One Touch in the Crowd

On the far side of the lake, the man from the tombs was telling every town what Jesus had done for him. On this side, a crowd was already waiting when Jesus' boat came back to shore.

A man pushed to the front and fell down at Jesus' feet. His name was Jairus, and he was a leader of the synagogue, the town's meeting house for prayer. Important men did not usually kneel in the sand. Jairus did not care.

"My little daughter is dying," he said. "Please come and put your hands on her, so she will get well and live!"

Jesus went with him at once. So did everybody else. The crowd squeezed in so tight that walking was more like being carried.

In that crowd was a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. She had spent every coin she owned on doctors, and she only got worse. In those days the law said a sickness like hers made her unclean, and anyone she touched would count as unclean too. She was not supposed to be in a crowd at all.

But she had heard about Jesus. "If I can just touch his clothes," she told herself, "I will be healed."

She crept up behind him, reached between the elbows, and touched his cloak. At once the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she was well.

Jesus stopped and turned around. He knew that power had gone out of him. "Who touched my clothes?"

His friends stared at him. "Look at all these people pushing against you! And you ask who touched you?" (Peter had probably been stepped on four times already.)

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. The woman came forward, shaking, fell at his feet, and told him the whole truth.

Jesus did not scold her. "Daughter," he said, "your faith has healed you. Go in peace, and be free from your suffering."

And while Jairus waited, his daughter died. Men came running from the house. "Your daughter is dead," they told Jairus. "Why bother the teacher any more?"

Jesus turned to Jairus. "Don't be afraid. Just believe."

He let only Peter, James, and John come with him. At the house, people were crying and wailing so loudly the whole street could hear.

"Why all this noise and crying?" Jesus asked. "The child is not dead. She is asleep."

They laughed at him.

So Jesus sent them all outside. He took the girl's parents and his three friends into her room. He held her hand and said, in her own language, "Talitha koum!" That means, "Little girl, get up!"

She got up at once and walked around the room. She was twelve years old, the same number of years the woman had been sick. Her parents could hardly breathe. And Jesus told them, "Give her something to eat."

(It was such an ordinary thing to say. That is how her parents knew she was really back.)

Both daughters went home well that day, one from the edge of a crowd and one from her own bed.

A crowd could not hide anyone from him. Twelve years of sickness was not too long for him. A message that said "dead" could not turn him back. Not long after, Jesus himself would die, and his friends would lay him in a tomb. On the third day he got up, and he will never die again.

One day he will take each of his children by the hand, the way he took hers, and say it again: Get up.