Here we have the last of the series of miracle stories that began in chapter 8. Matthew’s treatment of these stories is different from the parallel versions of Mark and Luke. He doesn’t offer much in the way of vivid details. He seldom refers to the awe of the spectators—an important element in most miracle stories. What he does focus on is the way in which these miracles create tension and confrontation with the very pious and the religious authorities. Jesus doesn’t stick carefully to the rules of religion as they were taught and practiced around him. Instead, he places acts of love above acts of sacrifice or the avoidance of impurity. The miracles we now come to, concluding the series, continue the same emphasis and also raise the stakes, as it were. The two most contagious sources of impurity in Jesus’ world were death and menstruation, and in the first story he gets polluted by both—at least according to normal reckoning,.
Oh yes! Raising Jairus’ daughter and healing the woman with the hemorrhage.
Yes—though the name “Jairus” isn’t actually found in Matthew; we borrow it from the more vivid accounts in Mark and Luke. (Once again, Matthew shows little interest in telling “a good story.”) And the passage (9:18-26), as you see, is a double story, with one miracle sandwiched, as it were, inside the other. The longer story, with which it begins and ends, is about death—the single worst source of pollution according to Torah.
It begins with a prominent citizen who is presumably Jewish (though the phrase “of the synagogue” in NRSV here was added by the translators and isn’t found in the Greek text). He tells Jesus that his daughter is dead and pleads with him to come, lay his hand on her, and bring her back to life. This will taint Jesus with the impurity that affects everything under the same roof as the corpse,. Nonetheless, he goes without question.
When Jesus reaches the house, however, even before entering it, he announces that the girl is not dead but sleeping. When the mourners react with derision, he has them all turned out of the house. He goes in, apparently alone, and takes her by the hand, whereupon she gets up.
Was she not really dead?
The people who had actually seen her were quite certain that she was. Jesus’ insistence that she wasn’t does curious things to the story. It makes a claim to supernatural knowledge, but it also has the effect of questioning the purity issue. If there was no corpse, there could be no question of his having become impure by entering the house and touching a dead body. Perhaps the statement is deliberately ambiguous. Later Christians, at least, would speak of death itself as “sleep.” But in any case, the declaration that she wasn’t dead creates another awkward situation for Jesus’ critics, comparable to his healing of the paralytic after being criticized for granting him forgiveness. How do you figure out whether someone who has just raised a dead girl to life, while claiming that she wasn’t really dead, has incurred impurity? For that matter, would you rather admit that she wasn’t dead, thus reducing the magnitude of the miracle, or insist that she was and make his exploit all the more amazing?
The intervening story works a little differently. The “leader” who asked Jesus to raise his daughter was at the peak of the social ladder, but the woman with the hemorrhage shouldn’t even have been out in public. A menstruating woman was invariably impure and conveyed that impurity to whatever and whoever she touched. This woman was ignoring purity restrictions in her desperate search for healing. And it was a serious offense for her to touch the teacher’s garment, rendering him unclean even though he would not know about it. But Jesus almost shrugs it off in Matthew’s abbreviated version: “Take heart, daughter, your faith has made you well.” As in the story of cleansing the leper at the beginning of chapter 8, Jesus has once against reversed the contagion of purity/impurity. He is in no danger of “catching” impurity: with him it’s purity that is contagious.
He’s had quite a day since getting back from Gadara. All this on top of healing the paralytic on the Sabbath and associating with tax collectors and sinners and letting his disciples off the hook on fasting.
Yes, and it’s not over. But, at least, he’s finally succeeded in getting from the shore to the place where he lives. “When he entered the house” is equivalent to saying “When he got home.” But he still has a couple of blind men asking for help. Like the woman with the hemorrhage, their healing turns on the question of faith. But this time, Jesus makes it explicit that the faith is placed in him and in his power to heal—a stronger assertion of his own role than he has expressed before. And despite his ordering them to keep silent, they spread the news and thus intensify the rivalry between Jesus and the existing religious hierarchy.
And, finally, we get one more miracle, followed by a formal declaration of hostilities. Jesus exorcises a demon that has deprived a man of speech. Matthew, for once, takes the trouble here to note that the crowds are amazed. And it’s the last straw for the pious. Jesus is undermining the standards of religious correctness—and becoming immensely popular in the process. But how can they attack him when he is doing so much good? The battle line has to be drawn. Since they’re convinced that his whole message and ministry is undermining religion, it is a fairly short step to conclude that Jesus is an evil influence, in league with “the ruler of demons.” Thus, they also reassure themselves that they are on the side of God.
This is how religious fights often work and why they tend to turn deadly. We human beings in our religious mode can accomplish great good, but it is treacherously easy to identify ourselves and our way of doing things with God—as if any human being or human institution could aspire to the perfection that belongs to God. Indeed, from Jesus’ perspective, as Matthew presents it, we are quite apt to misunderstand the nature of God’s perfection, which has to do not with accuracy of belief or religious practice, but with the intensity and generosity of God’s love. Remember how he described God’s perfection in Matthew 5:43-48—making rain fall on the just and on the unjust.
Next up: PREPARING THE INNER CIRCLE OF DISCIPLES (9:35-10:16)