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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Advent Part 2: The Whole Truth
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Hi guys, it's Jesse French and welcome to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast by Restoration Project. I'm glad to be joined by my colleague and co-host Chris Bruno. Hey guys, welcome. Good to have you back. Well, we're in the midst of kind of a fun little mini series here on the podcast. And last week we started a several part Advent series of just wanting to be able to give
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some reflection and some space to wonder in this particular Advent season for us around kind of the story deeper still that we believe Jesus sees when He encounters us and when He encounters several different people in Scripture. And so, excited to be able to hear some more reflections from you, Chris, and these are taken from our physical small batch journal. We just released issue number four, which is pretty exciting. And so, yeah. So, thanks for...
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being willing to share, to write in a small batch and to then extend those same thoughts here on the podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, today in the second week of Advent, we're going to take a look at Mark 5:21 all the way down through 34. And guys, this is one of my favorite passages. And I think it's one of the ones that just as really every time I read it, it hits me in a different way. And so I'm going to read that for us this morning.
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Mark 5:21. And 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 synagogue, 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 well and live. And he went with him.
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and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but 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.
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And immediately 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.
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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." As we look and think about this passage, there's so much here, and even today we don't have time to come back.
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to really talk about Jairus and what was happening with these two daughters, but Jesus lands on the shore and this man with a dying daughter comes and says, hey, come and heal her. And then along the way to that house, Jesus encounters another woman, this woman with the issue of blood. And I just love the exchange that Jesus has here with this woman in the midst of this crowd. And I can imagine
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that already Jairus has got Jesus' attention and there's this big throng of people that are walking down this road to the Jewish leader's house and how this wild rabbi that they've heard about is coming and he's gonna heal this man's daughter and all of that energy that is happening, the unbelief that a Jewish leader would be coming to Jesus and asking him for help, all of that is happening. And right in the middle of this is this woman.
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And she comes, she also hears of him, and she comes along the way and just in her own faith says, if I but touch his garments, I will be healed. Now, so much can be said about this passage, but here's what I love. I love, first of all, that this woman has the faith enough to believe that just touching him,
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is going to heal this 12 year old ailment. That this has been going on for a long time. And Mark tells us in the passage that so much has been going on for her in so long. She's tried everything that she can. She's gone to all kinds of doctors. She's spent all of her money, like all of that. She's been desperate to get healed of this. And yet still she believes that if I just touch the garment of Jesus that I will be healed. But we need to have a little bit more context even of what is going on for this woman.
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because it wasn't just like she had a rash. It involved blood. And we can make some assumptions of what that blood might be, some kind of feminine blood issue of blood coming from her womb or something like that. She might've had some kind of discharge in that sense. It might be something else, but regardless of what type of blood it was, it was blood and in the Jewish culture, any type of blood is considered unclean.
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And the requirements of the law for anyone who is unclean or who has some kind of like external disease or blood like that is to declare that you are unclean to any other Jews or in any other crowd that you come up to so that they don't touch you, that they're not in contact with you because if they come in contact with you, then they are also unclean.
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And so anyone who has blood on them, who's touched by another person, now two people are unclean. And if those two people are touched by them, then the third person, it's just like this ongoing uncleanliness that needs to be taken care of. And what ended up happening is that in the typical general menstrual cycle for a woman was that there would be a week after her cycle ended that she was then considered unclean. And so there's like a time period.
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that is to become clean again requires a time even of cleanliness, even though the blood has stopped, there are days that need to go by for her to become clean again. So if this woman, this woman for 12 years constantly has an issue of blood, there has not been a moment for 12 years where she has been considered clean, right? Her uncleanliness has been a part of her life, which then,
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you begin to think, well, okay, she's not been touched in 12 years. She's not been able to be in community in 12 years. She's had to declare to every crowd that she comes to that she is unclean just so that she can like walk down the street. And so the isolation and the loneliness and the exile of what that means from community to be 12 years unclean has got to be profound, has got to be profound.
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And you can imagine that her family is, you know, if it's a month or two months or three months or a year, there may be some level of like, we're gonna stick with you through this and we're gonna help house you and we're gonna help take care of you. But 12 years, that is a long time. So the likelihood of her literally being exiled or left or on her own to take care of herself is a pretty high likelihood. So there's that piece. And then...
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And then she, this unclean woman, is coming to the entourage that is following Jesus to a Jewish leader's home. And so if there is any situation where she should not be there, this is it. She should not come close to the Jewish leader's home. She should not come close to this crowd. She should not come, like there's a crowd. They're crowding in so much.
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And there's so much the disciples, when Jesus asked who touched me, the disciples were like, what are you talking about? It's almost like after a sports game or basketball game, or a football game or whatever, and the game was over and everybody in arena is leaving at the same time. It's just like this river of people. That's what I kind of imagined. Like, what do you mean? Like you're being touched by people all the time. And I think their response to Jesus is like, what are you talking about? Are you dumb?
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Of course people are touching you. Of course there was. So how can you say that? So the courage and the bravery of this woman, 12 years unclean, to approach the entourage on the way to a Jewish leader's house, and then to push her way to the center of the crowd to be able to touch his cloak means that she risked making probably 10, 20, 30 people unclean in the process in order to find healing, okay?
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Remarkable, remarkable, remarkable, remarkable woman. I love this woman, okay? And then we get to, I need to call this out, okay? So we get to verse 29 in Mark. It says, and immediately the flow of blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease, okay? So here, last week, we talked about how Jesus started with the man's shame and then moved
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to the man's body. I'm so curious about why and how it's opposite here, right? That he starts with, he heals her body and then begins to have a conversation with her about what her story is. And so I love that in verse 29, it says that immediately her body was healed. But again, Jesus knew that there was another healing that needed to happen.
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Jesus knew that there was another process that needed to occur for this woman to actually be fully healed. Because the ailment was the issue, she had the issue of blood. And the healing of her soul needed to happen in the course of a conversation. Given the context, that conversation was not going to happen unless her healing happened first. Her physical healing happened first. And so she reaches out immediately,
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her body was healed, and then Jesus is like, what happened, who is this? And I actually need to talk with her. So I just love too that it even says that she came up to him in fear and trembling and fell down before him. So can you imagine, Jesse, like, you're going down this dirt road to this Jewish leader's house, there's this throng of people, and they're all talking, and all of a sudden, the main character,
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stops. Right. Stops in the middle of everything and is like, who touched me? Everyone else stops. All the side conversations stop. The entire action of the scene stops. Yeah. In the middle of the road. Like it's her, I'm sure, right? She's thinking like, because there's so many people, right? Like I can just go and notice, right? Can I just go under the radar? You know, Exactly.
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Of course he's not going to notice when someone touches him. So, or, so I'll be good, right? If I can just, Sneaky in, sneak out. Totally. Right. So in that moment when he says who touched me and he stops everything, right? Can you imagine it is her worst nightmare? It is her worst nightmare because she's going to be seen. She's going to have to let everybody that touched her know that they are unclean and potentially Jairus who's there.
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The Jewish synagogue leader is going to turn on her and, right, re-exile her for her breaking of all these laws and rules. Yeah, the cycle only continues, if not gets worse. The cycle only continues. So Jesus says, who did this? She comes and she falls down before him in fear and trembling. And then I love how Mark includes this.
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the whole truth. What do you think? Where does your mind go when you hear that phrase? Well, again, if we put ourselves into the scene, she is there, fallen down before him, and just knowing the character of Jesus, it is very, very unlikely that he is gonna be speaking down to someone who is on the ground in front of him.
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And I could just imagine this like cinematic scene where all of a sudden Jesus sees her and she falls down on the ground and the camera angle does this like loop around all the other faces and the circle opens and now in the middle of the circle, the crowd, there's Jesus and the woman on the ground. And then everybody else goes out of focus. The whole crowd goes out of focus.
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and all of them are silent because they're just shocked at what's happened in Jesus, in this whole encounter. And I doubt that Jesus is gonna stand over her while she's standing, or as he's laying there in the ground. I can imagine that he is gonna crouch down and he's gonna like at least kneel, if not just sit on the ground right next to her. And right then and there, in the encounter between Jesus and the woman, she tells him her story. She tells him, and if we kind of...
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zoom out just a little bit, editorially, the only way for Mark to know anything about her was for him to listen to the exchange that she was telling in this moment, because when he reports it up above, in the previous verses, he didn't have that information until this moment where they're sitting on the ground. So in this place, she tells the whole truth about her bleeding.
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her pain. She tells the whole truth about her exile. She tells the whole truth about losing all of her money, right, to the physicians. She tells the whole truth about what it has been like for her to be in poverty as a result. She tells the whole truth about what it has felt like to be cast out from the community because of her uncleanliness. She tells the whole story to Jesus who is just sitting there and listening to her.
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Zooming out, that's where Mark gets his information from listening into the conversation. And it is in that interchange that Jesus says this, his first word to her was daughter. When can you imagine the last time that that woman heard that word, daughter?
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didn't hear the word unclean. His word was daughter. And when we begin to zoom out from all the scriptures, this is one of the only places that that word daughter is used. It is in this tender space of this hurting woman who has been suffering for years and years and years. And he then says,
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has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease. And here I wanna be clear, like your faith has made you well. I don't think he's actually talking about her ailment. I think he says that there is another healing. You are now well, you are now restored. You are now part of the community again.
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I see and I hear your story. It is important for you to not only be healed in your body, but to be healed in your story. Your faith has made you well and be healed of your disease. So I feel like there's two healings here and it is happening in the dirt in the middle of this crowd. Yeah. Yeah, to use some of the way that you described.
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The interaction with the man on his mat from the previous episode, right? His eyes towards the deeper, deeper story, right? She comes to him telling him the whole truth, right? Just what you said, like telling him all the ways and some ways of asking him to confirm, yes, you are defined by your isolation, you are defined by all the ways you're unclean and he refuses to play the game, right? He refuses to play the game.
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And he also refuses to allow the physical healing to be the only healing. Yeah, yeah. Because again, like I said, you know, last week, if the physical healing was the only healing that that woman walked away with, she would not have been well. Yes, but to call her daughter. But to call her daughter. I have the privilege of having you on screen as we are recording. What happened for you? As I was talking about the daughter, I could see your face.
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Jesse, what was stirring in you? I knew you were gonna say this, doggone it. I think just thinking through her recounting of the story, her again, asking and assuming Jesus will confirm your identity is based on your uncleanliness, your shame. And to hear that word daughter from him, just so kind.
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And I think we all know the ways in our life. We have come to others, we've come to Jesus telling him the whole truth, expecting the defining of who we are by our failure, by our mistake, by our... We are expecting that conclusion to be given and to hear him say so succinctly and so
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like that. It's good news. It is disruptively good news. Yes. Yeah. And that word disruptive feels true, right? Because in that interchange, all of the ways that we think about who we are and also who we think about who God is, right, is disrupted in that word of daughter.
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Yeah, and you know, the word daughter, the word son is like the unexpected response. Yeah. Right. It's the unexpected response. And so I think for today, you know, for the reflection for this week, guys, what would you tell Jesus if you had a chance to tell him your whole story? If you had an opportunity to sit there zoned in one-on-one in this like...
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cinematically unfocused, everyone else is out there, but you're just one-on-one, and you're gonna be able to tell him about your story of pain, your story of abandonment, your story of loss, your story of failure, your story of shame. Like, what would you tell Jesus if you had a chance to actually tell him your whole truth? And then, what would you expect to see on his face? What would you expect to see on his face? And what are you desperate to see on his face?
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And can you imagine that he might actually have one word for you? And that is the word, son.
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So as we reflect on Advent, right, this space of this disruptive kindness of Jesus is so, so important. And he is actually interested in your whole story. And he's not only interested in your healing, he's actually interested also in your wellness. Yeah.
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We'll catch you next week guys for our next reflection. Take care.