Did You Know Jesus Had A Daughter? 

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- June 13, 2004  

Luke 8:40-46

       One night a house caught fire and a young boy was forced to flee to the roof. The father stood on the ground below with outstretched arms, calling to his son, "Jump! I'll catch you." He knew the boy had to jump to save his life. All the boy could see, however, was flame, smoke, and blackness. As can be imagined, he was afraid to leave the roof. His father kept yelling: "Jump! I will catch you."

         But the boy protested, "Daddy, I can't see you."

        The father replied, "But I can see you and that's all that matters."

Our text for today is found in Luke 8:40-46ff

      40On the other side of the lake the crowds received Jesus with open arms because they had been waiting for him. 41And now a man named Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, came and fell down at Jesus’ feet, begging him to come home with him. 42His only child was dying, a little girl twelve years old.
    As Jesus went with him, he was surrounded by the crowds. 43And there was a woman in the crowd who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years. She had spent everything she had on doctors and still could find no cure. 44She came up behind Jesus and touched the fringe of his robe. Immediately, the bleeding stopped.
      45“Who touched me?” Jesus asked.
    Everyone denied it, and Peter said, “Master, this whole crowd is pressing up against you.”
46But Jesus told him, “No, someone deliberately touched me, for I felt healing power go out from me.”
      47When the woman realized that Jesus knew, she began to tremble and fell to her knees before him. The whole crowd heard her explain why she had touched him and that she had been immediately healed. 48“Daughter,” he said to her, “your faith has made you well. Go in peace.”

      Our text for today gives us a miracle of Jesus within another miracle of Jesus. Jesus has the power to heal and we see this many times in the accounts of his life and ministry in the New Testament Gospels. The context of this passage is a trip Jesus and his disciples made from Capernaum to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. While he was there he cast the demons out of the demoniac with the ultimate result that the pigs were destroyed. Jesus was invited to leave the area by those who would not believe in him.

     I want you to try to picture this scene:  When he returned home, a crowd met him. The scriptures say that they expected him to come back and were waiting for him.
Out of the crowd came a man, Jairus was his name, who was one of the rulers or leaders of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus’ feet and began to plead with Jesus to come home with him. His daughter was dying…his only daughter…..his only daughter who was only 12 years old was dying.

     Picture the crowd in your mind once more. In this crowd are those who deeply believe in Jesus and who love him. There are those in this crowd who are trying to find something that can be used as a weapon against Jesus. There are those who are just caught up in the crowd, not sure why they are there, except for the fact that something is happening and they want to be part of it. People are the same everywhere and that is what you would find in that crowd that met Jesus that day.
    

     Jesus goes with Jairus to his little girl. If you close your eyes and try to picture this event, I think you would picture Jairus out ahead of Jesus a little bit. He would be trying to get Jesus home quickly. And the crowd is trying to get to Jesus. People are pushing, trying to position themselves in the crowd to be where Jesus is…where the action is. I am sure that people are crowding Jesus and the disciples and those close to Jesus are bumping him, perhaps reaching out to shake his hand or simply to touch him. Strong men jostle each other to get near Jesus, to get one glance into his eyes. Mothers raise their children up high so that they can see Jesus before he leaves their area. There were those who wanted to be there and hear what Jesus had to say should he stop and teach them or see him work some wonder. He was the center of attraction.

     In that crowd of people, there was a woman who some how managed to make her way through the crush of the crowd. She had been ill…subject to bleeding for 12 years. She had been to doctors for treatment that had never worked. She had not been healed in the 12 years of her illness. She had spent all the money she had to no avail. And now according to the Law she was unclean. She would have been ostracized from the community of Israel because of her uncleanness. She would have lost her husband and family because of this and now she was destitute.. But she had worked her way through the press of the crowd to get to where Jesus was and thought that all she needed to do was touch the hem of his garment to be healed. And so she came up behind him and reached out and touched one of the blue tassels of his cloak. Immediately her bleeding stopped.

      Suddenly the progress of Jesus and this crowd is arrested,  because out of this encounter comes a strange question from Jesus:  “Who touched me?”
Our text tells us that in response to Jesus’ question everyone denied touching him. Peter said: “Master, the people are crowding, and pressing against you.” Essentially, the disciples’ response is….”What do you mean ‘Who touched me?’” There are hundreds of people around you and you want to know who touched you…almost everybody has touched you. How on earth could anyone know who touched you?”

      Jesus presses the issue: “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” There are only two who know what has happened:  Jesus and one other. And then in the hush and amid the amused glances of the people gathered around Jesus a woman is seen moving around until she knelt before Jesus. Then and there she told him the truth.
Bending over her, and looking straight into her eyes…I think that is the right way to picture what happens here…Jesus utters the only particularly tender epithet that he is ever recorded as having addressed to a woman:  “Daughter, your faith has made you whole, go in peace.”

     Where is Jairus while all of this is transpiring? He is waiting, eager to get going, anxious because he knows that the time is critical and the need of his little girl is great. He might be a little impatient and even angry at the delay that is placing his daughter in jeopardy.
At the same time, there must have been a new hope springing up within him at the evidence before him of the power of Jesus, the power of the One whose aid he had come to seek. Jesus could help his little daughter.  When they begin moving once again toward his home, messengers from his house meet them; “Don’t worry the Rabbi, the child is dead.”  It is too late. The delay has cost him the life of his little girl.  Jesus’ response to him is:  “Fear not, believer only; thy child shall be made whole.” When they arrive at the house Jesus says, “She is not dead but sleepeth.” And they laugh him to scorn. The people who have gathered at the house know that she is dead. Jesus puts them all out of the room except three of his disciples, the parents and the girl. Jesus bends over her and says, “Little lamb, arise.” Jairus, despite the delay, gets exactly what he has asked Jesus for…the restoration of his daughter to his family.

     Let’s go back to the question Jesus asked:  “Who touched me?”
It is revealing to us to this extent:
* There is contact with Jesus that makes a demand on Christ and there is contact which makes no demand on him. It reveals that men can come very near to him and yet never be near to him. Men can look him in the eyes and never see him; they can catch all the accents of his voice and never hear him; jostle his garments and yet never make contact with him.
* It further reveals that there is contact with Jesus, which if made, he must answer. Without the utterance of a word, virtue, power will pass from him to the person who makes that contact.

      Jesus knew that she was there. He knew she was coming. His question was not designed to reveal her so that he might discover who she was. No, he questioned so that he might bring her nearer to himself and that he might create a value for another breaking heart, the heart of Jairus.

      He knew she was coming, and in that moment when she made contact with him, far more quickly than a flash of lightning, virtue, power, health, healing, strength passed from Jesus to her and all that canceled her illness and restored to her everything she had lost.
What was her contact with Jesus that placed this kind of demand on him?
Here was a woman whose story reveals a fact, which expressed in terms of the Hebrew economy, may be stated in this way:  On account of this type of disease from which she was suffering, she was excommunicated from temple worship and not allowed to mingle among the worshippers there. By the Law she was divorced from her husband, not allowed to live with him. She was also ostracized from society and in this appalling loneliness she had lived for 12 years. For 12 years she had been drained of her strength and all of her assets.

     Look at her again: thin, emaciated and worn down by 12 years of suffering. She had heard that Jesus was coming. She had obviously heard that Jesus healed the sick and he was now coming her way. And somehow she managed to make it through that crowd to get behind Jesus and touch his cloak.

     What was it that moved her? Was it faith? I think it was her profound sense of need, an acquaintance with a testimony that told of his power. It was hope springing up in her heart that perhaps he could help even her. And this faith expressed itself in her venture of passing through the crowd getting near enough to stretch out her hand to touch that tassel…not just to touch it but to grasp it!

      It was an act growing out of her desperate need. It was faith venturing to make an appeal, the appeal of a touch. This was not the act of a reasoned and argumentative and logical faith. It was a venture in an hour of great need.
Hers was a great agony, a great need, a simple willingness to believe a testimony spoken by others, expressed in a determination to make a final venture. So surreptitiously, hidden away, she clutched at his garment. That is the contact that he answers! That is the attitude to which he is compelled, by virtue of what he is in himself, to make an immediate response. Need, agony, without logic, without reason, but in answer to testimony and to hope, making a venture – to that he responds, and the virtue passes from him to the seeker and heals.

     Augustine once said in writing about this story and contrasting the crowds that pressed Jesus with the woman who touched him: “Flesh presses, faith touches.” That which is merely of human interest or human curiosity, presses him, but faith reaches him, touches him, and this Lord of hope and glory knows the difference between the bump of the curious crowd and the touch of a weak, frail appealing soul.

      The healthy, robust, self-complacent, self-confident, satisfied, curious jostle of the crowd draws nothing out of him. But the weak, frail, agonized, almost hopeless touch of a hidden woman is answered by a flow of virtue, power and healing for which the soul is waiting.
She had hoped to get her healing and to quietly depart. She hoped to touch Jesus and get her blessing and slip away with no one knowing. But she is not permitted to do so. She must come from behind and stand in front. She must come from hiding out into the open and confess him.

      Her confession brings to her a greater, deeper blessing. She told Jesus how she had come through the crowd and how she had been healed.
And he said to her: “Daughter…” There is no way to say this to you  to convey the meaning contained within it when this woman heard the word. Though she has been healed, she is still excommunicate with no right of entry into the temple or synagogue. She is still divorced for even if there is the possibility of restoration to home and husband, it has not happened yet. She is still ostracized from society and is likely to remain so, because she has lost all her property.  But Jesus said, “Daughter…”  and with a word of ineffable tenderness has brought her to his heart. Not only has he adopted her as his daughter, but he has admitted her to fellowship with himself in fullest grace.

     In Luke 8:19ff we find this interesting exchange with Jesus:
     

 19Once when Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, they couldn’t get to him because of the crowds. 20Someone told Jesus, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, and they want to see you.”
      21Jesus replied, “My mother and my brothers are all those who hear the message of God and obey it.”

And now he adds another word “Daughter’. She has been healed physically, but she has also received a more glorious blessing when she ceased in her attempt to hide…she has come into personal and eternal fellowship with Him as he said to her:  “Daughter…go in peace.”
       We cannot stop there, but must go back to Jairus. He must during this time be asking himself:  “Why does he wait? My little girl is dying. He will be too late. The sunshine of the past 12 years is dimming. The laughter and joy she has brought to my home is gone and she is dying.
        What is that woman saying…12 years of shadow. That woman has been ill just as long as my girl has been with me. She has been in the shadows all the time I have been in the sunshine. What is it she has said? Her shadows are gone and the sunshine has come back into her life. Then if he could heal her, and help her when all she does is touch the hem of his garment, let us get him on and home.

      It is for Jairus sake, for his strengthening that she must confess to Jesus before the crowd.  The question “Who touched me?” is one that caused deeper blessing for the suffering woman, strengthened the faith of Jairus and gave glory to Jesus Christ himself.

Have you been with Jesus, yet never near him?
Have you made that venture to come near him?
Have you touched him?
Have you come to him in the agony of your need and touched him?

     Confess what he has done for you…that the whole blessing might be yours and that some Jairus might be encouraged and that Jesus might be glorified in it all.

---Dennis Gleason