The combining of the two stories makes for a number of contrasts. The outer story features a man named Jairus, a person of considerable influence and prominence who is a "leader of the synagogue," and whose daughter is gravely ill. The story sandwiched in the middle features a woman who remains nameless, who is cut off from her community because of an illness that renders her "unclean" and has left her destitute. In fact, she must secretly break the law in order to touch Jesus.
That Jesus goes with Jairus is not at all surprising. Not only is the situation desperate, but the man is a VIP. But in the middle of this mission of mercy, Jesus stops. At first glance it is not at all clear he needs to do so. The woman has received her secret healing and seems happy to leave undiscovered. But Jesus stops to find her and talk to her. (I've always wondered how Jairus reacted to this unexpected delay, a question only heightened by my now living in the DC area, a place filled with VIPs and VIP wannabes who are always in a hurry and seem to think everyone should get out of their way.)
Perhaps Jesus delaying to talk to the woman is primarily a literary device, serving to highlight the woman's healing plus allowing time for Jairus' daughter to die, thus heightening what Jesus will do at the VIP's house. But I think not. Jesus calls her "Daughter," sends her away in peace, and speaks both of healing and restoration. ("Made you well" translates a word that literally means to save or rescue or restore.) Jesus stops and makes sure this woman realizes what has just happened. She is a daughter or Israel once more. She is restored to full participation in community. She is no longer an invisible, untouchable, but a beloved child of God. And Jesus pauses to do all this while a frantic father is no doubt beside himself at the delay.
I find it a remarkable story. Jesus will not pass up this opportunity to give a woman more than she hoped for, to make sure she experiences the full implication of her encounter with God's love and grace, even when that leaves a desperate VIP pacing, perhaps fuming, on the sidelines. But the fact that Jesus seems particularly attuned to the needs of those like this unnamed, unimportant, unclean woman, does not mean the VIP gets left out. He is required to wait, and he must welcome a Jesus who is now unclean from this woman's touch into his home. But presumably such religious distinctions have become insignificant in this desperate situation.
I think it can be very difficult for the Church and for congregations to embody the Jesus we meet in this story, and I'm not talking about our inability to heal or raise people from the dead. I'm talking about being genuinely with and for the good religious folk like Jairus but always ready to discover, embrace, and restore the outcast, unclean, and broken among whom Jesus is so often found. Even some congregations who do a great deal of good with the homeless, hungry, and needy, still see such people as others, as "them" to our "us." And rare is the congregation where the Jairuses of the world sit side by side with people like the unnamed woman in today's gospel.
If the church is to be the living body of Christ in the world, it seems we should attract all sorts to us, from those like Jairus to unclean, unnamed outcasts like the woman with a hemorrhage. So how do we set up our congregations, our mission, and our worship so that we draw all sorts and not simply those who look the same as us, act the same as us, and like all the same things as us?
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