Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

One of the fascinating things about human beings is how much we depend on each other, and on nature around us, while at the same time insisting on our own independence.

From birth we rely on our parents and our environment.

But from the moment we can move on our own we’re trying to do our own thing.

But there is one thing that is guaranteed to make us ask for help.

Can you think what it is?

Yes, trouble, strife, accidents, pain, suffering.

Here’s a question: which of these circumstances is more likely to force you to ask for help?

Spilling your coffee on your work?

Falling down and getting a bad gravel rash?

Or your car blowing up in the middle of nowhere?

What do you think?

When we are most desperate, when situation is most beyond our own ability to control, that’s when we are most likely to ask for help, isn’t it?

Do you think we behave the same way towards God?

Only asking him for help when we’re in big trouble?

We tend to do that, don’t we?

What’s the difference between God and people when we ask them for help?

That’s right, God can always help us, no matter how bad the situation!

Jesus rules, right.

He rules over everything, including even sickness and death!

The trick, then, is to come to him before it’s too late.

Think about that while you go out to kid’s church with Graham and Kate.

The Context

Now, for us, let’s dig into the Scripture we just read.

This story of Jairus, his dying daughter, and the fatal interruption of a desperately sick woman, is in the middle of a set of three stories that demonstrate that Jesus rules, and he rules over everything.

He rules over the wind and the waves (Mk 4:35-41).

He rules over the most powerful evil (Mk 5:1-20).

And he even rules over sickness and death itself!

Our Lord reigns, is what this section proclaims.

Instigating action

But Jesus has always ruled, right?

He was the word through which the world was created (

), and all things are sustained through him (

).

What does this have to do with us mere mortals?

Well, in this story we see two examples of what we might call “instigating actions” on behalf of the people who come to Jesus.

The first is the action of Jairus, a synagogue leader, who pushes through the crowds swarming Jesus, and begs Jesus, all dignity discarded in his desperation, to come and heal his dying daughter.

It is important to note Jesus’s response.

Does he stop to weigh the need to entertain the crowds versus the private work of healing this girl?

Does he demand Jairus show some form of worthiness?

No, Mark writes,

Jesus was there waiting for Jairus to come to him in desperation.

Jesus is always there, waiting for us to finally recognise that we can’t solve our problems, we can’t fix ourselves, we can’t heal our relationships or repair our children.

While people crowd around Jesus, and always have, hoping for entertainment, something spectacular, Jesus waits for those of us who have reached the end of ourselves, who have nothing left to give, to come and ask him for help.

And he always answers, immediately.

But the process of his answer may not be immediate.

Which brings us to the second instigating action, the action of the sick woman.

The circumstances of Jairus and this anonymous woman could not have been more different.

Jairus is named by Mark, the woman is anonymous.

Jairus is an influential, respected man, with a powerful position in religious life as a synagogue ruler.

The woman is, thanks to her disease, a social outcast, rendered unclean for the last twelve years, banned from the temple, the centre of Jewish life.

She has tried everything to solve this: she has tried medicine, and it has all failed; she has spent money, and it has bought nothing.

For the length of Jairus’s daughter’s life, she has struggled with this, but it has defeated her, and diminished her.

And so, unlike Jairus who can simply walk up to Jesus and openly beg for his help, the woman feels that the most she can do is sneak a touch of his cloak.

But such faith does she have, that this is, in fact, all she needs to do.

Just as Jesus was waiting for Jairus’s request for help, so too was he waiting for this woman’s touch.

As soon as she touches him, she is healed.

Faith is relationship

Jesus, of course, is aware that his power has been exercised, and he makes a show of asking who touched him.

In recounting this, Mark seems to be emphasizing the contrast between being in near proximity to Jesus, and actually having faith in him, and acting on that.

The disciples, unknowingly, highlight the contrast:

This contrast has always plagued the church.

We can come to church week after week for our entire lives, we can give vast sums into God’s treasury, we can serve on the mission field, and yet, at the end, we can face Jesus and find that he doesn’t know us.

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

It’s not being a tree that matters, it’s being a good tree, doing the “will of my Father who is in heaven,” rather than our own will, that matters.

We need to be a tree that sends its roots down into the living water of God’s Word: we need to touch Jesus.

We need to recognise our desperate need.

If we come to Jesus, like the crowds, satisfied with our lives--with ourselves, with our behaviour, with the way we treat others--and wanting only to get more: more joy, more wealth, more health, an abundant life now… If that’s how we come to Jesus, we are just brushing against him in the crowd, and we remain unchanged, dead in our sins.

We’re like rootless chaff that the wind blows away.

But if we come to him like the woman, aware that we are bleeding to death, that we are unclean, untouchable; or if we come like Jairus, knowing that the most precious things are slipping away from us, that we are losing what makes us whole; only then--when we come to Jesus, desperate, without any other hope, throwing ourselves at his feet--only then will we touch him, will his power surge from his infinite love and strength, will we be healed and reborn.

But Jesus doesn’t just want a fleeting touch.

He wants a relationship.

And so he calls out, “Who touched me?”

And when we come, fearful and trembling, confessing the whole truth, he says to us:

This is the only time in the gospels that Jesus refers to anyone with such a tender address.

“Daughter,” he says, “your faith has made you well.”

It was not the magic touch of his clothes that healed her, it was her faith in the God of Israel, and her demonstration of that in action.

In fact, Mark points out the progress of this woman’s faith:

She heard about Jesus, she came to Jesus, and she touched Jesus in faith.

We all must follow the same path: hearing the word, responding to it by coming to Jesus, and acting on it by placing all our burdens, all our desperation, into his hands.

The rewards of faith

Sometimes, though, it feels like God, like Jesus, isn’t answering us.

He delays and delays and our daughter dies.

What do we do then?

Our desperation is doubled, our prayers unanswered.

When the terrible news of his daughters death comes to Jairus, how does Jesus respond?

His response is, to be frank, shocking.

He basically ignores this report.

Mark is very clever in his choice of words here, as James R. Edwards explains:

Mark’s word choice for Jesus’ hearing the report in v. 36 is masterful.

The Gk. parakouein (translated in the NIV as “ignoring”) has three distinct meanings: (1) to overhear something not intended for one’s ears, (2) to pay no attention to or ignore, and (3) to refuse to listen or to discount the truth of something.

All three meanings apply to Jesus in v. 36.

James R. Edwards, The Gospel according to Mark, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: Eerdmans; Apollos, 2002), 166.

Instead of responding directly to this news, Jesus turns to Jairus and makes a demand of him: “Do not fear, only believe.”

Jairus has just seen how powerful belief in Jesus is, but he is being asked to take it quite a large step further.

It’s one thing to cure a disease, it’s another to restore life.

But it seems that Jairus can believe, and so Jesus goes to his home.

Just as Mark contrasted the pressing crowds with the faithful woman, now he contrasts the believing Jairus with the mocking mourners.

These professionals, hired as part of the funeral process, have seen death after death.

Jesus’ assertion that this death is merely sleep is offensive folly.