“Do not fear, only believe.” — Mark 5:36
Mark 5 is three healings woven into one chapter, and each one pushes against a wall the religious world of first-century Judea had built. A demon-possessed Gentile in a graveyard across the sea. A woman twelve years unclean from bleeding. A little girl already dead. Demons, uncleanness, and death — the three things that made a person untouchable — and Jesus moves through them as though the walls are not there.
The Gerasene Demoniac (verses 1–20)
They arrive on the other side of the sea, in the country of the Gerasenes — Gentile territory, unclean by any standard reading of the law. The boat has barely touched the shore when a man runs out from the tombs to meet Jesus. He lives among the graves. He cannot be bound, not with chains, not with shackles — he has broken every restraint. Night and day he wanders through the tombs and the hills, crying out and cutting himself with stones.
When he sees Jesus from far off, he runs and falls down before him. The demons inside him speak: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” Jesus asks the man’s name. The answer: “My name is Legion, for we are many.” A Roman legion was six thousand soldiers. Whether the number is literal or a way of saying the possession is total, the point is the same — this is not a case. This is an occupation.
The demons beg not to be sent out of the country and plead for permission to enter a nearby herd of about two thousand pigs. Jesus grants it. The demons go into the pigs, and the whole herd rushes down the steep bank into the sea and drowns. The pigs — unclean animals in a Gentile land, chosen host of the demons — go to their death, and the demons go with them into the depths.
The herdsmen run and tell what happened. People come out from the city and find the formerly possessed man sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed and in his right mind. And Mark tells us they were afraid. Not rejoicing. Afraid. They beg Jesus to leave their region. The power that freed the man from Legion was more than they wanted near them. Jesus gets back in the boat. The man begs to go with him. Jesus tells him instead: “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” And the man goes — to the Decapolis, ten Gentile cities — and tells everyone. Mark says everyone marveled.
The first missionary to the Gentiles in Mark’s gospel is a man who, an hour earlier, had been living among tombs cutting himself with stones. That is how the Servant King makes apostles.
Jairus’ Plea and the Woman in the Crowd (verses 21–34)
They cross back to the Jewish side. A great crowd gathers around Jesus at the shore, and one of the rulers of the synagogue, named Jairus, comes and falls at his feet, begging: “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.” Jesus goes with him. The crowd follows, pressing close.
And in the middle of that crowd is a woman who has had a discharge of blood for twelve years. Twelve years of ritual uncleanness. Twelve years unable to enter the synagogue, unable to be touched, unable to have anyone touch her without being made unclean themselves. Twelve years of going from physician to physician, spending everything she had, and getting worse instead of better. She has heard about Jesus. She comes up behind him in the crowd and touches his garment, thinking, if I touch even his garments, I will be made well. And immediately the flow of blood dries up, and she feels in her body that she is healed.
Jesus knows power has gone out of him. He turns and asks, “Who touched my garments?” The disciples are incredulous — the crowd is crushing in on every side, everyone is touching him. But he keeps looking. The woman, knowing what has happened, comes forward in fear and trembling, falls down before him, and tells him the whole truth. And Jesus does not scold her for the uncleanness. He does not rebuke her for taking the healing by stealth. He calls her daughter — the only time in the gospels he addresses anyone by that name — and says: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
She came hidden. He sends her home known, named, blessed, and at peace.
The Little Girl Raised (verses 35–43)
While he is still speaking to the woman, messengers come from Jairus’ house: your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further? Jairus’ face must have fallen. He came to get Jesus in time, and the pause with the woman has cost him everything. Jesus overhears, turns to Jairus, and says the words that carry this entire chapter: “Do not fear, only believe.”
He lets no one follow him except Peter, James, and John. They arrive at the house. The mourners are already there, wailing loudly in the customary fashion. Jesus tells them: “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.” They laugh at him. Mark does not soften it. They laugh.
He puts them all outside, takes the child’s father and mother and the three disciples, and goes in where she is lying. He takes her by the hand — another act that under the law would make him ceremonially unclean — and says, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” And immediately she gets up and begins to walk, for she was twelve years of age. Mark adds the detail almost tenderly: he told them to give her something to eat.
Twelve years the woman had been bleeding. Twelve years the girl had been alive. Two daughters of Israel, one at the end of her story and one at the beginning of hers, restored in the same afternoon by the same Servant King.
Reflection
Mark 5 is the gospel in three acts. Jesus crosses to Gentile territory and confronts demonic power. He returns to Jewish territory and confronts chronic, isolating illness. And he enters a grieving household and confronts death itself. Demons, disease, death — and he walks through all three as though they are nothing.
Under the law, each of those three encounters would have left Jesus unclean. Touching a demon-possessed man who lives among the tombs, being touched by a woman with a twelve-year issue of blood, taking the hand of a corpse — these were the most defiling contacts imaginable in that world. But Mark has already shown us in chapter 1, with the leper, what happens when Jesus touches uncleanness. The uncleanness does not flow into him. His cleanness flows out. He is the one exception to the defilement laws because he is the source of holiness itself.
And notice the different faiths that meet him. The demoniac does not come asking for healing — Jesus confronts the demons directly. The woman comes in terrified secrecy, believing that even the hem of his garment will be enough. Jairus comes as a father in public, falling at his feet with everyone watching. Three completely different approaches, three completely different lives, one Savior who meets each one where they are.
Do not fear, only believe. That sentence, spoken to a father whose daughter had just died, is the pastoral center of Mark 5. Whatever has you bound — demons, shame, grief, twelve years of silent suffering, a death you thought was final — the Servant King is not repelled by it. He is moving toward it. And the only thing he asks of you is the thing the woman had and the father needed and the demoniac was given: do not fear; only believe.