Not a Zero-Sum Reality
based on Mark 5:21-43
Rev. Karen A. Goltz

            By and large, Mark’s gospel is pretty linear in its structure.  It’s fast-paced, but it’s linear.  Things happen very quickly in Mark; everything takes place immediately, as soon as, or at once, but it all takes place one thing at a time.  Until today.

            Today’s reading lumps two stories together, intertwining them, events of one impacting the events of the other.  Why?  What’s so special about these two stories?

            They’re both healing stories.  No surprise there: Mark’s gospel is full of healing stories.  They’re both about women being healed—again, nothing remarkable about that.  The very first healing narrative Mark provides is Jesus curing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever.  But there are differences between the pair, as well.

            The first striking difference is the manner in which the healing takes place.  Jairus begs Jesus to heal his daughter, and Jesus consents.  We can only assume that had Jesus said no, Jairus would have accepted that answer and gone home alone.  The woman, on the other hand, essentially sneaks up behind Jesus and takes her healing like a pickpocket taking a wallet.  Her hope is to remain hidden and anonymous in the crowd, and only comes forward when it becomes clear that Jesus isn’t going anywhere until he gets some answers.

            Another difference is in the social status of the people involved.  Jairus’ daughter herself is virtually a non-entity.  She is a girl and a child: double property.  But she is represented by a powerful and influential man, who lowers himself to beg Jesus on her behalf for healing.  The woman was likely a woman of means at one time.  We’re told that she’d endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had.  Only people with money could spend money on physicians.  But she was well-moneyed no more, and the nature of her illness had made her a social outcast for twelve years.  So we have a once-wealthy long-time social outcast compared to a girl-child with no rights or influence who is represented by a well-respected and influential leader of the synagogue.

            The severity of their illnesses is different, as well.  The girl is on the brink of death and time is of the essence; the woman has been living with her disease for twelve years, and a few more minutes, hours, days, or even years before Jesus could heal her probably wouldn’t change her prognosis very much.  And finally we have the difference in their ages.  The woman is an adult.  Assuming her affliction came upon her in early adulthood, she’s probably somewhere in her thirties, or maybe forties.  The girl is twelve years old.

            And that number – twelve – seems to link these two stories together in a strange way.  The girl is twelve years old; the woman has been hemorrhaging for twelve years.  It’s tempting to make the connection that from the time this girl entered the world, this woman began to suffer.  And once the woman’s suffering ended, so did the girl’s life.  Are the two related?  Can it be that the woman could not be healthy as long as the child was alive?

            On one level it seems foolish to think such thoughts.  On the other hand, we go there all the time.  When something terrible happens, in our desperate need to make sense of it all, we try to make connections.  A star athlete at the high school is hit by a drunk driver and killed, and some will speculate that it happened so that the boy’s father can learn to accept and appreciate his other, non-athletic son, or that it happened so that the drunk driver will have a wake-up call and straighten out his life.  A woman who is widely regarded as selfish and vain gives birth to a child with severe birth defects who will require round-the-clock care for the rest of her life, and some will speculate that it happened so that the mother could learn humility.  A plane goes down in the middle of the ocean killing everyone on board, and some will speculate that it happened so that the airlines will now make some recommended technical changes and save hundreds of other people.  We can all come up with examples.  We’ve all heard or even declared ‘reasons’ for bad things happening, reasons that help us see order in the chaos, but they are reasons that deem some lives expendable, and they are reasons that are just plain cruel to those who are suffering.

            God doesn’t need to kill a teenager in order to make his father appreciate a less talented sibling; God values the life of that teenager just as much as his brother, their father, and the drunk driver.  God doesn’t need to afflict a child with birth defects in order to teach her mother humility; God wants that child to grow and thrive in the fullness of life.  God doesn’t need to choose between airline passengers and decide who is worth sacrificing for the sake of those worth saving; they’re all worth saving.  And God doesn’t need to afflict a woman with a bleeding disorder in order to give life to a child, and a little girl doesn’t need to die in order for a hemorrhaging woman to be healed.

            In our society, we’ve been indoctrinated into the idea of a zero-sum reality.  In order for someone to win, someone else must lose.  But God’s grace is not a zero-sum game.  When it comes to God’s love and care, it’s not an either/or; it’s a both/and.  Remember, by the end of today’s gospel reading, both the woman and the little girl are healed, restored to their communities, and free to go on and be the people God intended for them to be, without impediment.  The woman achieved it by unconventional means, sneaking power away from Jesus, but ultimately confessing that she did it out of desperation, having endured twelve years of suffering, twelve years of doctors who didn’t know what to do for her, twelve years of social isolation, twelve years of watching her financial security dwindle down to nothing.  After twelve years of having her hope assaulted, she finally reached out when sense and logic and reason screamed that she was foolish, but after twelve years a foolish hope was better than no hope at all, and she was healed.  Not just by sneaking power and touching Jesus clothes, but by baring her soul to her savior, falling down in front of him and telling him the whole truth, fearful and trembling, but come what may.  And Jesus affirmed the healing of her disease, and declared that she was not only healed, but made well, and invited her to go in peace.

            The little girl died, possibly as a direct result of Jesus being delayed by the hemorrhaging woman.  But his grace to one did not diminish the grace available to the other, and Jesus cured her even of death, and restored her to life.  What seemed like an either/or became a both/and, with miraculous results.  Because miracles are not beyond the limits of God’s power; there are no limits to God’s power.  And while not everyone receives the miraculous healings we may be praying for, no one passes out of God’s reach when they pass out of this life.  By God’s accounting, no one has to die so that someone else can live, and no one has to suffer so that someone else can learn an important lesson.  But while this life is a gift, it is not the only experience of life we get.  We get to live in this life with its joys and its sorrows, and we get to live in the very presence of God himself in the life to come, where mourning and crying and pain will be no more.  Again, both/and.  That’s God’s limitless grace.  Amen.