This Sunday’s gospel reading tells two healing stories happening together. Jairus, a leader of the Synagogue comes to Jesus on behalf of his daughter who is gravely ill at home. As Jesus travels to Jairus’s home an unnamed woman in the crowd comes up to Jesus and touches his robe. The woman is healed of her long-standing illness instantly. As Jesus continues to the home of Jairus, people come to him saying that the daughter has died. Jesus goes on anyway and goes to the girl, heals her and restores her to her family.
As different as these two events seem, they are both the same at their root. The woman is healed by her faith in Jesus. She does not even approach him directly, she simply reaches out to touch the hem of his robe, apparently unseen by anyone including Jesus. Jesus commends her faith, her trust that Jesus could heal. In the other story, Jairus comes to Jesus on behalf of his daughter. Jairus is known to the people in the crowd to be a faithful member of the Synagogue. We are not told how he has come to know Jesus, but he does, and he has faith that Jesus can heal his daughter.
In both cases, Jesus heals the ill because of faith. While this story comforts the faithful, it still asks us to continue to trust Jesus the healer of our every ill.
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Bill