Sermon For Healing

When You Come To Jesus Carrying Everything

There is a woman in this passage who has been sick for twelve years. Twelve years of spending everything she had on doctors who could not help her. Twelve years of being considered ceremonially unclean under Jewish law, which meant twelve years of social isolation layered on top of physical suffering. She does not have a name in the text. Mark simply calls her a woman who had suffered much. And yet she makes her way through a pressing crowd to touch the edge of Jesus' garment, and everything changes.

There is also a little girl in this passage. She is twelve years old, the daughter of a synagogue leader named Jairus. By the time Jesus arrives at the house, she has already died. The mourners are already there. The situation, by every human measure, is finished.

Mark places these two stories together deliberately, one wrapped inside the other, and the effect is not accidental. Two daughters, as Jesus calls them both. Two impossible situations. One crowd pressing in with curiosity, one crowd pressing in with grief. And in the middle of all of it, Jesus.

This is a sermon for healing in the fullest sense of that phrase, not a promise of a specific outcome, but an honest look at what the Scriptures actually say about suffering, prayer, community, and the compassion of Christ.

What The Text Shows Us About Jesus

Mark 5:21-43 is one of the most carefully constructed passages in the Gospel. Jairus falls at Jesus' feet and begs him earnestly, saying, "My little daughter is at death's door. Come and lay your hands on her so that she can get well and live" (Mark 5:23, CSB). Jesus goes with him. That is the first thing worth noticing. Jesus does not debate the request. He does not offer a theological lecture. He goes.

Then the crowd presses in, and the woman reaches out. She had heard the reports about Jesus, Mark tells us, and she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothing. She said to herself, "If I can just touch his clothes, I'll be made well" (Mark 5:27-28, CSB). And she was. Jesus immediately knows that power has gone out from him. He stops. He turns. He asks who touched him.

The disciples think the question is almost absurd. The crowd is pressing in on every side. But Jesus looks around. And the woman, frightened and trembling, falls before him and tells him the whole truth. His response is not a rebuke. He calls her daughter. He says, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed of your affliction" (Mark 5:34, CSB).

Meanwhile, word comes that Jairus's daughter has died. The messengers tell him not to bother the teacher any further. Jesus overhears this and says to Jairus, "Don't be afraid. Only believe" (Mark 5:36, CSB). He goes to the house, puts the mourners outside, takes the child by the hand, and says, "Talitha koum," which Mark translates as, "Little girl, I say to you, get up" (Mark 5:41, CSB). And she does.

Two healings. Two daughters. And in both cases, what is most striking is not simply the power of Jesus but the tenderness of Jesus. He stops for the woman the crowd would have ignored. He speaks to her personally. He calls her daughter. He goes to the home of a grieving father and does not rush past the weeping. He is not a force that dispenses miracles from a distance. He is present. He is moved. He is compassionate.

The Honest Complexity Of Praying For Healing

Now we turn to James 5:13-16, because the New Testament does not leave the question of healing only in the Gospels. James writes to a community of believers who are suffering. He asks, "Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? He should call for the elders of the church, and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven" (James 5:13-15, CSB).

This is a genuine and serious instruction. James is not speaking metaphorically. He is telling the church to take illness seriously, to bring it into the community of prayer, and to trust God with the outcome. The elders are to pray. The sick person is to be anointed. This is not a private, solitary matter. Suffering is meant to be carried together.

But we must read this passage honestly. James does not say that every sick person who is prayed over will be physically healed in this life. The broader testimony of Scripture includes Paul asking three times for a thorn in the flesh to be removed and being told instead that God's grace was sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). It includes Epaphroditus nearly dying while in gospel service (Philippians 2:27). It includes the martyrs of Hebrews 11 who did not receive what was promised in this life but died in faith. The New Testament holds physical healing and ongoing suffering side by side without forcing a resolution that the text does not give us.

What James does promise is this: the prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect (James 5:16, CSB). Prayer is not a formula that produces a guaranteed result. It is communion with a God who hears, who cares, and who acts according to his wisdom and love. That is not a smaller thing than we might want. It is actually a larger thing, because it means we are not alone in what we carry.

What This Means For The People In This Room

Some of you are carrying something visible today. A diagnosis. A body that is not cooperating. A grief that has changed the shape of your life. Some of you are carrying something hidden, something you have not told anyone, something that has been going on for longer than you want to admit. Both of those people are in this passage. Jairus is known. He is a synagogue leader. His crisis is public. The woman is unnamed and isolated. Her suffering has been private and shameful by the standards of her culture.

Jesus meets both of them.

So the first thing this passage calls us to is honesty. Not a performance of faith that pretends everything is fine, but the kind of honest, trembling approach the woman made when she told Jesus the whole truth. You are allowed to tell God the whole truth. You are allowed to come to him frightened. You are allowed to say, "I have been suffering for a long time and I do not know what to do." That is not a failure of faith. That is faith reaching out.

The second thing this passage calls us to is community. James does not say, "Suffer alone and pray silently and hope for the best." He says call for the elders. He says confess to one another. He says pray for one another. The church is not a collection of individuals who happen to sit in the same room. It is a body, and when one part suffers, the rest are meant to suffer with it (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you are carrying something today, let someone in. Let this community carry some of it with you. That is not weakness. That is exactly what James is asking for.

The third thing is this: do not neglect the practical care that God has also provided. The woman in Mark 5 had been to doctors. She had sought help. James himself is writing to people in the real world with real bodies. Praying for healing and seeking medical care, mental health support, or any other form of responsible help are not in conflict. They belong together. God works through many means, and wisdom uses them all.

The Hope That Does Not Manipulate

Here is what we can say with confidence, not as a formula, not as a guarantee of a specific outcome, but as the testimony of the whole Scripture. Jesus is not indifferent to your suffering. He stopped for a woman the crowd had pressed past. He went to a house where everyone had already given up. He calls the suffering his daughters and sons. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

We do not always know why some people are healed and others are not. The Bible does not give us a clean answer to that question, and any preacher who claims otherwise is offering you something the text does not support. What the Bible does tell us is that nothing, not illness, not grief, not death itself, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39). And it tells us that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18, CSB).

That is not a dismissal of your pain. It is a horizon beyond your pain. It is the promise that the story does not end in the room where the mourners are gathered. It ends with a voice that says, "Get up," and a child who does.

Come to him today with whatever you are carrying. Come trembling if you must. Come in the middle of the crowd if that is the only way you can get there. He will stop. He will turn. He will call you by name.

That is who he is.

Let us pray together, and let us carry one another, and let us trust the One who holds what we cannot.

Sources Consulted

The Christian Standard Bible. Holman Bible Publishers, 2017.

France, R. T. The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2002.

Moo, Douglas J. The Letter of James. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2000.

Edwards, James R. The Gospel According to Mark. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Eerdmans, 2002.

Blomberg, Craig L., and Mariam J. Kamell. James. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Zondervan, 2008.