February 4 - Tell me what you want...what you really, really want
- Gary Fritsch
- Feb 7
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 8
In today’s Gospel we get one of many Markan ‘sandwiches’, or intercalations. This is where one story is started, and then in the midst of it, another story is inserted, and then it returns to the first story. This allows us to compare and contrast the two stories, and perhaps identify themes.
On today’s menu we have two stories where someone overcomes great obstacles to come to Jesus, one travels a distance and humbles himself before the travelling preacher, the other crawls through the crowd just to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment. When we see the lengths that they go to, we are prompted to then ask ‘why’. For the synagogue official it seems clear: he wants his daughter to live; for the woman with the bleeding problem, she want to be healed. But is this what they really want?
When the woman is healed by touching Jesus’s cloak, He could just walk away, knowing that she got what she was seeking. But He knows that she is seeking something must greater. Her illness has made her a cast out, lonely, despised, rejected. He calls her to Himself, raises her up and calls her ‘daughter’. She probably could have endured her illness had she been honored and treasured this way.
For Jairus, he wants to preserve life for his daughter, no doubt thinking of all of the good things in her future – and his. When we mourn others, we are often mourning for ourselves and what we will miss in a relationship. Jesus addresses this by bringing her back to life, but brings with it, for Jairus and his family, the hope of a life that doesn’t end; that does not involve a necessary separation by death. He gives him hope for a life that eliminates all of his concerns over his daughter, illness, bad fortune, separation, death. Down deep, isn’t that what we all want? All of the joy and excitement of life without the struggle, illness, hatred, death?
Jesus offers it, He offers what we really, really want. A foretaste of it here in the Christian life, and in its fullness in the life to come.
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