A sermon preached by Pastor Lewis Polzin on June 27, 2021 at St. Peter–Immanuel Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, WI, on Mark 4:25-41. You may play the audio of the sermon here.
A mostly unedited transcript of the sermon follows the jump:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the Gospel according to St. Mark, the fifth chapter:
And when Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him, and he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogue, Jairus by name, and seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly, saying, “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.” And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’ ” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and 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.” While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?” But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And they laughed at him. But 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. Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
This is the story of the two daughters. One, the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, and the other, the daughter of God. Both daughters had something horrible happening to them. The first of course, Jairus’ daughter had fallen ill. And as we know, she died. The second daughter had something probably even worse happening to her. She was bleeding for so many years that she was unclean, she could not participate in the life of the church. She was cut off from all of her people, from her family, from her friends, and even from her God. These two daughters could not be more different. One comes to Jesus on her own volition, and we see her begging out for Jesus and Jesus, out of the goodness of his heart, grants her what she wants. The second daughter is essentially brought to Jesus, having no real understanding of what's going on around her and also is healed of her disease.
Now, for both of these daughters, the ultimate cause behind what they were suffering was sin, because sin makes you die. That is the wages of sin, right? Death is the wages of sin and their ultimate affliction then wasn't some disease that was in their body. It wasn't something that afflicted them from the outside, but it was something that afflicted them from their hearts.
Let’s look at this second daughter, the daughter of God, who came to Jesus, begging that he would heal her, thinking that he would heal her. This daughter had a flow of blood. It wasn't just some cut on her skin. It wasn't just some laceration there. This is the womanly flow of blood. And if you remember all of your 613 commandments out of the Old Testament, a woman who had the flow of blood was to be set outside the camp until it was done. I don’t think we can imagine this today, that, when you get your time of the month, you can't see my family for however long it may last. If it were to happen, you might think that you're ostracized, although there are probably a whole bunch of women who would sit out there with you. But God commands that when this would happen, the woman couldn't be around other people because that flow would make her ceremonially unclean. God said, when a woman has her period, she is ceremonially unclean. That's kind of a weird thing. You might think that God is punishing women for something that they really have no control over. But I think if we understand God's Word rightly, and I think that we do, this is to point to Jesus and what Jesus is going to do in taking away sin, because a woman who has her period, it means that, within her, there is no life. There is no life growing in her womb.
You know how it works. And if you don't, I'll explain it. Biologically, a woman has two ovaries, and in those ovaries, there are thousands and thousands of eggs that she is born with. And when those ovaries finally reach maturity in her pubescence, she ends up releasing an egg, usually one at a time and travels from the ovary down the fallopian tube and embeds itself in the uterine wall. And if the seed of man has gone into her, and that egg has been fertilized in the fallopian tube, when it makes its way to the uterus it finds life. It finds the nourishment. The cells divide and divide, and 40 weeks later, a baby comes out of this woman. And this is a wonderful thing.
You have to remember that every Israelite woman looked forward to life coming from her womb because that life would bring forth the Messiah. At least that was the hope. Remember all the way back to Eve. After she sinned, she gave birth to Cain. And she said, well, it's translated in English, With the help of the Lord, I have gotten a man. Right? But really what she is saying there is, I have had a man, the Lord. Cain opened her womb and Eve had hoped that this would be the Messiah. And of course, we all know how it turned out for the first son of Eve that he became a murderer of his brother. Fratricide is the first human death in all of creation. Cain murdered his brother, Abel. You must imagine Eve's disappointment there, to see that her Messiah murdered her son.
Every woman from then on, every Israelite woman who knew of this promise, looked forward to the time that a son would open her womb and that she would give birth to the Messiah. When the woman was set outside the camp, this meant the Messiah was not in her. And she would grieve. This time outside the camp gave her time to do just that. It gave her time away from her family and responsibilities so that she could focus, not on the fact that she caused no life in her to come., but it was not yet the time for the Messiah. When she was done, then she would present herself back to the tabernacle or back to the priests in the temple and she would be declared clean and she would come back in and live among her family until the next time of the month came around or she was pregnant.
And just so you don’t think this was unfair to women alone, this also was required every time a man would spill his seed on the ground, meaning every time that his seed was not cast into his wife, let the hearer understand, he was also to be put outside of the camp.
So, this woman had now been having her time of the month for 12 straight years. 12 long years. Can you imagine what it was like? I think to some extent or another, we all know what it's like to have that time for a few days, whether by experience or by watching our loved ones. You know it's coming on you know that’s it really just kind of awful. This woman had it, not just for a week, not just for a month, but for 12 long years. She was cut off again from her family, from her friends, and even from her God; she couldn't go to the temple. She couldn’t go to make the sacrifices. She couldn't do anything that she needed to do according to the Law of God. And so she grieved. She grieved not only for the fact that she could not bear the Messiah, but she grieved for the fact that she could not even be right with God.
Until one day she heard the news of the Messiah. This man, Jesus, had been wandering around all the countryside, healing diseases, raising people from the dead teaching marvelous things, certainly doing signs that only the Messiah of God could do. And, in faith, she knew him immediately to be the Messiah. And so she set off to see him. She set off thinking, If only I could touch just the smallest bit of his garment I would be healed. Jesus, being a good Jew, wore a robe that had tassels at the bottom. I don't know completely the purpose of the tassels, except that it did set the Jews apart from anybody else in that world. And that was probably enough for God to say, do this. And so Jesus, with these tassels hanging off the bottom of his robe, was walking among the people.
For this woman, it’s not the hem of his garment she’s thinking about, it’s just the smallest bit of one of those tassels at the bottom of his robe. If I can just grab one of those things, one little thread, I'll be healed. And so she set off and found Jesus and pushed her way through the crowd. And you have to imagine if people found out that she was there, they would have killed her. If people found out what she had been dealing with and that she had been making them ceremonially unclean by touching them with her disease, oh, you can imagine the fear, the anger, the murder that would arise in their hearts.
But by faith, she came before her Jesus. And she knew that he would take her and make her clean. And if he could make her clean, then it didn't matter what else she did to the other people because she would be made well. And if she's made well, they would be made well. It wasn't out of a lack of concern for people that she thought this, but it was for the benefit of faith as she knew what the end result would be to touch Jesus. And certainly Jesus then, being God, knew that she was there. He knew that she reached out and touch the smallest tassel. He felt the power go out of him. I don't know what that means. I don't think any of us know what that means. I don't know how you can feel the power of God go out of you, but Jesus did. And he said, who touched me? The disciples looked at him and, laughing, they said, Jesus, everybody, everyone's touching you. And he's asking, who's touching me. Jesus, knowing what had happened, looked for his daughter, found her, and you can imagine, as she's groveling on the ground, he grabs her chin and lifts her eyes skyward to look into his face. And he says, Daughter, your faith has made you well.
This is a beautiful picture, that this woman who had suffered so much, who had been separated from her God for so long, was finally made clean and saw her God, not just in the temple, but face to face. And he looked at her and it was as if he were saying, I know you've suffered. I know you suffered for a long time. But you've suffered in order to bring you to this day that I would make you well and that your story would be told for millennia to show who I am, that I am the God who heals you. And I'm the God who brings you back into the congregation.
The second daughter, some disease had taken her over and she died. A 12 year old girl, a life cut short. It's a stark contrast, really, when you compare her to the first daughter: the first daughter was of the age that she was having her times of the month. I think it's mentioned here that this girl was 12 years old to set her apart from this other daughter, that she wasn't even having these things. She wasn't a woman. She was a girl and sin took her. There is not one who escapes sin in this life. She died, the hope of her father, the heart of her mother. She was taken away. She was dead. There was nothing there for her. There was no hope. There was no physician who could heal her. There was nothing. You can't heal dead people.
But Jesus, being God says, She's not dead. She's merely asleep. Notice Jesus is mocked for this. And he's walking by people who are hired to mourn this girl. This was common practice back then. When someone would die, you hire mourners, people who weep and wail and make such a show over it. I don't know why. I wish I knew what started that tradition, but that was the tradition. Most of these people there were hired to be there. Notice it was just her mother and her father and three disciples and Jesus that he allowed to go in and see this girl.
When Jesus arrives, he tells them to put these mourners out. You can imagine, I don't think this is Jesus saying, all right, everybody, get out. I got stuff to do. I think this is Jesus taking a whip and turning over the tables for the money changers kind of getting them out. I think Jesus was ticked off getting them out. Jesus. When he saw the death of his friend Lazarus, what does it say? He wept. He wasn’t weeping that Lazarus has gone. He's weeping that death is happening. Jesus is mad at death. You've taken another one. Get out.
Jesus cast them out and he goes up, and you can imagine Jesus doing the same thing, taking this little girl's chin and lifting her face to see his, he says, Talitha kumi, little girl, I say to you arise, little girl, daughter of Jairus. Get up out of your bed. And the little girl opens her eyes, has no idea what's going on, and goes about her life. Notice the first thing that happens to her, get her something to eat. What a wonderful picture that is. Do you notice to the parallel to this? The first thing that, after Jesus rises from the dead, he asks for something to eat. A stark contrast, obviously between humanity and God–humanity cannot raise ourselves from death. God can raise himself from death. But the first thing Jesus asks for is for something to eat. I see you have some fish. Can you make them for me? I see this girl has been raised from the dead. Let's give her something.
For us today, this is a very wonderful picture of what happens in the church. We are dead. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. We are unclean. We should be cast out of the presence of God being sinful. We should be nowhere near God for he will not abide sin in his presence. But, with the love of a father, God takes your face and says, Kiddo, your faith has made you well, get up, arise, and have something to eat. The Lord's supper is here and it's here that we would eat our God who will make us well.
These pictures, aren't there for us to say, Well, if we seek Jesus out with enough faith, Jesus will heal our diseases, will heal our infirmities. There are preachers out there who will tell you that. There are preachers who, through this pandemic said if you get COVID-19 it's because you didn't have enough faith. And I say to them, damn you. And I say that with all sincerity and truth, because that teaching is a damnable lie from the pit of hell. But I would say to you, this picture is here to show you, One, that God will make you clean and Two, that God will raise you from the dead. These two promises found in these two daughters are bound up in God's Word and in his Sacraments.
It’s weird to think of eating the Word, but it's true. John 6, remember: Jesus tells them, unless you eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, you have not life in you. Jesus is not specifically talking about the Lord's supper, though. I think we can make some really good parallels there to the Supper but he’s not talking about the Supper because Jesus hadn’t instituted the Lord's supper by John 6. So Jesus must be referring to something else. He's talking about eating his Word. Remember John in Revelation eats the little scroll, eats God's word. It's a spiritual picture that God's Word goes in us. And it strengthens us. So by his Word, we eat of God and by his Sacrament we of God. The Sacraments are simply the Word put with tangible things. We eat of God.
And why? What do I say when you leave the altar? The body and blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, strengthen and preserve you, body and soul, unto life everlasting. This food, which one of our ancient fathers called the medicine of immortality, will strengthen your bodies until life everlasting. We know it strengthens our souls, but it strengthens your bodies, too. Oh, you may say pastor, I've gotten older. I've been communing for a long time. I feel the creaks in my body as I get up out of the bed, and as I get up out of the chair. I get sick. I get diseased. And I'm going to die, Pastor. But this does strengthen your body. This is real food and real drink, which does strengthen your body in this life. This real food and real drink, which are also the body and blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, goes into your body, which will be preserved by the Holy Spirit until the day of our Lord. It strengthens you body and soul and keeps you for his return.
These things go into your body to say, This one is mine. This flesh, this blood goes into your body that Jesus says, Now you have life in you, not the life of this world, which is going to end, but the life of eternality, which shall never end, that this food and this drink strengthens you in your body that you will bodily receive everlasting life. And it strengthens your soul that you will spiritually receive everlasting life. What a blessing it is that our Jesus has taken you and has asked to see you in this holy place, that he looks at your face from that altar, from that Word, from that font, and he says, You are my beloved son, you are my beloved daughter, you are my beloved child, and in me, I am well pleased with you. Eat, drink, and be filled unto life everlasting.
You are your God's beloved child. He has made you one with his Son and he will deliver to you exactly what it is that you need, which is not the things of this world, but life which lasts forever. And he has seen fit to give it to you. Through his precious Word and Sacrament, his means of grace, while it may be that you cannot reach out and grab Jesus' tassel, Jesus still comes to find you and touches you, literally, sitting upon your tongue and upon your teeth and going into your body, cleanses you from all of your sin and makes you well so that you may live forever with him by faith.
This is our Jesus who loves you so much that he has brought you everlasting life. He has brought you cleansing. He has brought you back from death. And through his death, he has defeated your death forever. You, by faith, are made well in this place, at this altar. And you are made well by Jesus. And in his name, we say, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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