The Struggle in Waiting, Pt. 1
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Ever wonder why God makes us wait? Why do we have to hold our breathe, search for answers, and watch for things to come? Couldn’t God just give us an answer right away? Pastor Nick Gatzke introduces us to two desperate people who were required to do the one thing none of us enjoy—wait
I want to ask you to grab a Bible and open with me to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5. Mark, chapter 5. And as you do, let’s pray together. Father in heaven, we ask that you would bless the reading and the preaching of your most holy word. Continue to conform us to the likeness of your Son, to change our affections and our attitudes, increase our faith, we pray. In the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.
Well, long-distance online dating relationships can be rough. They’re increasing, no doubt, but they can be very challenging. Just ask Alexander Peter Sirk, who lives in Holland and a handful of years ago had fallen for a Chinese woman that he had met online. And fed up with the distance between the two of them, he was intent to finally meet this woman face-to-face. And so he got a visa. He booked a flight. He flew 5,000 miles to see her. He had sent her a picture of his itinerary. But when he arrived at Changsha Airport, she was nowhere to be found. Convinced that she would eventually come for him, he decided that he would stay at the airport terminal and patiently wait for her. And patiently. He indeed did wait. In fact, 10 days later, the frail-looking Sirk was taken to the hospital. And what about the girlfriend?
Well, a Chinese TV team was able to find her, and she confessed that she thought Sirk was joking about the trip. Though hopefully none of us have had to be hospitalized after waiting for days in an airport on end, the feelings… he must have gone through are familiar to all of us. Those feelings of hopefulness that turns to hopelessness, those feelings of patience that turn into impatience, those things sound familiar. And thankfully, when we are waiting, when we are waiting on answers from God that we’ve been praying about, we can know that God has heard us and that he didn’t think that we were just joking. But waiting is sometimes the hardest part. Jesus had announced the coming of the kingdom of God. And in Mark chapter 4 and Mark chapter 5, he is displaying a vast and powerful authority over a variety of things that people encounter in life. And in Mark chapter 5, we see him engage with two people. from vastly different backgrounds. Both of them, however, are absolutely desperate, and both of them have to wait to get what they want.
So let’s read together Mark 5, starting at verse 21. We see a story inside of a story, and this is what it says. It says, “When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered about him. And he was beside the sea. Then came one of the rulers of the synagogues, Jairus by name. And seeing him, he fell at his feet and implored him earnestly saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live.’ And he went with him. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard of the reports about Jesus and had came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.’ The flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, “Who touched me?”’ And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.’ While he was still speaking, there came from the ruler’s house some who said, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they had said, Jesus said to the ruler of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ And he allowed no one to follow him except for Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.
They came to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and Jesus saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. And when he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead, but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside, and he took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and he went in where the child was.
And taking her by the hand, he said to her, ‘Talitha Kumi,’ which means, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’” And immediately the girl got up and began walking, for she was 12 years of age. And they were immediately overcome with amazement. And he strictly charged them that no one should know this and told them to give her something to eat.
The account begins with Jesus entering yet another town by boat. Word had gone out before him so that when he had arrived, the beach was already swarming with people. His reputation preceded him, both the good and the bad. To the people, he was seen as a teacher and as a miracle worker. He had healed many and he had just come from the other side where he had cast a legion of demons into a herd of swine and they jumped off the cliff and died. This was the good side of his reputation. But Jesus’ reputation was also growing among the religious elite.
The scribes and the Pharisees had accused him by this point of many things to go against God. They had accused him of blasphemy, of violating the Sabbath, of performing miracles by calling on the name of Satan himself. And in chapter four, it says that they were seeking to destroy him. And now, as he gets off of the boat, one of those very same leaders was running toward Jesus. Jairus was his name, and it tells us that he was the leader of the synagogue, the local house of worship for the Jews in that region. And as a ruler of the synagogue, he was well-respected in the community. He was considered to be an elder. He led people in the readings from scripture and he led them in worship. He was most likely wealthy and of high social standing among them. And he almost surely aligned with the Pharisees and the scribes who stood against Jesus.
But his situation was desperate. His young daughter was dying. And here, the man of stature and standing in the community, the local religious ruler had fallen down on his knees before Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, begging him to please come. Because if he doesn’t, His daughter will die. And at this point, it’s hard to know, but it doesn’t seem like Jairus has put his faith in Jesus. He is most likely there out of sheer desperation. The situation was dire.
There was nowhere left to turn. He is there strictly out of need. And you know, It seems to me that a fair number of people come to Jesus that way. That’s the way that some of us came to Jesus. Not in trust, not in faith, at least not yet, but in complete and utter desperation. And if you have ever… that feeling, you know exactly what we’re talking about.
The need was great. And at the time, it seemed like he was the best place to turn. Perhaps it was on behalf of a loved one like Jairus. Maybe for physical need or healing. Maybe it was for a job to provide for your family. Perhaps it was for your emotional health. Or perhaps it was because you had an overwhelming sense of guilt. Because of your sin.
And so in desperation, you ran to Jesus. Jairus is desperate. He set all of his status aside. He set all of his concerns aside. He had exhausted all of the options. He was not just a leader. He was the leader. And he swallowed his pride and he fell down on his knees, before this carpenter because of the desperation that he had for his daughter.
And what’s amazing is that Jesus, knowing who he was, received him anyway and immediately went with him. The crowd had gathered. The beach and now the streets were packed. They all saw what just happened. And they were pressing in on Jesus, who is now hastily walking through the street with Jairus. Jairus was desperate, but he wasn’t the only one who was. And you can almost hear the people call out to Jesus, trying to get his attention, try to have them glance their way to try to get him to do their bidding. And another desperate person. comes into the scene. Verse 25 tells us about her. It says, “There was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians. And it spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, ‘If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.’
And immediately, It says the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed from her disease.” Jairus had just gotten what he wanted. Jesus was on the way back home with him.
But then everything came to a grinding stop. The unnamed woman was an outcast in society. She was the opposite of Jairus. Jairus was one of the elite. She was one of the ostracized. Jairus was rich. She was poor. Jairus had a family. She had no one.
And in her desperation, her state is just as severe as his. For a woman to have this type of physical bleeding disorder, that would have made her unclean, in Jewish society, ceremonially, religiously unclean. And as such, it meant that she could transmit her uncleanliness to anyone that she was in contact with. It was difficult enough for a woman to experience the type of loneliness and isolation that this required during her monthly cycle, but this woman had experienced this type of bleeding. For 12 years.
12 years. Think about just for a minute what you were doing 12 years ago. Think about all that has happened in the last 12 years of your life. Think about what it would have been like for you for that amount of time to be isolated, ostracized, alone, and suffering. That’s a long time. 12 years. The Talmud gives a variety of treatments for this type of malady.
The Talmud is one of the Jewish writings, and some of these treatments are potions. Others of them are superstitions. Presumably, the woman has tried them all. Everything from drinking the juice of Persian onions boiled in wine to being frightened out of her illness by a physician, to carrying the barley corn that came from the dung of a white female donkey. Try to put those pieces together. Waiting and trying, trying and waiting, spending what little she had left, and waiting some more. In a New York Times article, Alex Stone tells about how the executives at Houston Airport faced and then solved a cascade of passenger complaints that they had about long waits at the baggage claim.
They first decided to hire more luggage handlers, and as a result… achieved an industry beating average of eight minutes for someone to get their bags.
But the complaints persisted. And this made no sense to the executives until they discovered that on average, passengers took just one minute to walk from the gate to the baggage claim, resulting in a hurry up and wait type of situation. The walk time was not the problem. It was the remaining seven minutes of staring at the baggage carousel that became the problem. And so in a burst of genius and innovation, the executives moved the arrival gates farther away from the baggage claim area. Passengers now had to walk much farther to go get their bags, but when they arrived, their bags were there waiting for them. Mission accomplished. The complaints ceased.
In the same article, Stone interviewed MIT operations researcher Richard Larson, who, believe it or not, is one of the leading experts in the world on waiting in lines. I didn’t know there was an expert for waiting in lines, but apparently they are employed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And he wrote about the psychology behind our waiting.
What happened at the Houston airport makes the perfect illustration, he says. According to Larson, the length of our wait is not as important as what we do while we’re waiting. Often psychology of queuing is more important than statistics of the wait itself, he says. Essentially, you and I tolerate occupied time, for example, walking to the baggage claim, better than we tolerate unoccupied time, such as standing at the baggage carousel. Give us something to do while we wait, and the wait becomes more endurable, is the point. You know, there’s something there for us as we think about what it feels like to wait on God.
So you think about waiting on God and how it might feel like unoccupied time. We wait, but the question is, is what is really happening? behind the scenes of our life while we wait? And where does our perspective turn while we wait? Is God actually doing anything? Waiting on God implies developing a new perspective on what God is doing while we wait on him. 12 years, potions and magic tricks. Verse 26 says “she suffered much under the hands of the physicians.” She’s exhausted all the options. She’s got no money left. And so this woman, like Jairus, is desperate. She broke all the ceremonial law.
She entered the crowd. She pushed her way through, presumably making a bunch of people unclean along the way. And she brushed up against the side of his cloak and she was healed. And the blood dried up within her. And it all happened so quickly. And Jesus’s hasty walk with Jairus comes to a complete stop. Verse 30 says that “Jesus perceived that power had gone out of him.” This is the same power that stilled the storm. It was the same power that cast out the demons into the swine. It was the same power that healed many, many, many before this woman. The power had left.
He felt it. The disciples are confused because they don’t feel the power of Jesus leaving his body. So they’re like, well, why are you asking who touched me? Of course, they’re all touching you. That’s the point of why they’re here. Dozens were pressed in at that time.
But in that moment, the woman knew that she needed to make herself known. And so in trembling and fear, she came to Jesus. And in verse 34, we see the point of the interaction. He says to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.” Her faith made her well.
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** This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy, but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
