Mark 5 21 - Desperate for Healing
February 1st, 2026 “Desperate for Healing” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Mark 5:21-43
Today we continue our deep dive into the Gospel of Mark. Last week we read about Jesus traveling across the sea of Galilee and healing a demon possessed man who was living among the tombs. This morning, we pick up right where we left off and continue to study Jesus’ healing power.
Our story begins with Jesus fresh off the boat and surrounded by a great crowd. Jarius, a leader of the synagogue, who would be an important religious official, approaches Jesus and asks for a healing miracle. His daughter is near death, and he begs for Jesus’ touch. Jesus agrees, and they begin to walk to the man’s house.
But on the way there a woman sneaks up to Jesus in the crowd and touches his cloak. She too is seeking healing, and her hope is that by touching a garment that Jesus is wearing she might absorb some of his powers. While this seems strange to us, it was commonplace in Jesus’ time to assume that people who had magical abilities would have that power contained or extended into their clothing.
Jesus feels the event in his spirit, and asks who touched him, but as the crowd surges around bumping into him, the disciples point out that locating one person would be impossible. The woman though, knowing that she has been healed, bows before Jesus in thanksgiving, and he offers her a blessing. “Your faith has made you well, go in peace”.
Messengers arrive from Jarius’ house, the interruption with the woman has been costly, and now his daughter has died. Jesus promises that this is not the end for her, if Jarius can believe. They arrive to a house in mourning, but Jesus is able to raise the girl from death. It is a miracle for sure, and Mark tells us that “at this they were overcome with amazement.”
As we have done previously, we will start our study looking at Mark’s goal for this portion of his gospel. In this section of his writing, Mark is utilizing a technique of insertion. He has two stories of Jesus, the healing of Jarius’ daughter and the woman in the crowd. To heighten the tension and suspense Mark combines the stories together. This is a deliberate editing choice on his part to excite the reader and add drama to his story.
We find similar themes to last week’s story here in this section. The woman with the flow of blood is unclean, as is Jarius’ dead daughter. Once again, we find Jesus ignoring the normal issues of religious cleanliness. Also, Mark is highlighting Jesus’ power to heal and how that relates to faith. Both of the healing miracles begin with the faith of those seeking healing. The effectiveness of Jesus’ power is linked to the faith of those involved. Readers of Mark are encouraged to think that they too might experience healing if they have faith in Jesus.
I find three things that I want to pull out of this story for us to look at today. The first thing I noticed this week is that Jesus doesn’t abide by our social constructs. Jarius is a religious leader, an important person with political and social power. The woman with the flow of blood is the opposite. Her blood makes her perpetually unclean so she would be an outcast from church and society. Plus, Mark tells us that she has spent all the money that she had looking for healing, so she is poor. It would be like if we had a senator and homeless person side by side. One of these people is really important in our world and one of these people is not.
The thing about Jesus is that he doesn’t care about our social constructs. Instead, everyone is equal in the eyes of God. It doesn’t matter if we are rich or poor, republican or democrat, well respected or looked down upon, Jesus doesn’t care about those things. In fact, Jesus makes the important person wait while the less important person receives healing. Here we find echoes of a teaching we will read later about the first being last and the last being first.
Another thing I noticed about the reading this week is the possibility for interruptions to be holy moments. If you know me very well then you know I like to keep a schedule. I have a calendar on my desk where I write down everything that I have to do each week and cross things off as I go along. I also have a calendar on my computer and phone that shows all the family commitments, church commitments, and personal commitments that I have each day. I have a wall calendar at home that lists our evening activities and family events. And I have an internalized order of how I do things. I have tasks I do in the same order every day and I have tasks that I do in the same order every week. To say that I don’t like interruptions would be an understatement. I always have a plan that I am following, and it stresses me out when things don’t go according to my plan. Now that doesn’t mean don’t pop in and visit me, that’s why I am in the office, I just struggle when the rest of my life gets upended.
I love this story because it reminds me that God doesn’t care at all about my plans. Holiness happens in the moments between my schedule. When things go off the rails or out of control, then there is opportunity for the in-breaking of the divine. I know that if I was in the position of Jarius I would be out of my mind with anxiety and worry as Jesus stopped to help the woman. I would literally have been jumping up and down with unease and stress. But of course, God’s time doesn’t have the same limits that our time does. And Jesus had all the time in the world to heal both women. Just as God has all the time in the world to mess up my schedule with holy moments. Reading this story reminds me that I need to calm my anxiety and trust God to give me what I need each day.
Which brings me to the third thing that I notice in these stories, the sheer desperation of the people seeking healing. Both the woman and Jarius are at their wit’s end, and Jesus is their last resort, their final hope. “I’ve done all I can on my own” they seem to say, as they reach for Jesus in one last ditch effort.
One of the commentators I listened to this week asked if faith is simply another word for desperation and that really stuck with me. It’s as if these people don’t really know who Jesus is, they just know that he is their last chance for healing. We find here that belief in Jesus’ ability to heal is about trust and hope and not doctrine. Neither person confesses that Jesus is the Messiah or the Son of God, they simply confess their hope in his abilities.
This week I was wondering about desperation and how that connects to our faith life. If we have never been at the end of our rope, if we have never hit rock bottom, then do we really know what faith is? I’ve been talking to a friend lately about whether or not God is real, and I realized this week that God isn’t real for us until we need God to be real. Its not until we hit the very bottom, the lowest of the low, where there is nothing left to hope for or believe in, that we finally turn to God in faith. Anyone that works with our homeless ministry downstairs will tell you that most of those folks have a deep and abiding faith. They’ve been desperate and so they know God.
I know this to be true for myself too. Only when I am most broken and alone, do I notice my true need for God and I feel God’s real presence with me. When I am most desperate, I have the deepest faith. Maybe desperation is an integral part of how faith works.
My friends, this week Mark continues to encourage us to have faith in Jesus. The Messiah he writes about crosses social and religious boundaries, he ignores our ideas of who is important and who isn’t, and he meets us at our most desperate. If we only have hope, then we might find that we have faith. And Mark is convinced that this Messiah can bring healing into the broken parts of our lives and our world. May we find God in the holy interruptions this week ahead brings. Amen.
