Jesus and a Woman No One Knew

Friday morning fun time!

This morning was a blast! We had a bunch of our middle school friends come out, and, as always, it was great seeing them. Eating doughnuts and hanging out before we get things going is probably my favorite part of the morning. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing games, and I LOVE getting to talk to them about Jesus… but hangout time is gold. Its during the hangout times where we get a glimpse into their world. We get to see what is happening in their lives, what they are excited about, what's going on at school, and at home. Its during this time that we build trust and earn the right to speak into their lives.

Balloon Buns 

We also get to share with them about what is going on in our lives. We get to talk with them about what's happening in our lives that is exciting, or what we have going on during the weekend. We also get to share Jesus with them just through how we act and the way we spend our time. As we share with the kids the normal parts of our lives, they get to see that we are totally normal people, not at all perfect, but hopefully they see that we love Jesus. This is the heart of Young Life and WyldLife, living life with kids and pointing them towards a real and growing relationship with Jesus.

Ben taking a different approach

We played another balloon game today. It was a team game where kids had to work together as a team to win. There were teams of 4. Each person on the team had a balloon, and they had to work together to transport the balloons from one place to another. Three team members were on one side of the field while the another member waited on the other side. First two members would put the balloons between their backsides and try to transport the balloons across without letting them fall. Once they got to the other side, the third person would join and they would have to do the same thing but with three balloons and three people… the team to successfully do this with all four people won. While the guys got creative and may have finished first, it was the girls who won the game actually doing it the way it was supposed to be done.

The girl teams had it nailed

This morning I got to share about a time when Jesus was on his way to heal a town official's daughter, but stopped to spend time with a woman that no one knew, and no one seemed to care about. The story is found in the Bible, in Mark 5:21-35.

I started by sharing about the first night I lived in California. One of my friends from TX was in a band and was playing a show at The Roxy in LA. My sister, who was attending Vanguard Unniversity, and I went thinking we were just going to another show. As we walked around the club, we started seeing faces that we recognized. Colin Farrell was there, then we saw Giovonni Ribisi… we started seeing more and more faces that we recognized and realized that we had ended up in the middle of a party full of celebrities. As the night went on I was approached by Rosario Dawson to dance, but not knowing what to do, didn't even realize what was happening and just kinda stood there in shock.

I shared this story because Jesus had become a sort of celebrity in the towns where he hung out. People were constantly coming to be around Jesus and to see what he was doing. Some of these people came because they wanted him to heal or wanted to hear what he had to say, but then there were others who just wanted to see what was going to happen. It seemed that wherever Jesus was, crazy things were happening, things like blind people seeing, lame people walking, crazy people being made totally sane and people wanted to be part of the action.

This one day Jesus had just gotten back to town after a trip across the sea, and a large crowd met him right away. In this crowd was a man named Jarius. Jarius was the local synagogue leader, he was an important person in the town, and someone that everyone would have respected. He came and fell at Jesus' feet and begged Jesus to come and heal his daughter because his, "little daughter was dying!" 

Jesus of course agreed and the entire crowd started making their way through the town to this man's house. There was a sense of urgency and purpose in the way everyone was moving, and I imagine that it looked more like a mob moving through the town than anything. 

And in this mob was a woman.

This woman was no one special, but she was desperate to touch Jesus. She had been bleeding for 12 years, and while she had spent all her money on doctors trying to get well, she had only gotten worse. Nothing she had done had made her better, and, as if in a last ditch effort, thought that if she just touched the fringe of Jesus' rode she might be healed. After all, Jesus had healed others with only a word. It seems that this woman didn't want to be noticed by anyone, even Jesus. I assume she may have been nervous and insecure about how Jesus would respond. 

Her problem was more than physical. Not only was she sick and weak from bleeding for so long, but, in those days, a person in her condition would have been considered "unclean" and made to live a life of isolation. There would have been no way for her to contribute to society, no way for her to earn a living, I'm sure her husband would have left long ago if she ever had one, and people would have treated her as if it was better for everyone if she didn't exist. She was truly alone.

The second she touched Jesus' robe, she knew that everything had changed. The Bible tells us that. "Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition." Life had been restored. Her last ditch effort had worked!

And now it seems that she wanted to just shrink away without anyone noticing. 

But Jesus stopped, right then and there, while on a urgent mission for an important person. The author of Mark tells us that Jesus knew right away that something happened, he could feel that power had gone out from his body, and I think its safe to say that he knew life had been restored to someone around him… and he wanted to know that person.

Jesus asked, "Who touched my robe?" and the disciples answered, "Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, 'who touched me?'" They thought Jesus was nuts. Lots of people were touching him! But two people knew what he was talking about, Jesus knew, and the woman knew. We get the picture that this woman really didn't want to be noticed even by Jesus, that she had just enough courage to try, but not enough to stay… not even enough to ask Jesus to heal her. She reminds me of myself, not having enough courage to dance with a pretty, famous girl. 

Jesus waited until she finally came forward and the woman, "frightened and trembling" came and fell on her knees in front of Jesus and began to tell her the whole story. She told Jesus how she had tried everything and spent all her money but nothing had worked. How she was desperate and thought she would maybe be healed just by touching his robe. 

And Jesus listened.

Jesus was not in too much of a hurry. Yes, he was on an urgent, time sensitive task for someone much more "important" than this woman, but he stopped, waited for her to find the courage to come to him, and then listened to her story. 

Jesus wants to know us in the same way. Its easy to think that Jesus may value someone like a celebrity, or a popular pastor, or a well known Christian athlete more than us or the person that lives across the street, but he doesn't. He loves us, cares for us, and wants to know us the same as anyone. We are as special to him as anyone else, and he is never in too much of a hurry to stop and be with us. 

Its also easy to connect to the woman in this story. Some of us may be more in touch with the fact that things are not right, but its not hard to know that things aren't the way they should be, and this often leaves wounds in our own lives. We might try to cover these wounds through many different ways. For kids it could be doing well in sports or school, being popular, or having a girlfriend or boyfriend. For adults it might be making money, having more things, a bigger house or nicer cars, having more prestige or having a life that looks perfect on the outside… but like this woman, this doesn't fully work, and often we are left with a bigger problem than when we started.

Jesus wants to both know our story, the good the bad and everything in between, and he wants to restore our lives to the way they were made to be. He isn't too concerned with all the problems in the world to stop and be with us, even in the midst of everything else that is going on. 

The story doesn't end here. As Jesus was with this woman, servants from Jarius' house came with news, "Your daughter is dead," they said,"There's no use bothering the Teacher now."

But again, were we see death and pain and things gone wrong, Jesus sees the chance to make something beautiful again, the chance to restore life, and the chance to bring love. We will be talking about Jesus did next, next week.

For today, if you would like to talk with your kid about WyldLife, ask them what "bubble buns" was. Ask them what Luke did when a famous girl wanted to dance with him, and then ask what Jesus did to a woman no one knew or cared about. Ask them why they might think Jesus would want to hear their story as well.

Matt Wright telling everyone whats coming up