This week we will continue our journey through Luke with Luke 8:40-9:50 where we encounter the great stories of Jesus and his disciples – the feeding of the 5000, Peter’s Confession, and the Transfiguration. I know we are behind schedule, but I am still anticipating that we will get to the Crucifixion before Easter.
Jarius’ Daughter and the Hemorrhagic Woman: (vv. 8:40-56)
As part of Luke’s orderly account, he takes these two stories directly from Mark 5:21-48 but simply deletes Mark Aramaic phrases. The story begins with Jarius, the leader of the synagogue and therefore a very important man, asking Jesus to please heal his daughter. Jesus’ interaction with Jarius is interrupted when the unnamed hemorrhagic woman simply reaches out to touch Jesus to be healed. Jesus responds to her that her faith or trust in him has healed her – Jesus’s intention did not heal her, but her trust in Jesus did. In the interim, Jarius’s daughter dies. Jesus tells Jarius and the crowd that they too should have the faith and trust of the woman. As the story ends, Jesus goes into the girl’s room, instructs her to “arise” (using the same word that will be used to describe his own resurrection), and she gets up.
This story demonstrates not only the power of faith but also foreshadows the resurrection. In both cases, Jesus takes upon himself the blood of the woman and the death of the child and makes them both whole through his touch. Like the child, Luke is forecasting that Jesus’s death is not the end of the story.
Commissioning of the Twelve. (vv. 9:1-6)
The synoptic Gospels can generally be divided into three parts – Jesus’s Galilean ministry, Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem, and the events of Holy Week. This chapter is the transition between the Galilean ministry and the journey to Jerusalem. To put Jesus’s ministry in business terms, Jesus is the founder of the Kingdom of Heaven, but for the business to succeed, he needs others to share in the planning and responsibility of the venture. These are the Twelve, and in the next several pericopes (or lessons), Jesus will give the Twelve the insight into exactly what membership in and leadership of the Kingdom of Heaven entails.
In the commissioning of the Twelve (Jesus has other disciples (Luke 6:13)), Jesus gives the Twelve power and authority over demons and disease. This authority is not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of others. They are not only fishers for the Kingdom but also healers. They have seen Jesus do these things, now it is their turn.
Jesus also imparts to them his status as an itinerant. They have to go out without anything – no bag, no money, no change of clothes, and nothing to ward off danger. The Twelve cannot accept payment for their services but must rely upon the kindness of strangers. (The word for “hospitality” in Greek is xenophilia which literally means “love of strangers.”) Jesus reminds them of the parable of the sower – some places they go will have good soil and some will not. At this time, they are to go only where the land is fertile to the message. And so they are sent out for the first time. Their training has begun.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is meatloaf. Discussion about 6:45. Compline at 8. Hope to see you here!
And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.” And he said, “Go, and say to this people . . .” Isaiah 6:8-9a