Mark 5:21-43  Taking her hand

It’s every parents’ worst nightmare, their child sick, dying, in desperate need of help.  A parent will do anything in that situation; they will make any sacrifice, explore treatment options, look for help and advice wherever they can.  When Jarius comes to find Jesus, we sense his desperation; he falls at Jesus’ feet and pleads with him to heal his daughter.  He believes (rightly) that if Jesus lays his hands on her, her health will be restored, and her life saved.

In the middle of this story, Mark the storyteller takes a detour to bring us the story of another desperate person, a woman suffering from a haemorrhage.  As the crowds press around Jesus, she tells herself that even a touch of his garment will be sufficient – and so it is; with the slightest touch, she is healed.  The woman’s experience of healing offers a clue as to what the outcome will be for Jairus’s daughter.  She is thought to be dead by the time Jesus arrives but again, with a mere touch – this time Jesus takes her hand – she is restored.  With tenderness, Jesus addresses the woman as ‘My daughter’ and the young girl as Talitha, Aramaic for ‘little girl’.

Early in 2023, earthquakes brought devastation to parts of Turkey and Syria, leaving over 50,000 people dead and many more missing.  One photo from the aftermath showed a Turkish father, Mesut Hançer, sitting in the rubble, holding the hand of his fifteen-year-old daughter, Irmak.  Irmak had died in the earthquake and was lying in her bed buried beneath the concrete and bricks that had been their home.  Only her hand was visible, and her distraught father clings tightly to it.  How many of us have sat and held the hand of a sick loved one, bound together in love even as hope fades or life slips away?  Today’s Gospel places Jesus in situations of distress, tragedy, even death.  We see his response to the pleas of those who are suffering, his impulse to reach out with tenderness to touch, comfort, heal and restore.  God who reaches out in compassion through the hands of Jesus reaches out to us, and through us.

© Triona Doherty & Jane Mellet, 2023.  The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark.  (Dublin: Messenger Publications 2023)

‘Sometimes, reaching out and taking someone’s hand is the beginning of a journey. At other times, it is allowing another to take yours.     – Vera Nazarian