Two urgent needs collide in this passage, and Luke lets us feel the collision. Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue and a man of standing, falls at Jesus' feet begging for his only daughter, about twelve years old and dying. Jesus goes with him at once, and in the middle of the urgent walk a second desperate person interrupts everything.
Her situation has its own quiet horror. She had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, the same span as the little girl's whole life, an illness that under the law made her ritually unclean the entire time, unable to worship normally or to touch anyone without spreading her uncleanness. She had spent all her living on physicians and could not be healed by anyone. Twelve years of savings and failed cures have shrunk to one furtive plan. She will touch the edge of his garment from behind, unseen, and slip away.
It works instantly. 44"immediately her discharge of blood ceased." But Jesus will not let her vanish into the crowd unnamed. 45"Who was it that touched me?" Peter's reply is almost exasperated, since the crowds are pressing on every side. Jesus insists. 46"Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me." Caught, she comes forward trembling and tells the whole story publicly, the reverse of the secrecy her plan depended on. And Jesus undoes any shame that confession could have cost her. 48"Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace." He gives her a family word in front of everyone, to a woman who had likely been treated as unclean and nameless for twelve years.
While the conversation is still unfolding, the news Jairus feared arrives. A messenger says, 49"Your daughter is dead." The woman's twelve years have delayed Jesus long enough, it seems, for a father's worst fear to come true. Jesus refuses the premise. 50"Do not fear; only believe, and she will be well." The faith that has just healed a woman in a crowd is now asked to reach across death.
At the house everyone is weeping, and Jesus says, 52"she is not dead but sleeping." 53"they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead." No one in the room believed him, and he does not argue. 54"taking her by the hand he called, saying, 'Child, arise.'" 55"her spirit returned, and she got up at once." Then a detail easy to miss beside the wonder of it. He 55"directed that something should be given her to eat." A girl who has just returned to life will need a meal.
Two women, one twelve years old and one twelve years sick, are restored by the same voice on the same afternoon. The Greek behind "made you well" and behind "she will be well" is the word Luke uses elsewhere for salvation itself, the word he gave the sinful woman at Simon's table (Luke 7:50). Underneath the plain description of two repaired bodies, Luke insists that what happened to the woman in the crowd was still available, moments later, to a girl already gone. Neither miracle waited for the crowd's belief or for the mourners' laughter to stop. Both happened because the one walking through that crowd carried an authority that neither chronic suffering nor death could delay for long.
If you are in the middle of an interruption, see that Jesus is not hurried by delay and is not stopped by death. Bring him the one, and trust him with the other.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a Son unhurried by delay and unstopped by death, who called a trembling woman "daughter" before the crowd she had spent twelve years hiding from. Meet us in whatever long affliction we have spent everything trying to cure, and whatever loss looks too final for hope. Take us by the hand as you took hers, and speak the word we need to hear. In Jesus' name, amen.