I am indebted to Rev'd Keith Addenbrooke for the main idea in this sermon. He is, however, not responsible for the imperfections in my understanding of what this passage says to us.
Mark 5: 21-43
In our Gospel reading this morning a story about a woman is sandwiched between the beginning and the end of a story about a little girl.
The woman’s life is oppressed by a taboo governing women who are having their period. The rule was that when women were bleeding, they should keep away from everybody else.
But this woman had haemorrhages. She was continually bleeding. She had been bleeding, we are told, for 12 years. The rule she was following was ruining her life.
So she broke the rule. She had heard about Jesus and she came out to see him and to touch him. She did touch him. And the power went out of Jesus. She was healed. She was set free from the tyranny of the rule.
And Jesus touched the girl who had died. The rule was that you weren’t supposed to touch a dead body. So Jesus broke the rule. He touched her. Little girl! Get up! And the little girl was healed. She was set free from the tyranny of death.
Jesus came into our world of rules, our world where you stay away from bad things unless you too become contaminated, a world where the assumption is that the power of evil will flow from one person to another, a world where evil dominates and controls.
And Jesus broke the rules. We went towards the bad things. He showed us that good can triumph over evil. He showed us that when a good thing touches a bad thing, instead of what was previously good becoming bad, what was previously bad becomes good. The power of love and healing flowed from him. He showed us a new world where love dominates and controls.
So, as followers of Jesus; we do not accept that contact with bad things will contaminate us. We do not accept that evil will dominate and control us. We believe the reverse. We believe that when love has contact with bad things, healing takes place; transformation takes place. We reverse the flow. We follow Jesus with confidence, knowing he has the power to bring healing and liberation even into the darkest and most hopeless places in the world.
Amen