PART 3 – EXPLORE THE PLOT LINES
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Chapter 15 - JAIRUS'S DAUGHTER: plots within plots
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Having looked at the overall structure of the Joseph story, let’s turn to something quite different – the story of Jairus’s daughter from the Gospel of Mark.
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There is an extra twist to this story, in that we have an additional “story within a story” that interrupts the progression of Jesus’ healing of Jairus’s daughter, but forms an integral part of the Jairus story by adding to the tension and changing the nature of the interaction between Jesus and Jairus.
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So as you read the story below, try to identify the crisis point and resolution of both the main story, and the embedded story, and analyze how the two stories interact.
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Jairus’s Daughter (from Mark 5:21-42)
Jesus left the country of the Gadarenes, and he and the disciples sailed back across the lake to Capernaum. When he arrived, a large crowd gathered around him on the shore.
While Jesus was talking to the crowd, a leader from the local synagogue arrived, whose name was Jairus. He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him,
"My little daughter is dying. Please come and lay your hands on her to heal her. Don’t let her die"
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So Jesus went with him, and everyone else followed him, crowding around him.
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Now there was a woman in the crowd who had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had been to many different doctors over the years. They had fleeced her of all her money to pay for her treatment, but she was no better for it. In fact, she had got worse. She had heard about Jesus, and thought that if she could get close enough to Jesus and just touch his robe she would be healed. So she came up behind him, slipped through the crowd and managed to reach out and touch his robe. As soon as she touched him, the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that her condition had been healed.
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Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around looking at the people in the crowd and asked,
"Who touched my robe?"
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His disciples said to him,
"Look how big this crowd is. There are people all around you. How can you ask, 'Who touched me?'"
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But Jesus kept on looking around in order to get a reaction from whoever who had done it.
The woman was scared, shaking at the realization of what had happened to her. So she came and fell at Jesus’ feet and told him what she had done. Jesus said to her,
"Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over."
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While Jesus was still speaking to the woman, messengers arrived from Jairus’s home and told Jairus,
"Your daughter is dead. It’s too late now to bother the Teacher."
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But Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus,
"Don't be afraid. Just have faith."
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Then Jesus made the crowd stop where they were. He wouldn't let anyone go with him except Peter, James, and John. When they came to Jairus’s home there was a great commotion going on, with people weeping and wailing. Jesus went inside the house and asked,
"Why is there so much commotion and weeping? The child isn't dead; she's just asleep."
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The people there all laughed at him. But Jesus made them all leave. Then he took the girl's father and mother and his three disciples into the room where the girl was lying. He took hold of her hand, he said to her,
"Talitha koumi," which means "Little girl, get up!"
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Immediately the girl, who was twelve years old, stood up and walked around! They were overwhelmed and totally awe struck. Jesus gave them strict orders not to tell anyone what had happened. Then he told them to give her something to eat.
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Plot-line 1 – Main Story, Jairus’s daughter
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Let’s look first at the main story – that of the interaction between Jesus and Jairus.
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At first sight, the crisis point and the resolution seem to be straightforward:
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CRISIS POINT – Jairus arrives to ask Jesus to heal his sick daughter
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RESOLUTION – Jesus raise Jairus’s daughter from the dead
But look closely, and you will realize there is a disconnect between the crisis and the resolution. By the end of the story Jesus is not healing a sick daughter, but raising a dead daughter. The crisis has actually changed and deepened somewhere in the middle of the story. So there are in fact two crisis points:
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CRISIS POINT 1 – Jairus arrives to ask Jesus to heal his sick daughter
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CRISIS POINT 2 – messengers arrive to tell Jairus his daughter is dead
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RESOLUTION - Jesus raises Jairus's daughter from the dead
So the resolution connects with the second crisis point. But this second crisis is connected firmly with the embedded story – the story of the woman with the issue of blood. If Jesus had not been delayed in approaching Jairus’s house, and had not taken the time to respond to this woman’s needs, he could have arrived before it was “too late” to prevent her death.
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We could analyze the story of Jairus’s daughter with the following diagram:
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Introduction
Jesus travels back across Lake Galilee to Capernaum (actually the Greek text doesn’t mention Capernaum here, but we know from the context that Jesus is using Capernaum as his base for this part of his ministry). So we know where he is when the story starts, on the lake shore in Capernaum, and that he is met and surrounded by an eager crowd.
CRISIS 1
Jairus arrives to ask Jesus to heal his daughter
Development
Jesus joins Jairus and starts off for Jairus’s house, followed by the crowd.
Interruption
Jesus heals the woman with the issue of blood
CRISIS 2
Jairus’s servants arrive to tell him his daughter is dead
Development
Jesus reassures Jairus. They continue to Jairus’s house. Jesus sends the mourners away, enters the house with the girl’s parents and 3 of his disciples.
RESOLUTION
Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead
Unravelling
Jesus commands the girl’s parents to give her something to eat (a sign of the completeness of her recovery) and tells them not to broadcast the miracle.
Notice how the story of the woman with the issue of blood is a complete story in itself, but also an integral part of the larger story, causing the delay in Jesus’ arrival at Jairus’s house, and resulting in the second crisis point.
How does it help to see the structure of the story in this way?
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Consider how the progression from CRISIS 1 (Jairus’s daughter being sick) to CRISIS 2 (Jairus’s daughter having died) makes such a massive difference to the response of the crowd.
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After CRISIS 1, the crowds are following Jesus, expecting to see a miracle of healing. We can assume this to be the case since Jesus has often demonstrated his ability to heal – he has only just returned from the land of the Gadarenes where he has dramatically healed the man possessed by demons.
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After CRISIS 2 we see a very different picture.
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The messengers from Jairus’s house come to say that there is no longer any point in Jesus coming to heal his daughter – it’s too late!
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When Jesus arrives at Jairus’s house everyone is weeping and wailing. Hope has turned to grief.
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And when Jesus suggests that he can bring the girl back to life, everyone laughs with scorn – they know it’s impossible!
Now compare Jesus’ response. It seems that Jesus is not at all concerned by the interruption, but simply carries on as if nothing has changed. Jesus knows his Father’s purpose, knows that the “interruption” was planned and prepared by his Father to demonstrate his healing power and compassion to the crowd.
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He also knows that as far as God’s power is concerned, raising the dead is no more difficult for him than healing the sick – all things are possible with God.
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So the story strongly contrasts the “Lower Story”, seen from the human point of view, and the “Upper Story” seen from God’s perspective, and shows how Jesus was perfectly in tune with his Father’s will and purposes.
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But as we already remarked, the story of the woman with the issue of blood is a complete story in itself, and stands up to the same kind of analysis.
Plot-line 2 – Embedded Story, the woman with the issue of blood
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Even though this embedded story is quite short, it is by no means straightforward. Careful analysis would show that we have more than one crisis point, and more than one resolution.
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We have quite a lengthy introduction to this story, in proportion to the length of the story as a whole, but Mark wants us to appreciate the seriousness of this woman’s condition. All the English translations of this passage (at least all that I have access to), like the original Greek text, use euphemistic language to talk about the woman medical problem, since it is the kind of “woman’s thing” that is embarrassing and humiliating to talk about in direct terms. In Jesus’ time, having a permanent “issue of blood” would not just be embarrassing, but would make her permanently “unclean”, shunned and outcast by the rest of society.
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Mark uses very derogatory language about the treatment this woman received from the medical profession of the day. He implies that the doctors were very dismissive and lacking in compassion, taking all her money to pay for her treatment, but leaving her no better than when she started, so that now she was not just physically sick (note that, whatever the root cause of her medical problem, a permanent loss of blood would leave her anaemic, weak, and prone to all types of secondary infection), considered unclean and shunned by society, but also financially destitute.
The way this woman sought to gain healing by slipping unnoticed through the crowd, and touching Jesus’ robe, shows how she felt too embarrassed and humiliated to approach Jesus and ask for healing in front of the crowd.
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So the development of the story looks something like this:
Introduction
We learn about the woman and the effect of her medical condition on her life.
CRISIS 1
She hears of Jesus’ healing power, and thinks if she can just touch Jesus robe she will be healed.
Development
She carries out her plan, slips through the crowd, and manages to touch Jesus’ robe.
RESOLUTION 1
She received physical healing.
CRISIS 2
Jesus demands that the person who touched him comes forward.
Development
The woman is frightened at the prospect, but she overcomes her shame and embarrassment, steps forward and confesses what has happened.
RESOLUTION 2
She receives not just physical, but spiritual healing. Note that her confession and Jesus’ public pronouncement of healing, would mean she was no longer “unclean” and could return to full social interaction within the community. And Jesus’ declaration, “Your faith has healed you” has a spiritual as well as physical implication.
Unravelling
It was “while Jesus was still speaking to her” that Jairus’s servants arrived with the news that his daughter was dead. So the unravelling of this story leads directly to the deepening crisis in the Jairus story.
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Questions for consideration or discussion --- Compare and Contrast…
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There is an important principle of Biblical study to notice here. One story can provide an important commentary on other stories, especially if those stories are connected. The story of Jairus’s daughter and the woman with the issue of blood are indeed intimately connected, and moreover have very similar story structures.
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There are some very revealing similarities between the two stories, but there are also some striking contrasts
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Similarities between the two stories
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Both stories have more than one crisis point, with the second crisis changing the nature / deepening the problems faced by the participants in the story.
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In the main story, the crisis changes from that of healing a sick daughter, to raising a dead daughter.
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In the embedded story, having received physical healing, the woman is faced with making an open public confession, which leads to a second, deeper healing.
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But in both cases the final resolution is more powerful, more glorifying to God, more deeply fulfilling and restorative to the individuals concerned. Ask yourself the questions:
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Why was Jesus not prepared to spare this woman the shame and embarrassment of revealing her medical problems?
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Why was it so important for her to stand up and confess in public what had happened?
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How did the woman benefit from this second public encounter, that was not already achieved by her first secret encounter with the healing power of Christ?
What spiritual principles can you derive from comparing these two stories side by side?
Contrasting the two stories
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On the other hand, there are some surprising contrasts between the two stories:
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With the embedded story, Jesus turns what could have been a private and personal encounter between himself and the woman into a very public occasion.
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But in the main story, Jesus sends away the mourners and excludes Jairus’s household, and even most of his own disciples, and makes what could have been a very public event into a private and intimate affair.
It would appear that Jesus’ decision to deal with the matter either publicly or privately was not a matter of principle, but depended on individual circumstances…
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So what do you think made the difference in these two cases?
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Why do you think Jesus kept the raising of Jairus’s daughter so quiet, when the other healing was so public?
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What do your conclusions tell you about Jesus’ character, and his concern for those individuals involved?
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