Miracle Inside a Miracle

This week's lesson continues with the story of Jesus and his disciples returning from healing a possessed man. They are welcomed by the people, including Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, who pleads for Jesus to heal his sick daughter. As they make their way to Jairus' home, another woman with a 12-year issue of blood reaches out to touch Jesus' garment, believing it will heal her. Jesus stops and acknowledges her faith, and she is healed. Meanwhile, Jairus receives word that his daughter has died. Despite the apparent unfairness of the situation, Jairus remains by Jesus' side, and his daughter is ultimately brought back to life. This story highlights the justice and mercy of the Savior, and reminds us that we may not always know the full story or understand the reasons behind certain circumstances. Okay, welcome back everyone. So this week we're going to pick up right where we left off the last time we were together. They're making their way back from healing the man who had been possessed and now is preaching in his hometown and trying to help everyone understand how the Savior, well who the Savior is really and that he saves us. So when they get back to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, in Luke chapter 8, we learn that the people over there, quote, gladly received him. The thing is, we don't know which city it was that gladly received him or where he returned to. The most likely candidate is Capernaum, but we just can't tell for sure from the gospel record that we have. Well, among the people who gladly received him, there's one whose name is Jairus or Jairus, however you want to say it, and he's the ruler of the synagogue. It might be important for a second just to understand a little bit more about who a ruler is or how they become that. A ruler of a synagogue was appointed by the Jewish elders of the town and his job was to look after the synagogue and also to organize the worship services. Because of his position and who appointed him, he would have been well respected and well known in town. So while everyone's gladly rejoicing, they would have been surprised to see this leader in the town come and, quote, fall down at Jesus' feet and then begin to plead for the Savior to help his daughter who's lying at home in bed sick. This would have left an impact on everyone there, I imagine. Jesus agrees to go with him and they're headed towards his home. And that's where we get into an interesting experience. This would have a miracle inside of a miracle. And so we're going to pause for a second because Jairus' story just gets put on hold by all the gospel writers. And instead, we're going to move into another story of a woman who'd been forgotten by her society. So the gospel authors never give us this woman's name. We just know her as the woman who had an issue of blood. We don't know exactly what an issue of blood was, but the footnotes say a hemorrhage. And there are biblical scholars who suggest that this was a hemorrhage of the uterus, basically mimicking a menstrual cycle for 12 years. This would be horrible in any time, but in this time in particular, it would have led to some very difficult challenges. The law of Moses stated that if you had a menstrual cycle and there were a bunch of other things as well that could make you unclean, but you were unclean, symbolically speaking, and you had to be separated for seven days and had to wash to clean yourself. There were good reasons for this. Germs weren't common knowledge, and people who were bleeding or had other bodily fluids were considered ritually unclean. This would have been medically very good. Even up to our time in early America, we didn't understand germs. We even had a president die because of how little we knew about germs. President James A. Garfield was shot, but he likely would have lived except for the doctors didn't know anything about germs and kept sticking their dirty fingers into the wound and he dies of the infection. Anyway, point being, medically speaking, this was probably a good idea. I'm not suggesting that's the only reason the Lord had in mind. He was probably teaching some very important things about the sacredness of life and death as most of the things that will make you unclean had to do with life and death. But that aside, this would be horrible for this woman. She would be separated from everyone. There's a biblical scholar out there, excuse me, an LDS scholar, who even points out that during this time, she wouldn't have been able to have children. And the law then did say that if you couldn't have children for 10 years, your husband could divorce you because posterity was that important to survival. That scholar's name is Lynn Wilson. We'll come back to her in a second because she says something else. So here she is, she may have been divorced if she had been married. She spent all of her living trying to get healed and nothing has gotten better. In fact, she's only gotten worse. As this crowd goes by, she knows that this Savior, this Messiah, has been healing people. And Jairus has hope that his daughter won't die. She's probably been hopeless for years and now that hope is beginning to ignite in her. So she throws caution to the wind and breaks the law of Moses and enters this crowd. There could be very bad consequences for doing this. But she thinks to herself, if I can just touch the hem of his clothing, I can be healed. Now that phrase is really important because in Matthew 9, verse 20, Matthew lets us know that the hem of the garment is what she touches. And if you look at the Bible dictionary, there is an entry on the hem of the garment. Because that hem was blue and it was put in there because God commanded it in the law of Moses. That blue represented heaven. And that scholar that we were just talking about, Lynn Wilson, also points out that that hem represented covenant. And so when she reaches out to touch him, she's likely touching the place that symbolically represents heaven and covenant. P.S. just as a side note, most of the paintings or all of them I've ever seen show her on the ground reaching out. The scriptures don't seem to suggest that at all. In fact, they seem to suggest the opposite, that she was standing up following him when she touches the shawl that he wears. And for whatever reason, they always show her on the ground. But the scriptures suggest she's standing up because when he stops, that's when she gets down on the ground. This whole symbolism of someone who is suffering reaching out to God and heaven through covenants is powerful for you and for me. I don't know that she understood this, but when I'm struggling with something, if I'm in pain or anxiety, I don't usually think about my covenants. I'm just calling out to God for help. When we understand the symbolism here and what this may be teaching us, it gives us power to act. At that point, instead of just calling out for help, we can think about our covenants and go, how can I act on my covenants? Because if I act on my covenants with faith in Jesus Christ, I will literally draw power from him into my life. When she touched him, the Savior stops the whole crowd and says, who touched me? And obviously everybody's touching him. And so they say, well, everybody is. He says, no, I felt virtue go out of me. Joseph Smith teaches something really powerful about virtue. One time he goes and heals some children. He gives them a blessing. Let me say that correctly. He gave them a blessing. And when he's done, he's pale. And he's with this elder Jedediah M. Grant and Elder Grant asks him, why are you so pale? And Joseph Smith points back to this experience. And he says, sometimes when you exercise great faith in administering to the sick and in blessing people, that you can have virtue go out of you. And then he called virtue, quote, the spirit of life. So this tells us that when we reach out to God in faith, the spirit of life, God's power, he says, I am the light and the life, that literal power can flow into our lives. So we know what happens next. She is healed. And he stops the crowd. And he actually gives her a chance to come forward. And this is another powerful symbolic moment for us. Because one of the things that might be holding us back is sin. And when we confess, the scriptures say that she told all, she told the truth of everything. And when we confess to God, and at times when we need to to bishop, it's at that point where God can help us be healed, but it's also when he can declare us whole. It's a powerful moment in the scriptures for us and for her. Okay, that's one way to look at this experience with this woman who is now healed from issue of blood. Let's go back to Jairus. Jairus was maybe the only person in this crowd who didn't find this experience as sweet as everyone else did, because he's worried about his daughter and his good right to be because it's right then when his servants come and say, don't bother the master anymore. She's already dead. Well, from his point of view, this might not seem fair at all. I mean, you've gone and gotten the master and then this thing stops him from coming to get your daughter in time. And there are times in life where things just don't seem fair. They're just unjust. And yet the beauty of this is, is that it shows the justice and the mercy of the Savior. Elder Kimby Clark points out how this woman would likely have been barred from entering the very synagogue that Jairus ruled over. Just think about that for a moment. She was the one left waiting outside and now he's the one left waiting kind of on the outside. But he's not alone. He's right next to the Lord, right next to the Messiah. His daughter is 12 years old. For 12 years, she has been separated from loved ones, from society, from companionship as a whole. And for 12 years, he's had this beautiful child and the companionship of his family. And she hasn't been able to have a child. And so I guess what we're pointing this out is just to think, we don't know everyone else's story. The Lord doesn't tell us everyone else's story. And so from our finite point of view, what might seem unfair might be not only just, but a beautiful mercy in the moment, even though we might not see it. Just to kind of illustrate this point in another way, Elder Bednar once gave a devotional at BYU-Idaho called The Character of Christ. And there's this woman who's sick and probably not feeling good. She's got a cold, is the way he described her. And maybe it was a really intense cold. And I don't want to judge her, but in a moment of weakness and frustration, she calls up the Relief Society president in anger or frustration and just kind of vents to her that she didn't bring her a meal, didn't think about her. And the Relief Society later on that day brings her a meal. Well, there was way more to the story and this woman didn't know it. The Relief Society president, her daughter had died. And on the very day of the funeral is when this sick woman called her and vented and kind of went after her for not getting the meal ready, having no idea that it was the Relief Society president's daughter's funeral that day. The point of the story isn't to go after the woman who was sick or to exalt the Relief Society president. Although I find it amazing that she didn't say anything and she made the meal, which is why Elder Bednar talked about her in this talk about Christ-like character. But the point is, we just don't know each other's story. And so we really do just have to trust the Lord. The Savior hearing the servants of Jairus says to not be afraid, but only believe. And we could fill that in with a bunch of things. Don't judge. Just believe. Don't be upset. Just believe. Don't lose hope. Just believe. The Lord will come and the timing will be right. Now, when he gets into the house of Jairus, I just find it really interesting. He tells them, the people who are there, both the professional whalers and the actual people who are suffering pain because they've just lost a loved one, to not weep because she is asleep. And in one version of the Gospels, I love this. It says, quote, knowing she was dead, they knew she was dead. And so for him to say this would have been seemingly ridiculous from mortal standards. And their response, though, I think it'd be one thing if it had been like, no, that's incorrect. Or to be like, you don't know the whole story. But they laughed him to scorn. Scorn veers off of the path of discipleship and goes into a place where the adversary has control. And for whatever his own reasons are, he removes them from the house or has them removed from the house. But for sure, they would not have been adding to the faith of this moment and of this miracle. And then we know the story. He calls her back to life. And I just want to end with this thought. This comes from an ensign from years ago, but it's also in the newest Institute manual. Whatever Jesus lays his hands upon lives. If he lays his hands upon your marriage, it lives. If he is allowed to lay his hands upon your family, it lives. And I just testify that's true. Take care and God bless.