Why Are You Weeping?

My little daughter is at the point of death come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live And he went with him and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians And it spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse She heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment for she said if I touch even his garment I will be made well Let us pray Father, I pray now that you would just come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death That as we are often fear and despair. I pray that we would find hope in this person we call Jesus I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking I'm Christ's name. We pray these things. Amen and Amen Well, if you were here when I started this series on Mark I was gone for a couple of weeks, obviously We talked about by chapter three of the gospel of Mark early in chapter three the religious leaders Had decided that they were to destroy Jesus that they were going to just put him to death. They were tired of it Jesus then switches his teaching from from doctrinal teaching I guess into Teaching imperables and then Mark sort of like playing bumper cars He seems to shift all the sudden to another topic or another area and we see Jesus exercising authority Over lots of different areas of life We saw him exercising his authority over nature when they were in the great storm on the sea of Galilee and he said peace Be still remember the dog whisper Just stop it And then we saw him exercise the authority over the demonic realm when he he exercised an army of demons from a man Remember we called him Legion When you look at those kinds of stories whether you're Christian or not You know they seemed that they're so far away and they're so far from what we see to be normal. It's hard to really grasp them In other words, you know, yesterday someone was asking me about in the discovery class about Halo school what parachuting school in the army and I see it was a huge difference between jumping out of an airplane from 25,000 feet and jumping out of an airplane from 800 feet You see me jump from 25,000. It's actually a lot easier because everything doesn't seem real The ground is so far away. It seems like you could fall forever and it just is out there But when you jump from 800 feet you could see people's faces on the ground and you realize that things don't go well Death is imminent and you're much more fearful Well, when you read these four stories that we've looked at we looked at two of them calming up the storm and the the Exorcism of the Legion. They're sort of like 25,000 foot stories we look at them and they're so far away from our experience It doesn't make a big deal. When you read the story of Gyrus and the woman Who by the way church tradition has called her Bernice for whatever reason when you look at Gyrus and Bernice It becomes an 800 foot story Because and you can you you might not be able to identify with with someone dog whispering a storm But you can identify with the loss of a loved one You can identify what's struggling with a disease and that's where you really have to ask your question What do I really think about this guy Jesus? Yeah, you it's a sort of Sunday school answer. Can Jesus calm the storm? Yes, he can You can't you have to say yes, he can't but can Jesus heal the despair in your own life? Can Jesus heal the things that you are going through can he calm you down? Because we all experience it the question is how you're going to experience it? You know when I went to Ethiopia on the flight home most people don't know this There was a terrorist event on my airplane

Seriously, and it was amazing to me because they the the security going into the airplane I was down to two items of clothing And so when this happened I thought how in the world that this crazy guy get through here. I was naked, you know and So anyhow about two in the morning we flew from Addis Ababa the first stop was to be Rome and then from Rome to the US And as soon as we passed into out of African airspace someone stood up in the plane and started running toward the back screaming You are all going to heaven. You are all going to heaven So we're all we were all on the plane and Everyone experienced I'm guessing some kind of despair everyone to dealt with it differently some people screen I Look over at my seat mate inside Nothing's easy I can't get on a plane and just fly home What happened ultimately was some male flight attendants went and tackled them and brought them back up to the front and Deplained them in Rome But the fact is is those kinds of things happen to everybody and the question is how are you going to respond to it? When you look at the story of gyros and this in the woman What you're going to see is people at two completely different ends of the socio-economic spectrum and yet they both have the same problem Despair and the big question that you that this text answers I think is Jesus big enough and does he have authority not just over disease and death But does he have authority even over your despair even over the things in which you think are hopeless And so we're going to look at three things Today, we're going to look at the context of despair and this passage We're going to look at the drama of the despair and finally we're going to look at the death of despair So let's look first at the context Let me read to you again the first few verses It says when Jesus crossed again and again in the boat to the other side a great crowd gathered about him and he went beside The sea and then came one of the rulers of the synagogue gyros by name and seeing him He fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying my little daughters at the point of death come and lay your hands on her So that she may be well may well and live and he went with him So the first person you meet in this story Is given a name that's important not only that, but he's a man You know to be a to be a man in the ancient Near East generally speaking was a much better position to be in than to be a woman Frankly, I hate to say that but it was true and in this story you have a man who has a name and who is a ruler in the synagogue In other words, he is extremely prominent What's a ruler in the synagogue basically had elders in the synagogue and rulers in the synagogue in Jesus day They would have been roughly equivalent to what we call trustees They would have been responsible for the care of the synagogue and the providing of the scrolls and the care of the scrolls And all of the sacred items they would have been the one to have been in charge They would have been well-known and here is gyros who is one of the rulers of the synagogue And you get a clue to his desperation and the very fact that he's coming to Jesus Because you remember religious leaders especially in the book of Mark and chapter 3 the verdict is out among the religious leaders at least generally speaking And that is they think Jesus needs to be gotten rid of and you know He must despair if most of the religious leaders have a low opinion of Jesus and yet he's thinking I'm willing to do anything to see my daughter get better even go see the one that everyone else wants to destroy Because gyros by throwing his lotting with Jesus by asking Jesus for help He would have been probably ostracized as well and yet he isn't such a desperate straight He's willing to do that. What's interesting? Is the up to this point in his life As far as we know it was pretty charmed In fact, it's interesting because we say who we hear that he is his only daughter who was 12 years old and we meet Bernice This unnamed woman up to this point who also has been ill for 12 years That's what they have in common on the other hand 12 years But up to this point gyros is basically a relatively wealthy man He's socially connected he's he's connected with the synagogue in fact He helps to run the synagogue and his daughter as far as we know has been healthy She's been his only daughter so she would have been apple of his eye I'm guessing daddy's girl and now she is sick Luke Matthew and Luke imply almost that she's already dead And so in in the twinkling of an eye this man who had everything who was on top of the world now has lost the only thing that's important to him And he is desperate You imagine that could happen to anyone in this room That you feel like you're sailing on top of the world and then all of a sudden the rug is pulled out from under you You got a great house you got a great family got everything and then someone you love dearly dies Has that ever happened? I know it has because I've done the memorials People lose children people lose babies people lose parents and there are those times no matter how good things are going for you You despair gyros is at one end of the continuum The other end of the continuum is the woman If gyros is is welcome a man and and well connected and socially acceptable and runs the synagogue The woman is at the exact opposite end of the continuum Mark could not communicate in more grim ways the way he has communicated this woman's status Let me read it to you again And when I read it to you I'm actually going to Read it to you the way it is in Greek I'm going to read it in English But he basically piles on part of cipples here so that you you should become almost uncomfortable with how badly this woman has it When verse 25 he says and there was a woman who had a discharge of blood It's all in the present tense. There's a woman who having a discharge of blood for 12 years and having suffered much under many Physicians and having spent all she had and having gotten no better grew worse So she had this ailment for 12 years. She suffered much under many physicians and having spent all she had Having failed to get better. She only got worse now. That's pretty bad. We think Here's a woman who has a discharge of blood for 12 years You know the wise providence of God. I was with a team of doctors for the past Two weeks and of course no may I look at them and said what's what's a story with her? And it was an interesting connection with Ethiopia because one of the primary ways women in Ethiopia historically up until a few Decades ago had been made to be socially outcast is because of this problem right here that the woman has Maybe not the exact one, but a problem and basically it's it's a hospital was started in Addis Ababa in order to take care of this problem and our doctors got to meet the eighty nine year old founder of this hospital And basically the hospital was started for women who had an obstetric fistula And I don't know any nice way to explain that other than when a baby is being born and it won't come out and it takes such a long time for labor The tissue begins to the woman's tissue is cut off a blood and it begins to die and basically her bottom side is Torn out or it has to be taken out and she's an outcast for the rest of her life And hospital was started there decades ago in order to actually do surgery on these women and restore them and it changes everything for them So even today people are outcast in society because of this and so this woman had some issue that was causing her to be constantly bleeding Another thing she might have had as a brain tumor Pushing on her pituitary gland that's doing that, but either way the problem is bigger than a health issue Because in the ancient Near East and Jewish society For when a woman would go through her menstrual cycle she was unclean or unapproachable untouchable for seven days And if anyone did touch her they would be unclean until the evening Now how how bad do you think it is if a woman is like that perpetually? She is constantly unclean She is always unclean so here this woman has not just been broken has not suffered much under many physicians But her whole life is ruined she would have been ex-communicated from the synagogue her husband would have left her She may have lost a baby in the context of all this and no one would have come around her It's bigger than just being broke she has nothing she is no friend She is no place to go and no one will approach her or touch her because she is constantly Consistently unclean interestingly enough gyrosis daughter is unclean as well Now the question is what can be done about it? Is there hope for either one? You see gyrosis on one end of the continuum and the woman is at the other end of the continuum But they're both in great need and that's how everyone in this room is Everyone in this room is either on top of the world or you're at the very bottom of the world or you're somewhere in between But here's one thing I can guarantee you there will come a point in your life where your faith will be tested And you will be taken to the edge of despair Some of you that's yet to be in the future some of you you feel like that's how it's meant for the past say I don't know 12 years Is it ever going to get better? And that's what what is great is the next thing we see in this text is we enter into this sort of drama The drama of despair So gyros comes up to Jesus and he humbles himself and basically throws himself before Jesus It says please come that my maybe you may lay hands on my daughter that she may live and did you notice what it says and Jesus went Jesus went with him Now what what makes Jesus different than most of us? The religious authorities and Jesus day We're seeking to put him to death and if and if Jesus it was like me Fortunately, he's not and this guy came to me the first thing I would have said is Let me get this right you guys are over there whispering about how to put me to death and now you're gonna come to me and ask for my help You got a lot of hoots put pal Did you notice Jesus didn't say that? You see a lot of people I've met over the years they refused to come to Jesus in times of crisis because they didn't never came to Jesus when they were doing well And at the end of the day, it's just pride I'm not gonna come to Jesus now Like I haven't even followed in my whole life. Why would I go now that he's just gonna think I'm insincere and my question is always do you need Jesus now? Because a beautiful thing about Jesus is Jesus doesn't act like you do and I do Jesus doesn't say Come talk me later when you're out of here gets straightened out Jesus welcomes this man and it not only says he welcomes him It says that Jesus went Jesus is more than willing to help even the most ardent Pharisee who comes to him and says I need help Now where the drama begins is as Jesus is taking off to save this little girl another person comes in to the picture the woman We'll talk about gyros again in a minute But let's look at what how Jesus treats the woman and as we unfold this drama In verse 25 it says and there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years and it suffered much under many physicians And it had spent all that she had and was no better But rather reward she heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment first She said if I touch even his garment I will be made well And immediately the flow blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease and Jesus Perceiving in himself the power had gone out from him immediately turned about in the crowd and said who touched my garments And it's disciples said to him you see the crowd pressing around you and yet you say who touched me And he looked around to see who had done it But the woman knowing what had happened to her came in fear and trembling and fell down before him And told him the whole truth and he said to her daughter Your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease So the woman seeks Jesus notice how gyros when he approached Jesus approach from the front and he addressed him and said can you come and help? The woman is such an outcast. She doesn't even Think about going and approaching Jesus and asking him for anything But she has this inkling that if anyone can help her he can And so she works her way through the crowd and order she approaches him from behind in order just to touch him And the Greek there actually is the word clutch. She must she must have grabbed onto him And as she seeks up and touches Jesus How her goes out of him it says he feels it and immediately she's made well

Now the question is and the disciples ask a good question I mean you got to love the disciples here when Jesus says who touched me And then disciples go Like there's a crowd thronging around you and you're asking those who touched you Maybe your family was right about the whole crazy thing

And it says but Jesus knew and where it says he kept looking and Verse 32 says he he looked around to see who had done it The Greek there says he kept looking Jesus wasn't going to stop until he found out who had done this who had touched him Because what you see here among other things is that the woman had some kind of real faith Not perfect. We'll see in a minute some kind of real faith But also some kind of desire on the part of God God to actually heal her and it's his sovereignty because there were certainly lots of people that were touching Jesus and hopes of getting something In the ancient Near East you read stories about people doing the same thing to Alexander the great when a great king would ride through people Thought if I could just touch his robe if I could just touch part of him I will absorb some of his greatness or I will be healed of my disease, but there was something about this woman That actually was effective She didn't know what it was but Jesus did She just knew if she could touch him power because that Jesus keeps looking and apparently the woman felt Like people were looking at her or Jesus was looking at her because she came to Jesus in order to fess up It's interesting. Notice the woman was seeking healing She was looking for something and Jesus was looking for someone He was looking for this woman He wanted to not just she had already been healed But he wanted to make sure she knew why she was healed and how she was healed and that she could go forth not just being healed But with his benediction And so notice what it says to In verse 33 it says but the woman knowing what had happened to her came and fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth Now it's always interesting there I've told you before sometimes what the Bible doesn't say is just as important as what the Bible does say First of all Jesus is looking she comes up and it says she told him the whole truth Now that would have included not only the fact that she had been ill for 12 years But the fact that she is unclean and he is a rabbi and she touched him in other words. She has defiled him She told him that And did you notice how Jesus responded you did what How dare you touch me how dare you defile me look I'm like perfect And you're just going to sneak up from behind me in a crowd What if I hadn't known that you did it? I would have been walking around unclean all day and not even known it Does Jesus say that to her he doesn't say that he doesn't say that What is he saying instead he says the same thing to her he uses the same word that that gyros used earlier He says daughter Daughter your faith has made you well go in peace and be healed of your disease Think about how gracious he is You know I was reading I was studying this week. I couldn't help but think about a woman named Marta that I met If you read the blog I posted when I was in Ethiopia I wrote about her It was during one of the days when usually I was out teaching during the week And Normally the pastors attend the medical clinics and if anyone has a has a spiritual problem or want counseling or something They'll call one of the pastors and only had to do that one day and the one day I did it Um, they brought a woman over to me with a translator and they said The doctor one of the doctors wants you to talk about talk to her And I said sure what's the problem and they said will the she she's pregnant and she wants to have an abortion and she wants to talk to someone about it And I said, okay, and I'm thinking to myself. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to her Frankly, so we go with the translator and I asked her Um, you know why she wanted to to abort her baby and she said because um, I have no hope I've known to help me And I said really that struck me as odd because the project she is in provides them with money for rent food Any basically any physical need they they have the project provides them and I said how can you not have any hope? And I said I decided to take another tack and I asked the translator I said ask her if she's a Christian or Muslim And he asked her and she replied back she said oh, I'm a Christian she said I gave my heart to Jesus last year And I said well now we're now we're getting someplace I don't know how he translated that but now we're getting someplace And I said how where's your church? Well, you can't your church help you And she said oh, no, no, no, I'm not allowed to go to church. That's what he means She said when my landlord's of Christians too and they won't let me go to church with them And I said why and she said because I'm HIV positive And now because I'm pregnant I can't even think about telling them I'm pregnant And you know the if they have to think I'm the weirdest person in the world because I started crying You mean to tell me you can't go to church because you're a sinner It's backwards It's upside down. It's just not right And by the end of the day we had her but frankly in a different church and a support group all these things But as I was thinking about it, I wondered to myself how would a woman who was HIV positive single and pregnant with no means of support Feel as she came into our midst I don't know it depends on who she meets frankly But it really challenged me to think what are ways as far as outreach are we like Jesus? Would we be willing to receive anybody and if your answer is no then you don't understand the gospel because at the end of the day Guess who you are You're that woman who's unclean and without any hope whatsoever outside of yourself Fortunately for you and for me Jesus doesn't say get away from me because you're unclean Jesus says because you're unclean come on to me All you are weary and heavy laden come to me Jesus want you to come down And he says to her your faith has made you well and it's not just general faith It's the object of her faith which of course is Jesus himself and he sends her away with a classic Hebrew benediction go in peace Shalom Remember Shalom and the old testament is the way things are supposed to be Bernice let's give her a name now Bernice For the past 12 years your life has been completely and utterly desperate. You've been outcast lonely friendless and afraid now You're well Go in peace be healed. It's pretty amazing isn't it Unless you're gyrus Remember you get so caught up in the story of the woman. It's easy to forget about gyrus If you were gyrus, what are you thinking right now? You're not getting all misty-eyed You're not excited that this woman who's has been Just bearing for 12 years has now healed what you're thinking to yourself is come on Remember Jesus was on the way to heal his daughter and hear this woman that no one will talk to interrupts him and Jesus stops Don't you hate that? I do you go to a party and you're talking to a friend and they say hey, let's go from point A to point B And between point A and point B they have to stop and talk to a hundred people That drives me crazy Now imagine if your little daughter your only daughter was dying In fact dead and Jesus was on his way to save her In his outcast woman stops him If you're like me you'd be saying come on Jesus, you know She's been pretty miserable for 12 years don't you think you can wait another day Tell her to call your office on Tuesday talk your assistant you'll get an appointment by Thursday. We hope and she'll be good But right now we have bigger fish to fry that is you need to make my daughter well What gyrus doesn't get and what you and I don't get most of the time Is that the stop was made not only for the woman's sake, but it was made for his sake as well

Jesus stop not just to heal that woman Jesus stop because Jesus gyrus needed Jesus to stop Because Jesus knew the men were already on the way to tell him his daughter was dead. That wasn't done deal And gyrus needed to know that this Jesus could fix anything He didn't need to just know it. He needed to see it And now he had seen this woman who everyone probably knew was outcast and unclean and for it Jesus had just made her well and only after that does he hear your daughter is dead I Think if he had heard your daughter is dead before he had seen any of that he would have thrown up his hands and said Jesus You shafted me I was hoping you could do all this stuff and you did you didn't do anything and yet now he can think to himself Jesus fixed her maybe he there's hope for my daughter There's a great lesson there. There's several great lessons there one is about God's timing Right most oftentimes we expect Jesus to move now. We expect him to get on it now I've got problems so they need to be fixed now And sometimes Jesus takes his time because you need to see some other stuff before but also There's a lesson here and that we need each other because with only as we see God working in other people's lives does that boost our faith to know he can do the same for us Are you in relationships with other people? Or do you just sort of pull up your house and use the garage opener and pull in the garage and you do your thing and then you come out You never talked to anyone else you're gonna be weaker spiritually for that The last thing in this text after you know, you get all this drama is is is basically the death of despair Let's look at what happens In verse 35 it says while he was still speaking there came from the rulers house some who said your daughter is dead And why trouble the teacher any further But over hearing what they said Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue do not fear only believe What I think is great about this passage is Jesus doesn't give gyros a chance to doubt They come and say your daughter's dead don't why bother the teacher and it says over hearing them Another good translation of that would be ignoring them Ignoring them Jesus intervenes But any other words before gyros can can despair Jesus intervenes ignoring them and says Don't fear only believe Do not fear only believe and gyros must have done that because he goes with Jesus and it says that Jesus took Peter James and John and the parents And as they approach the house was a great commotion mourning and weeping And we know these mourners were professional mourners one because in the ancient Near East that's what they would have done Even a poor person was expected to hire at least two mourners and a flute player If someone in their family died in the wealthier you were the more that would be expected But we know that these were professional mourners, you know the union put out a call of we need you know gyros died We need to have 50 of you guys over there and they're weeping and moaning and mourning and we know that they're just professionals And they don't really care because of their response Remember Jesus shows up and he says why are you mourning why are you weeping? The girls only asleep And immediately they they change gears and they start laughing at Jesus In other words their mourning is just a facade. It's just a show. They don't really care about this little girl And we know that because as soon as Jesus says she's only asleep They laugh at him Notice whenever Jesus does things like this. He's often mocked The faith less often mock the faith fold the question is are you going to believe don't fear only believe What does Jesus do? Says they laughed at him and he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was Taking her by the hand he said to her Salitha Kumi Which means little girl another translation is little lamb Little girl I say to you or rise and immediately the girl got up and began walking for she was 12 years of age And they were immediately overcome with amazement and he strictly charged them that no one should know this and he told them to give her something to eat Verse 43 I think is one of the most interesting Versus because Jesus has just raised this little girl from the death and everyone is just shocked and utter amazement Their jaws are on the ground and you almost get the picture point the Jesus like hey I might want to give her something to eat she been dead for a while. It's probably hungry And you can imagine snapping out of it going oh hey, right She was dead now she's alive And in this we see the death of despair why because Jesus Raises this little girl from the dead but even bigger than that In the story we see the death of despair because ultimately here's how the story ends Jesus doesn't just heal diseases. He doesn't just heal death Jesus bears our diseases. He bears our death The big problem the thing the reason that the woman was bleeding for 12 years at the end of the day and ultimately Which because this thing called sin had violated all of shalom It had violated all of creation and it had violated her And Jesus came to bear that sin Jesus came to bear that disease Everyone deserves death. Jesus came to do to bear that death. He takes it on to himself You ever seen the movie The Green Mile I watch it yesterday. It's pretty amazing Movies Tom Hank for the prison guard and a guy comes into the prison. He's the biggest guy I've ever seen in my life It's a huge black man. He's about seven feet tall and his biceps were bigger than my head His name is John coffee and they find out over the course of the movie that John has the power to heal people But the way that John heals people is he has to touch them and he absorbs their disease. He's covered with scars And as he absorbs their disease and takes it on to himself the other person is made well That's exactly what Jesus does Jesus doesn't sit back from afar and with a scepter and say I'm gonna heal his disease and I'm gonna heal her death Jesus comes and he lays his hands on each and every one of us and he absorbs our sin He takes it on to himself. Remember second Corinthians says he who knew no sin became Sin so that you and I might become the righteousness of God If that doesn't make you hopeful nothing will Jesus comes in he has authority over despair, but that's because he bore our despair And now Peter says to us and I'll end with this. Remember what Peter says in his letter. He says chapter five Cast all your anxieties on him because why he cares for you think about it what's praying Father I pray that Even as we consider this text but people in this room I know summer in despair summer on the verge of despair And I pray that the gospel of Jesus would cut through all of it and we give them hope and faith Father, I thank you for this text. I thank you for what Jesus has done for us and Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen