(Audio version; Music: "We Cry Out" by Brian & Jenn Johnson--WorshipMob--Real Live Music)
Introduction
So many
awful things have occurred around the world this past week. Paris has endured
multiple terror attacks from Islamic terrorists apparently affiliated with
Al-Qaeda and the Islamic terror group Boko Haram continues to kill thousands in
Northern Africa generally and Nigeria specifically. For all my brothers and
sister is France and North Africa, my heart breaks for you. I am praying that
God would comfort you during this terrible trial. And I am praying the God
would protect you from the growing and migrating pestilence that is Islam. And
of course there have been countless other atrocities and injustices abroad and
here in America. Some, perhaps even most, were perpetrated specifically by the
hand of evil. Many others still were the result of desperation—maybe more than
you might have thought at first. There were tragedies that occurred that didn’t
have anger or malice at their root but only desperation. There was one in
particular that caught my attention that occurred in San Francisco. A man
entered a restricted parking area and when he was confronted by police
officers, he drew a plastic play gun from his waistband and pointed it at the
police officers who shot and killed him. The man knew exactly what he was
doing. In a note he left behind, he admitted to using the police to kill
himself. He wrote in the note, “You ended the life of a man who was too much of
a coward to do it himself.” The man made clear in his note that the police did
exactly what they were trained to do and he relied on that to fulfill his
death-wish. However, he said something else to the police officers that I
wanted to focus on as part of this week’s lesson. He wrote, “I am so sad and I
am so lonely. There is no place for me here. Please, don’t blame yourself. I
used you. I took advantage of you. I am so lost and I am so hopeless. God made
a mistake with me. I shouldn’t be here.” Desperation takes many forms. For
Muslims, desperation takes the form of becoming martyrs in the quest to protect
the honor of a false prophet and please a false god all with the false hope of
earning their way into heaven. For others, desperation takes the form of giving
up on living with the hope of quieting the internal voices that say, “You are
worthless.” “You are a mistake.” “God doesn’t love you.” “You have no place in
this world.” “The world would be a better place without you in it.” For others,
however, desperation takes a very different form. For some, desperation takes
the form of taking a chance on reaching out to the one true God who desperately
wants to be in relationship with us for all eternity and who wants us to know
that He will stop and nothing to show us how valuable we are to Him. For these
people, desperation gets turned inside out and is redeemed into a life of hope
and blessing. Desperation becomes like the dust that is trampled under the
dancing feet of those who have been restored to new life. When desperation
abandons pride and position and asks for new life that only the Creator can
grant, miracles become possible. Desperation can take life, it can give up on
life, or it can ask for new life. From out of a crowd, a shaky hand reaches out
in faith to touch the hem of the garment worn by the Creator in An Act Of Desperation with the hope of
new life.
Subject Text
Mark 5:24b-34
24bA large crowd
followed and pressed around him. 25And a woman was there who had
been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26She
had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she
had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27When she heard
about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because
she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29Immediately
her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her
suffering. 30At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked,
“Who touched my clothes?” 31“You see the people crowding against
you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32But
Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33Then the woman,
knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with
fear, told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, “Daughter, your
faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed
from your suffering.”
Context
At the end
of Chapter 4, Jesus and the disciples crossed over the Sea of Galilee from
Capernum on the way to the region of the Gerasenes. On the way, the disciples,
having gone ahead of Jesus, faced a violent storm but witnessed Jesus walking
to them on the water in the midst of the storm. After a failed attempt by Peter
to get out of the boat and walk to Jesus on the water, Jesus climbs aboard the
boat and with a word silences the storm. Once they reach the Gerasene shore, a
man possessed by the evil spirit, Legion, meets Jesus and the disciples.
Defeated by the power of Jesus, Legion asks to be sent into a nearby herd of
pigs. Jesus grants the spirit permission and once Legion enters the herd of
pigs, the lot of them stampeded down a steep embankment into the Sea of Galilee
and drown. Frightened by the power and authority of Jesus, the people who
resided in the town and countryside pleaded with Jesus to leave the region. Never
one to impose Himself on anyone who rejects Him, Jesus sets course back toward
Capernum. Upon landing at Capernum, Jesus is immediately surrounded by a large
crowd of people. Among those people was a ruler from one of the synagogues
named Jairus. In An Act Of Desperation,
Jairus falls at Jesus’ feet and explains that his little girl is dying and
Jesus is the last hope of saving his daughter’s life. Jairus confesses his
belief that if Jesus would only come to his house and lay hands on the girl,
she would be healed. Jesus would eventually make it through the throng of
people but not before the little girl dies. The servants of the house reach
Jairus with the news and suggest that it is unnecessary for Jesus to come
because it was too late. But with Jesus, the Author of life, the Creator of all
living things, it’s never too late. True enough the girl had died, but with a
word, Jesus brought her back to life and presented her as a gift back to her
parents. An Act Of Desperation set
the stage for Jesus to prove he had power over life and death. There was,
however, something that happened among the crowd of people on the way to Jairus’
house that caused the delay that set the stage for the divine intervention that
occurred at Jairus’ house. That’s where our Subject Text comes in. With all eyes focused on a plea by a
desperate Jairus, an outcast finds her way through the mass of people and in An Act Of Desperation does the
unthinkable.
Text Analysis
24bA large crowd followed and pressed
around him.
It is
unclear what the text means in v. 24b
by a “large crowd” followed and pressed around Jesus. It seems fairly
subjective but I suppose a “large crowd” could have been fifty people but
remember that Jesus, on more than one occasion, taught and fed thousands at a
time. It doesn’t seem like a significant matter except for the mysterious woman
who appeared to be undiscovered until the fateful moment when she was exposed
by Jesus. You’ll soon realize why she perhaps picked this particular moment to
take a chance; to step out in faith in An
Act Of Desperation. What better way to hide than in a large crowd of people
surrounded by a mass of confusion? For her, being noticed meant that there was
no way she would ever get close enough to touch even the hem of Jesus’ garment
and at this point, that’s all she wanted to do.
25And a woman was there who had
been subject to bleeding for twelve years.
Although we
never learn the woman’s name, we find out in v. 25 that she suffers from a serious medical condition. The text
refers to her condition as being “subject to bleeding” for twelve years!
Without being overly graphic, it is likely that she was suffering from some
kind of menstrual or uterine disorder. In other words, she had been
menstruating for twelve years! As a man, I can’t even imagine how awful that
might be in the context of our present day culture and as bad as that condition
might be in our modern society, I promise it was exponentially worse in this
woman’s culture. In our culture, at least in the West, this woman’s condition
would be a private matter between her and her doctor. In the culture of our Subject Text, this woman was an
outcast; she was perpetually “unclean!” Let me explain what is happening to her
based on God’s instruction for women who are menstruating found in the Book of
the Law:
Leviticus 15:19-31
19“ ‘When a woman has
her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period
will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. 20Anything
she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be
unclean. 21Whoever touches her bed must wash his clothes and bathe
with water, and he will be unclean till evening. 22Whoever
touches anything she sits on must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he
will be unclean till evening. 23Whether it is the bed or anything
she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, he will be unclean till evening. 24If
a man lies with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be
unclean for seven days; any bed he lies on will be unclean. 25When a
woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly
period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she
will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her
period. 26Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be
unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will
be unclean, as during her period. 27Whoever touches them will be
unclean; he must wash his clothes and bathe with water, and he will be unclean
till evening. 28When she is cleansed from her discharge, she must
count off seven days, and after that she will be ceremonially clean. 29On
the eighth day she must take two doves or two young pigeons and
bring them to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. 30The
priest is to sacrifice one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt
offering. In this way he will make atonement for her before the LORD for the
uncleanness of her discharge. 31You must keep the
Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in
their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place, which
is among them.’ ”
I want you
to take moment and think about this instruction. We don’t live in the age of
the Law. We live in the age of grace so it can be difficult to wrap our minds
around this instruction from God. Let me try to summarize the condition of this
woman’s life: Every bed she slept in was perpetually unclean. Anything she sat
on would be unclean. She, as a person, was considered unclean. Anyone who came
in contact with her physically or who might have come into contact with
anything she made unclean would have become unclean themselves. Since her
bleeding never stopped, she never got to experience the atonement sacrifices
described in vv. 28-30. She was perpetually unclean and v. 31 tells us what
that meant—she had to be separate from the rest of the community. The text
doesn’t tell us if she had a husband or children but if she did, she had an
obligation not to contaminate them with her uncleanness. Nevertheless, she had
to be very careful not to risk the contamination of anyone unsuspecting in the
community through her uncleanness. It is possible that any time she was in
public, she had to announce that she was unclean or possibly wear some type of
identifying clothing so that she could be avoided. Are you starting to get a
picture of what this woman’s life must have been like? Her condition
essentially places her in a state of solitary confinement everywhere she went.
She could not be an active participant in her community and more importantly
she could not participate in any practices involving the Temple—worship,
sacrifices, offerings, etc. She was probably in the worst place a person could
be in her culture. “According to the Torah, a woman was unclean for seven days
after her monthly period, but if she had a protracted gynecological problem, as
does this woman, she remained unclean throughout its duration. Anyone who came
into contact with her during menstruation would be banished until evening.
Josephus’s [the Jewish historian] testimony that ‘the temple was closed to
women during the menstruation’ indicates that this particular Torah ruling was
carefully observed in Jesus’ day. Accordingly, a menstruating woman—and whoever
touched her—was banished from the community until purification.”[1]
26She had suffered a great deal
under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of
getting better she grew worse.
I’m not much
of a go-to-the-doctor sort of guy, much to the chagrin of my wife and kids. I’m
not particularly afraid of doctors for any reason, I’m just not a huge advocate
of running to the doctor with every ache and pain that comes along especially
as I get older. Nevertheless, when things get bad enough, I’m not averse to
visiting the doctor. Well we learn in v.
26 that this woman wasn’t averse to seeking help from doctors either.
However, the text tells us that instead of helping her, the doctors only
managed to intensify her suffering. Already a social outcast, she spent
everything she had on doctors to help her get better but instead she only got
worse and now she is financially destitute as well. Her condition went from bad
to worse to desperate. Twelve years of traveling from one doctor to the next
yielded nothing more than more of the same except that now she no longer had any
financial resources either. “The woman suffers physically, living every day
with the signs of our decaying mortality as the blood essential for life drains
from her body. She suffers socially and psychologically, knowing that she is a
contaminant. Her plight is compounded because she has become impoverished after
wasting her living on the fruitless cure of physicians. The failure underscores
that Jesus can succeed when other sources of healing have failed, and it costs
nothing except a bold faith.”[2]
27When she heard about Jesus, she
came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28because she
thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.”
There’s an idiom
we use here in America that says, “Desperate times call for desperate
measures.” Where do you turn when you have nowhere left to turn? What do you try
when you think you’ve tried everything? Remember what I said at the beginning,
‘Desperation can take life, it can give up on life, or it can ask for new
life.’ Put yourself in the shoes of this woman. What would you have done? Would
you have been angry? Angry enough to take the life of the doctor that took your
last dime with the promise of a cure, only to leave you in an even worse
condition? Would you be depressed? You’ve been cut off from the community.
You’ve been cut off from the temple which means, at least in her mind, that you
are cut off from God. If you had a family, you’d be cut off from them. We
weren’t created to live solitary lives; lives of isolation. So, especially
after twelve years, would it really be that hard to imagine that there were
times when she was convinced that she would have been better off ending her
miserable life? But vv. 27-28 tell
us that her desperation pushed her to neither of these two choices. Instead, in
An Act Of Desperation she did the
one thing she believed would bring her new life. In An Act Of Desperation, she hid herself among the throng of people
that surrounded Jesus and did something courageous, she took a chance and
reached out to God for help and healing. Desperate times call for desperate
measures and after hearing that Jesus was nearby, she was convinced that if she
could just touch the hem of His garment, she would receive the new life she so
desperately wanted and needed. With the crowd’s attention on Jesus, she somehow
managed to navigate the crowd unnoticed until she was just an arm’s length away
from Jesus. Reaching out to Jesus probably took the last ounce of courage she
had left. Being discovered would invite a level of scorn and condemnation she
hadn’t experienced to that point if that were even possible. But there was a
fate far worse than being exposed, what if her plan didn’t work? Everything
that defined her converge at this point in time—the pain, the sorrow, the
loneliness, the failures, the disappointments, the shattered dreams—everything!
It wasn’t too late she may have been thinking. She could still turn back. But
turn back to what? More of the same life wasn’t life, it just wasn’t death. She
was simply existing without purpose. At that critical point in her life,
desperation drove her faith more than it drove her fear. So with a shaky hand
she broke the rules and reached out and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment and
her life was changed forever. “The decision to touch Jesus’ garment was due to
the popular belief that the clothes of a holy man imparted spiritual and
healing power. She may have feared that Jesus would not touch her if he knew
her condition. Or she may have feared that if her disease became known to the
crowd, the people who had touched her would be angry at having become unclean
unknowingly. The woman knew she could be healed, but she tried to do it as
unobtrusively as possible. She thought that she would just get healed and go
away.”[3]
29Immediately her bleeding
stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
What must
it feel like to finally receive something you’ve been praying for for years?
You’ve tried to have children for years without any success and then you hear
about a new procedure. It’s a long shot with lots of possible complications but
it also comes with a hope. And in An Act
Of Desperation, a child is conceived—finally. You’ve prayed for years that
God would send you someone you could fall in love with and spend your life
with. But instead, no one ever comes and each prayer ends with no answer. And
then one day, long after you’ve given up praying because you think God has
stopped listening, in An Act Of
Desperation you pray one final time. Then, there’s a chance meeting in the
church parking lot, or at the grocery store checkout, or waiting in line at the
coffee shop and suddenly all you prayed for is standing right in front of you
asking you your name. You’ve recovered from the shock of being diagnosed with
cancer and now you go from one gruesome treatment to the next but the cure is
more elusive than ever. Then your doctor tells you about an experimental
treatment with painful side effects but it offers a chance at success where
everything else has failed. In An Act Of
Desperation you agree and after enduring and surviving the consequences of
the treatment, you hear the words you’ve longed to hear for so long—the cancer
is gone! In an instant, pain, misery, sorrow, and hopelessness are transformed
into a new life. And it was no different for this woman as we learn in v. 29 that “immediately” her bleeding
stopped and she was healed! “The ‘And immediately’ that begins this sentence is
meant to show the great power of Jesus in that the woman’s twelve-year medical
condition was resolved, and she was healed instantly by Jesus of her
affliction…Even the touch of the Son of God’s garment brought instant and
complete healing after twelve years of hopeless suffering.”[4]
30At once Jesus realized that
power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who
touched my clothes?” 31“You see the people crowding against you,”
his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ” 32But
Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.
To this
point, the woman’s plan was working to perfection. She was able to navigate the
crowd to within an arm’s length of Jesus without being noticed and once she
touched Jesus’ garment, she was instantly healed. Now, all she had to do was
get clear of the crowd and she would be free to begin living her new life.
Except that we learn in vv. 30-32
that just as quickly as the woman was healed when she touched Jesus, Jesus
sensed that among the crowd that jostled Him and pressed in on Him, a hand of
desperation touched Him and received from Him the divine healing that was so
desperately needed. Immediately, Jesus turned and asked, “Who touched me?” An
odd question given the fact that He was in a crowd of people. And the oddity
isn’t lost on the disciples who in essence respond, “What do you mean who
touched you? Take a look around at all the people here. It might be easier to
identify the people who haven’t touched you.” But Jesus is undeterred because
He knows something has changed. Through faith in Him, a life has been changed
and He wants to know who it was. This is another one of those instances where
the intersection of Jesus’ divinity and His humanity baffles me. His divinity
gives Him the power to heal someone that merely touches His garment while His
humanity limits His ability to discern who it was that touched Him. I am
absolutely convinced that Jesus is fully God and fully man but I will never
understand how that works its way out practically. In one instance He suffers
and dies on a cross and then three days later walks out of the tomb alive. I
suppose that therein lies the wonder and uniqueness of Jesus—someone who can
relate to both the demands of holiness because He is divine and someone who can
relate to the struggles of humanity because He is human. “The miracle is
extraordinary because it was performed without conscious effort on Jesus’ part,
although he immediately realized what had taken place. On the one hand, Mark
may have seen in Jesus’ awareness a sign of his deity; on the other, he
candidly described the limitations of Jesus’ humanity. Although some think
Jesus knew all the while who had touched him and asked only to induce the woman
to confess publicly her deed, more likely he needed to learn the person’s
identity. Self-limitation of the earthly Jesus is not incompatible with
omniscience of the risen Christ. Mark, perhaps better than any other New
Testament writer, realized that. Another purpose of Jesus’ question may have
been to begin to lead the person to a confession of faith.”[5]
33Then the woman, knowing what
had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told
him the whole truth. 34He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has
healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
You can
almost picture the scene in vv. 33-34
can’t you? Suddenly the noise of the crowd turns to a hushed murmur as everyone
begins to look first to their left and then to their right wondering what Jesus
is talking about. It suddenly becomes increasingly difficult to be inconspicuous
in the crowd of people no longer focused on Jesus but who are now focused on
another person still unknown at this point. Anything the woman tried to do at
this point to try and escape would only serve to bring more attention to
herself. She was trapped and the desperation that was transformed into elation
has now become fear. She was unclean and she didn’t just purposely touch
another person; she didn’t just touch a strange man, she touched a holy man
that was clearly revered by the people. She had been unclean and for all she
knew, she had just defiled an innocent holy man. It’s no wonder that the text
says that she fell at His feet in fear and trembling and confessed that she was
the one who touched Him. No more hiding, no more pretending. Her getaway had
been foiled and she has been exposed. I wonder if the crowd didn’t gasp in
astonished wonder as to how this defiled woman got past them unnoticed and then
got close enough to touch Jesus. I wonder, were they celebrating her new life
or were they reaching for stones prepared to exact swift punishment? The text
doesn’t say but would it surprise you if they completely overlooked the miracle
and instead only saw the infraction? Come on! You’ve seen it yourself haven’t
you? The girl that isn’t welcome in your church because she has too many body
piercings. The young man who isn’t welcome in your church because his hair is
too long and he has too many tattoos. What about the two men who walk into your
church holding hands. Or what about the unwed pregnant teen that walks through
the door. Would you celebrate that they came looking for the truth or would you
be looking for the nearest stone? Many have this odd compulsion to insist that
people be sort of cleaned up before they can come near Jesus. However, if this
story illustrates anything, it illustrates that Jesus isn’t concerned how dirty
our lives are; He doesn’t care if you’ve broken your life; He doesn’t care that
you are sexually dysfunctional; He doesn’t care that you have an addiction
problem; He doesn’t care that you’re divorced; He doesn’t care that you had an
abortion; He doesn’t care about any of the things that make you a sinner. What
Jesus cares about is that you come to Him and allow Him to forgive all your
mistakes, heal your life, to wash you clean and give you the power to live a
life that honors Him from that point forward. Jesus demonstrates that in His
response to the woman when He calls her “daughter.” Not knowing any better, we
tend to put limitations on the depth of God’s blessings in our lives. I’ll
venture to bet that this woman had no idea that she was about to be blessed
beyond just being healed. John tells us that all who received Jesus would be
called children of God (Jn 1:12). Jesus fulfills that promise when he calls the
woman “daughter.” “Jesus called her daughter, a word used only in this passage
in the New Testament. He claimed the same special relationship with her that
Jairus had with his little daughter—infinitely precious, unbearably sorrowful
at the thought of loss. She had come to him as an outcast, fearful of rebuke
because of her status. Instead, she had found not only physical healing but
spiritual healing as well. [Jesus said,] Your faith has healed you. Not magic
or superstition, but faith in the person of Jesus had healed her. The word for
‘healed’ is the same as the word for ‘saved,’ indicating the physical and
spiritual aspects of her healing. [Jesus tells her to] Go in peace. Only now
could she go in peace—a bodily peace from which all traces of disease had been
removed and a spiritual peace in which all hostilities with God had been
removed through the work of Christ.”[6]
Application
Desperation
can take a life, it can give up on life, or it can reach out for new life. An Act Of Desperation that takes a life
manifests itself in a spirit of defiance that says I will do whatever it takes
to prove myself worthy to God. An Act Of
Desperation that gives up on life manifests itself in a spirit of defeat
that says I am worthless and don’t deserve the life I’ve been given. An Act Of Desperation that reaches out
for new life manifests itself in a spirit of surrender that says I don’t have
the power to do it on my own but I know that with God’s help I’ve got a chance
at new life. Surrender is the key. Unfortunately, here in America, surrender is
bad. It means you are weak. It means you don’t have what it takes to succeed.
It means you’re a loser. However, nothing could be farther from the truth
Biblically. For example, Jesus surrendered His life to the will of the Father.
Did that make Him weak? Was He a failure? Was He a loser? Well it certainly
appeared that way while He was hanging there on the cross didn’t it? But what
did His surrender look like after being dead for three days and then walking
out of the tomb alive? You could find His weakness, His failure, and His losses
wrapped up in His grave clothes that were lying in a pile on the floor of the
empty tomb. Surrender doesn’t mean the same thing to God that it means to us.
To God, surrender means an opportunity to show off. When an important man from
the community, the ruler of the synagogue, surrenders his sick daughter to
Jesus, it gives God the opportunity to show that He has power over life and
death. When a woman, long forgotten by a society that has turned its back on
her, surrenders her twelve year-old medical condition to Jesus, it gives God
the opportunity to restore and renew a life that has been discarded by the
community. Surrender is an invitation to God. Surrender invites God into our lives
to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. The only problem is that most
people aren’t prepared to surrender until their life is in shambles or
shattered. It’s funny because when our lives are thoroughly broken and we’re
bloodied and lying face down in the mud, you know who’s sitting there waiting
on us? Jesus. Jesus is there wondering if we’re ready for Him; if we’re ready
to surrender. Jesus wants to know if you’re desperate enough to reach out to
Him. Jesus wants to know if you will surrender to His call. He wants to know if
you will be weak so that He can be your strength. He wants to know if you’re
willing to be a failure so that He can succeed through you. He wants to know if
you’re willing to be a loser so He can show you what it means to win. What
Jesus wants to know is whether or not you are going to reach out to Him in An Act Of Desperation.
[1]
James R. Edwards, The Gospel According To
Mark—The Pillar New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 2002), p. 163.
[2]
David E. Garland, Mark—The NIV
Application Commentary, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996),
p. 220.
[3]
Bruce Barton, Philip Comfort, Grant Osborne, Linda K. Taylor, Dave Veerman, Life Application New Testament Commentary,
(Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001), p. 164.
[4]
Robert H. Stein, Mark—Baker
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2008), p. 269.
[5]
James A. Brooks, Mark—The New
American Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 1991), p. 96.
[6]
Rodney L. Cooper, Mark—Holman New
Testament Commentary, (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2000), p. 88.
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