The Explanation

Jesus and his disciples cross a lake and step into a place full of graves. A man lives there among the tombs, so wild that chains cannot hold him. Night and day he screams and cuts himself with stones. Nobody can help him, nobody dares come near. When he sees Jesus, he runs to him, but it is the evil spirits inside him who cry out, begging Jesus not to torment them. Jesus asks the spirit its name. "Legion," it answers, because a legion was a huge group of Roman soldiers, thousands of men. There are that many spirits crushing this one man. Jesus sends them into a herd of pigs nearby, and the pigs rush into the sea and drown. When the people from the town arrive, they find the man sitting calmly, dressed, thinking clearly. Instead of being glad, they are afraid and ask Jesus to leave. The man begs to go with him, but Jesus tells him to go home instead and tell what God has done for him.

Back on the other side of the lake, a synagogue leader named Jairus falls at Jesus' feet. His little daughter is dying. Jesus goes with him, but the crowd presses in in from all sides. In that crowd is a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. She has spent everything she owns on doctors and only gotten worse. She touches Jesus' clothes secretly, sure that this alone will heal her. It works instantly. Jesus feels power go out of him and stops to ask who touched him. Trembling, she tells him the whole truth. Jesus calls her "daughter" and sends her away in peace.

While he is still speaking, messengers arrive saying Jairus' daughter has died already. Jesus tells Jairus not to be afraid, only to believe. At the house, he puts out the mourners who laugh at him, takes the girl's parents and three disciples inside, and takes her hand. "Talitha cumi," he says, "Girl, get up." She stands up immediately, twelve years old, alive again.

What Does This Mean?

This chapter is full of people nobody could help. Chains could not hold the man in the tombs. Doctors could not cure the bleeding woman. Death itself had already taken Jairus' daughter. Every human solution had failed completely before Jesus arrived. And in each situation, Jesus does not just fix a problem from a distance. He gets close. He lets the man scream at him, he lets the woman touch him even though her illness was considered unclean and would have made others unclean too, and he takes a dead child by the hand. Jesus is not afraid of what is broken, afraid, or forbidden. He touches it anyway, and it does not make him dirty. Instead, life flows from him into the mess.

Notice too how differently people respond. The freed man wants to follow Jesus. The townspeople want Jesus gone. Fear can either draw us toward Jesus or push us away from him. Mark does not smooth this over. Both reactions happen right after the same miracle.

The Common Thread

God had always promised his people that one day he would set them completely free and make everything whole again. In Jesus, that promise starts breaking into the world already, piece by piece. He frees a man that no chain could control. He heals a woman no doctor could cure. He raises a girl that death had already claimed. These are small windows into the bigger promise: one day, through Jesus, everything broken will be made new completely.

For You

Maybe you know what it feels like when nobody seems able to help. Or maybe you have looked at someone else's mess and felt afraid to get close, the way the townspeople reacted to the healed man. This chapter asks whether you would run toward Jesus like the demon possessed man eventually did, or whether fear would make you want him to leave. It also asks whether you're willing to get close to people others avoid, since Jesus never was afraid to.

Talk About It

Why do you think the people were more afraid after the man was healed than when he was still dangerous?

The bleeding woman touched Jesus in secret, but he stopped and found her anyway. Why do you think that mattered to him?

Praying Together

Lord Jesus, you were not afraid to come close to people who were broken, sick, or even dead. Thank you that nothing is too much for you to touch and heal. Give us courage to come to you honestly, and to get close to others the way you got close to them. Amen.