"Jesus goes along with Jairus’ wish but finds his healing plot quickly interrupted. The crowd starts by pressing in on Jesus, but even that passing distraction proves to be adequate cover for a woman plagued by hemorrhages for twelve years....
"Here, early in this sandwiched narrative, a close reading of the Greek is a great help to the preacher. Mark 5:26 goes to great lengths to describe the woman in a long periodic sentence full of past participles: having suffered, having spent money, having not benefitted, and having gotten worse, having heard about Jesus, and having come from behind … then comes the long delayed main verb: she touched [Jesus’] garment....
"She 'has been' participled worse than most, but by the end of the long periodic sentence the unnamed woman still has agency—in her only indicative verb—to touch the one she just knows can heal her....
"Hers is no passive rescue—and that itself, I suspect, becomes part of the healing. The healing confirmation does not come first from without, but within—the woman knows immediately in her body that the healing has happened."
Thank you, Professor David Schnasa Jacobsen!!
Dr. David Schnasa Jacobsen, who received his Master of Divinity degree and Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, is Bishops Scholar in Homiletics and Preaching and Director of the Homiletical Theology Project at Boston University School of Theology. His fuller reflections on Mark 5:21-43 can be found at workingpreacher.org, posted on June 27, 2021.
His research project at STH, the Homiletical Theology Project, has sponsored consultations in crucial research areas for the field like Christian preaching and the Hebrew Bible, pedagogy and intercultural communication theories, and a projected global project on homiletics and trauma.