struggles and the weariness you describe, I want to remind you of the God who sees, loves, and restores—even in the darkest valleys. You have incredible worth, and there is a purpose for your life that extends far beyond the pain you have endured. I have unshakeable faith that God can work a miracle even in your troubled life. Fellow Christians, pray for a miracle.”
With Love and Faith,
Candace”
It did not happen instantly.
But quickly, something happened— power went forth.
As though Jesus is God deep in flesh in ways we cannot begin to fathom.
I wonder if she planned her anguished espionage? Did she choreograph her pick-pocket approach? How long did she conduct her stake-out on the shore, waiting for his boat to return from the far side of the sea? I wonder because this nameless woman is the only person in the Gospels who tries to secret a miracle from Jesus.
The ancient church father Cyril of Alexandria interrogates her actions by asking:
“Why does she draw near and touch the hem of his garment surreptitiously and not openly, hoping, as it were, to steal salvation from one who knew not of it? Why, tell me, was the woman careful to escape notice? What then was it that made this sick woman wish to remain hid?”
Why is she so clandestine about approaching Jesus?
She is so surreptitious because her touch is transgressive.
A touch from her is a trespass by her.
Biblical scholars refer to this passage as an intercalation; that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke alike all sandwich this story of the nameless woman in the middle of the story about Jairus’ dying girl. Thus Mark intends for us to interpret each of these stories by means of the other. For instance, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue is twelve years old; meanwhile, the nameless woman has suffered an unremitting hemorrhage for twelve years. The intercalation leads us to surmise that this woman’s unseen affliction is the chronic wound left by a miscarriage.
The scriptures do not name this woman with the hidden affliction, but they do supply a title. According to the commandments, she is a zavah, literally a female discharger who endures a long-term, indefinite genital flow. In fact, the opening words of Mark’s passage describe her using the exact legal terminology of the Septuagint’s translation of the Book of Leviticus. Consequently, the synagogue as well as the Temple itself is off limits to her. Jairus does not know her name because she is not allowed in his synagogue. To enter either the synagogue or the Temple would be to cross a taboo, to break a stigma. “Better is one day in your courts,” the Psalmist sings of the Temple in Jerusalem, “than a thousand elsewhere.” But for four thousand three hundred and eighty days, this nameless woman’s hidden affliction has prohibited her from approaching the LORD in his dwelling place for even a moment’s respite.
Indeed, according to the commandments she is forbidden far more than entrance onto holy ground. As the Book of Leviticus stipulates, “Whoever she touches shall be unclean.” In other words, she has mourned the loss of a child without the benefit of another’s embrace. She has wept without a friend’s shoulder on which to cry. She has grieved without a steady hand to hold beside her baby’s grave.
She is more than invisibly sick.
She is socially isolated.
And it has become unbearable.
She sneaks up like a purse-snatcher in the subway because, while she still bleeds, she is not supposed to touch anyone. She is not supposed to touch anything anyone might touch. The crowd itself should be as off limits to her as the Temple Veil. She should avoid bumping into Simon Peter just as she would be loathe to enter the Holy of Holies. If she accidentally runs into Jairus and then the worried father subsequently touches his little girl whose life hangs in the balance…
If they knew her affliction and if they knew her plan, then they would know she has potentially placed upon them all a terrific burden.
Typhoid Mary did not know she was a carrier of contagion.
But this nameless woman, it is as dangerous as it is desperate.
Back in December, many mental health experts responded to Joseph Awuah-Darko’s social media farewell with alarm and disgust, particularly given his large audience. They accused him of being selfishly reckless for suggesting, as he did, that suicide is a legitimate answer for people with a treatable disorder. Still others worried of the danger he posed to other people, romanticizing suicide to those vulnerable to such desperate gestures. The stigma exists for the sake of safety. “My daughter is in a fragile, emotional and impressionable state,” the mother of a suicidal young woman wrote to Joseph, adding: “You are not helping anyone with this content. I’m begging you to shut it down. Please. Before you take my daughter with you.”
Such dismay and consternation is entirely legitimate— righteous, in fact.
Nevertheless!
Despite the response Joseph Darko’s heedless gesture may have deserved, a merciful surprise happened. Three days after Candace Nkoth posted a plea for her brothers and sisters in Jesus to pray for Joseph— hear it: on the third day— thousands of people from around the world responded by reaching out, getting in touch with Joseph, and inviting him to supper.
Since he announced his desire to die in December, Joseph has received over a hundred and fifty dinner invitations from strangers heeding Candace’s prayer request. He has boarded trains to visit homes in Berlin, Paris, Antwerp and Milan. He has traveled to cities all over the Netherlands and to dozens of Amsterdam neighborhoods. Those who don’t cook have joined him at bistros and even a Burger King.
As of the end of July, Joseph confessed that he had acquired something else unexpected in addition to hundreds of dinners invitations: a reason to live.
After he defeats the Philistines, King David reclaims the ark of the covenant upon which the LORD invisibly dwelt. David transports the ark to Jerusalem with the fanfare of a military parade. At a certain point in the procession, however, the oxen pulling the cart on which the ark rested “stumble.”
The oxen stumble. The oxcart rocks. The ark tips over. And the attendant marching beside the oxcart, a man named Uzzah, reaches out his hand to steady the ark of God to keep it from falling. Uzzah but touches the hem of the ark of the LORD and instantly power goes forth from the ark and the glory of the LORD strikes Uzzah dead.
Jesus is that God deep in the flesh.
Just so—
In touching Jesus, this nameless not only risks public shame and righteous anger, she also risks her life. Like most taboos, the stigma is in place for her safety. She may as well be committing suicide.
What happens instead however is merciful surprise.
In spite of her transgressive touch, despite her trespass, regardless of her reckless desperation, power proceeds from Jesus and instantly she is healed.
In §64 of his Church Dogmatics, entitled “The Royal Man,” the theologian Karl Barth criticizes the Protestant Reformers for not turning to the miracles of Jesus as evidence for their emphasis on grace alone.
Observing that the nameless woman who trespasses by touching the LORD is cured rather than killed, Barth comments:
“We may well ask with amazement how it was that Luther and Calvin could overlook this dimension of the Gospel, which is so clearly attested in the New Testament— its power as a message of mercifully omnipotent and unconditionally complete liberation from suffering. How could Protestantism as a whole possibly overlook the fact that it was depriving even its specific doctrines of justification and sanctification of so radiant a basis by not looking very differently at the miracles of Jesus, by not considering the free grace which appears in them.”
After two sisters served him a Persian diner, a recipe of their mother’s, Joseph admitted that he had been in the midst a depressive episode. “I cried heavily during the latter two hours of the dinner,” he posted, “before they sent me home in a cab with a bouquet of flowers. All I did was show up and they held so much space for me. Maybe there’s hope for all of us.” Meanwhile, the hosts who have received Joseph as their guest frequently express feeling buoyed by “his readiness to speak with candor about his innermost turmoil.” One woman in Rotterdam served Joseph Indonesian fare prepared by her mother, and served in Tupperware. As she described her table fellowship with Joseph, “I’ve also struggled with this in my own life a little bit. That’s why I love to listen. It’s a kind of talk therapy in reverse.”
That is, Joseph is not the only one who has discovered a needful community.
As soon as she touches the hem of his garment she is healed. “Straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up;” Mark reports, “and she felt in her body that she was healed of her plague.”
Yet her story does not stop where her affliction ends.
There is more to the miracle.
Sensing that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turns to the crowd, “Who touched me?” Again, this is God deep in the flesh. It is not the case he has no idea who touched him. He is testing her. He is seeing if she will trust him enough to come forward. Remember. She does not have friends to dig a hole in the roof for her. She does not have anyone who can throw themselves down at Jesus’s feet and plead, “My friend is at the point of death: I pray thee, that thou come and lay thy hands on her, that she may be made whole.” She sneaks up and touches Jesus because she does not have anyone who will take Jesus to her.
She is not just chronically sick. She is sorely alone. And God did not make her to be either! If Jesus merely staunched her wound, she still would not be whole.
“Who touched me,” Jesus asks.
And note how Mark reports that Jesus turns around and looks right at her, “And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing.” He knows who touched him. But he wants to see if she will reveal herself to them.
Why?
Because if this woman is going be healed of what truly ails her, then Jesus must undo her habit of hiding.
“Who touched me?”
Knowing her trespass, she falls down with fear and trembling. She tells the truth, Mark writes. She says in front of everyone, “Jesus healed me. I touched him. I trespassed against him because I had this sickness no one could see— this stigma— and I could bear no longer.”
She unveils the truth. And that act of trust and revelation— that is the faith which Jesus says saves her.
Notice: Jesus does not say “Your faith has healed you.” She has already been healed. Jesus says, “Your faith has made you whole.” And praising her faith, Jesus remedies her final lack. He gives her a name. He calls her “Daughter.”
And by giving her a name, Jesus in fact gives all of them a person for whom they can care in his name; so that, what is grace for her can be joyful obedience for them.
In his essay “On Becoming Man: Some Aspects,” the theologian Robert Jenson argues that if the LORD Jesus had stopped short with the woman he calls “Daughter,” healing only her hemorrhage and not her wound of loneliness, then Jesus would have left her less than human.
Jenson writes:
“The mutuality of human existence means that each of us is himself only as part of a larger whole he makes with others— only as an organ of a body. That I am an organ of a community is not a limitation of my humanity; it is its possibility.”
Consider:
Jesus is the first person who has touched her in twelve years.
Mark does not name the woman at the beginning of this story because no one in the little town of Capernaum— the city is smaller than the footprint of the church— knows her name. Do they even recall her lost child? She has gotten into the habit of hiding because no one in the community has gone looking for her. She is able to sneak up on Jesus because they no longer even see her. They have abandoned her to shame and isolation. They may not know her unseen affliction but they certainly know she is alone.
They have left her to be less than human; in turn, they have become a corpse of the body they are meant to be. Her desperate gesture is an indictment of their failure of faithfulness. Therefore, there is more to the miracle.
Jesus does not simply staunch her bleed. Jesus does not merely restore her to the body of believers. Precisely by restoring to her to them, Jesus resurrects this dead community.
They don’t even know her name anymore.
But Jesus gives her to their care.
They do not deserve her!
Just so, he gives them new life.
Like Barth says, if you want proof that God is gracious, look no further than Jesus’ merciful surprises.
Musing on the long string of last suppers that have kept Joseph Darko alive, a journalist for the NY Times writes, “If this is a grift, it might be the world’s lamest. Hosts typically cover Mr. Awuah-Darko’s travel expenses, but he doesn’t receive any money from the meals. So what exactly is Mr. Awuah-Darko up to? What do we call it? Is this a piece of performance art? Unconventional psychiatric treatment? A long goodbye, with catering?”
What is this?
What do we call it?
We know.
It is Jesus.
It is God deep in the flesh.
A few Advents ago, after the Christmas Pageant, one of the children in the cast came up to me in the fellowship hall. “I have a question,” she said.
“What’s your question?”
“So, Jesus is alive?”
I nodded.
She thought about it for a moment.
Clearly this hadn’t been her question.
“Well,” she said, “if Jesus is alive, then how come we can’t see him?”
I knelt over and I leaned in towards her and I whispered, like this was a miracle too delicate to say loudly.
“Actually,” I said, “you can see him; in fact, you did see him just last Sunday.”
“I did?” I nodded.
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“He was that bread on the table and the cup next to it. Jesus is alive and that’s the form his body takes now.”
She nodded.
“Oh, cool,” she said.
And then she ran off as quickly as a magi from the manger.
But of course, I was only half right.
I had not dared her to reach all the way out and touch the mystery.
“Now you are the body of Christ,” the scriptures proclaim, “and individually members of it.” As much as loaf and cup, Jesus is present to me— incarnate for me— in the body called you. This is exactly why the apostle Paul commands us that before we come to the altar table we “discern the body.” Before you eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, Paul instructs, apprehend that the LORD Jesus is already here for you, with you, alongside you as the body of believers.
Jesus is God deep in our flesh.
Jesus is God deep in our flesh; we are the body of the Risen Jesus.
Not only is this good news, it is a life-saving reminder.
Because notice how this nameless woman’s story ends. While she is being healed, while she is being made whole, and while the community that has neglected her is being raised up— while they’re all receiving a gratuitous miracle, a merciful surprise— Jairus’s daughter has died.
Remember, it is an intercalation. The sandwiched stories are supposed to teach us. In this case, this is life on this side of Resurrection. A woman will be healed while a father will grieve. This is why when the apostle Paul writes about how Christians are to live with one another he counsels, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Which is to say, in the community of faith there will be a simultaneity of people who have cause to praise God and people who have reason for lamentation.
Just the other Sunday—
As the body of Christ came forward to receive the body of Christ, I noticed:
Little Konnor Eddinger, who has been in occupational therapy, walked to the loaf and cup all by himself for the first time.
Behind Konnor, with her hands held out like a beggar and her bald head wrapped right in a scarf, was Patricia, who is still waiting for a miracle that will arrest her breast cancer.
Behind Patricia was Brad, dressed in the brown suit he wears on the days he guests on CNN; Brad has been cancer-free for three years.
Behind Brad was Mary, whose daughter— despite Mary’s entreaties— will not speak to her.
For every lonely woman Jesus names “Daughter,” there will be a Jairus and his lost child. There is always going to be a mix and a muddle of rejoicing and weeping. The scriptures say joy and lamentation just are the soundtrack of the church's life together. The Triune God raises us from the dead; he does not keep us from dying. In Christ, God becomes human not so we don’t have to be human. The promise of the gospel is not that Jesus excludes us from suffering. The promise of the gospel is that Jesus includes himself in our suffering. He places himself deep in the flesh. So deep in fact, your neighbor is now no less Mary’s boy than the bread on the table.
The truth is, we are all just barely living from one supper to the next.
So come to the table.
But before you do, discern the body of Jesus and know.
Whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone.
This is the key to our Story.
