Conversation Points for Mark 5:21-43

Study Format:
1. Read passage aloud. What did you notice in the reading? What words or phrase caught your attention?
2. Read passage aloud a second time. What questions would you ask the text?
3. Read passage aloud a third time. What do you hear God calling you to do or be in response to this text?

Interesting Ideas to Consider:
• Mark inserts the healing of the woman who had been hemorrhaging into the story of the healing of Jairus’s daughter. This builds the contrast between the two stories, of the esteemed (and therefore named) synagogue official and the nameless woman.
• Not just a physical ailment, the woman’s bleeding would have been an economic and social ailment as well. The text says she spent all her money on doctors to try to cure her affliction. Per the social norms of the time, contact with the woman would cause ritual impurity, so society would have isolated her.
• The woman touching Jesus for healing identifies Jesus as a “thaumaturge,” a performer of miracles. When the woman touched Jesus, she was “stealing” a healing from him. The belief of the time could have been that then there would be no healing power left for Jairus’s daughter. This story demonstrates Jesus’ healing is not magic, and there is no such limitation on Jesus’ healing power.
• The woman’s response (“fear and trembling” v. 33) demonstrate the woman’s recognition of what happened to her. Fear and trembling is a common response in scripture to being in the presence of the divine.
• Jesus addressed the woman as “daughter,” which imparts a level of intimacy.
• On the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, Jairus was a ruler of the synagogue, a position of power, wealth, and influence, someone from whom others often begged for favors. Yet like the unnamed woman, Jairus was powerless against the illness that plagued his daughter.
• Seeing a leader of the synagogue come to Jesus for help may seem like a surprise. After all, Jesus’ last encounter with synagogue leaders led to a plot against him (the healing of the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath in 3:1-6). But in Mark, Jesus’ struggles are not with local leaders, but with the religious and political officials who are distant and detached from local churches.
• Jairus’s friends present obstacles to Jesus’ healing, first by telling Jairus not to bother Jesus since his daughter has already died (v. 35) and then by laughing when Jesus told them the girl was sleeping (v. 40).
• Once again, Jesus’ miracles are different than those of magicians as there is no show of magic. Jesus simply took the girl’s hand and she got up.
• Jairus asked that his daughter be “made well” (v. 23) and Jesus said the woman was “made well” (v. 34). The Greek word is sōthē, which better translates to “be saved.” Sōthē shows up several times in the crucifixion story, when Jesus was challenged to “save” himself (15:30), when the scribes accused Jesus of saving others but not himself (15:31), and when they challenged him to comes down so they can “see and believe” (15:32).

Works Sourced:
Perkins, Pheme. “The Gospel of Mark.” The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VIII. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995.