Bodies and Boundaries
Divine (dis)interruptions on the path to healing
Welcome back, dear ones. I'm so grateful you're joining me for this journey through Mark's Gospel. Today we're diving into Mark 5, where the parabolic mysteries of chapter 4 give way to concrete demonstrations of kingdom power. Three healing stories dominate this chapter, each one challenging different assumptions about who deserves restoration and how divine power operates in the world.
Healing happens in marginalized communities - often outside traditional institutional structures, frequently through touch and presence rather than formal procedures, and almost always involving some disruption of established boundaries about who gets access to care. Are you ready for this?
Mark 5: Healing at the Margins
Mark 5 presents us with three interconnected healing narratives that escalate in intensity and intimacy. Each story involves someone society has written off, each requires crossing cultural boundaries, and each demonstrates that God's restorative power operates most freely among those pushed to the edges of respectable community.
Restoration Beyond Recognition (5:1-20)
The chapter opens with one of Mark's most dramatic healing stories. Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee into Gentile territory, where they encounter a man possessed by demons. Mark's description is pretty bleak: the man lives among tombs, cannot be restrained even with chains, and spends his time "howling and bruising himself with stones" (5:5).
This is someone the community has given up on. He exists in the space between life and death, human and animal, sacred and profane. The tombs where he lives represent the ultimate boundary of ritual purity - contact with the dead rendered one unclean and excluded from community participation.
When Jesus asks the demons their name, they reply "Legion; for we are many" (5:9). This isn't just about quantity - "legion" was the term for a Roman military unit of about 6,000 soldiers. The naming suggests this man's torment is connected to imperial occupation and violence. His demons bear the name of Rome's oppressive military force.
The demons' request to enter a herd of pigs introduces dark comedy into the narrative. Pigs were considered unclean animals, forbidden to Jewish dietary law but essential to Gentile economic life. When the demons enter the swine and the herd rushes into the sea, it's both cosmic justice and economic disruption - the unclean spirits find their proper home in unclean animals, but the local economy suffers significant loss ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From an intersectional perspective, this story speaks powerfully to communities dealing with complex trauma.
The man's self-harm, social isolation, and inability to be "restrained" by conventional interventions resonates with experiences of PTSD, addiction, and other conditions that push people beyond the reach of standard community support systems.
The restoration is as dramatic as the possession. When the townspeople find the formerly demon-possessed man "sitting there, clothed and in his right mind" (5:15), their response isn't celebration but fear. They beg Jesus to leave their region. Sometimes healing threatens established systems more than sickness does.
The man's request to follow Jesus receives an unexpected response. Instead of joining the traveling community, Jesus tells him: "Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you" (5:19). The man becomes the first missionary to the Gentiles, sharing his testimony throughout the Decapolis.
This detail is often overlooked but theologically significant. The man's healing doesn't require him to abandon his cultural context or join a different religious community. His restoration includes reclaiming his place in his own society, transformed but not displaced.
Intersecting Healings (5:21-43)
Mark's second healing story actually contains two interconnected narratives - a literary technique called "intercalation" or "sandwich construction." The story of Jairus's dying daughter frames the healing of a woman with chronic bleeding, and the two stories illuminate each other in profound ways.
Jairus represents religious respectability - he's a synagogue leader with social standing and community connections. When his twelve-year-old daughter becomes critically ill, he has the privilege of direct access to Jesus. He can approach publicly, make his request openly, and expect a response.
The woman with the hemorrhage represents the opposite social location. Her condition renders her ritually unclean, excluded from community worship and normal social interaction. Mark tells us she has "endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had" (5:26) - a description that resonates painfully with contemporary experiences of chronic illness and medical bankruptcy.
A pet peeve. The reason why I don’t like to engage on whether or not Leviticus is calling homosexuality an abomination is specifically because of the above statement. Leviticus 18:19 states “You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness” and Leviticus 18 ends with calling everything in this chapter “abominations.” So it’s categorically incorrect to state that Leviticus 18:22 homosexuality is an abomination. Because for the writer of Leviticus whether you sleep with a woman on her period or sleep with a man because of hegemony - it’s an abomination.
Her approach to Jesus breaks multiple social boundaries. As a ritually unclean woman, she shouldn't be in the crowd at all. Her plan to touch Jesus's garment without permission violates protocols about contamination and consent. Her condition makes her anonymous - Mark doesn't even give us her name.
The healing happens through touch, but not the kind of touch Jesus usually initiates. She "came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, 'If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well'" (5:27-28). The healing is immediate, but Jesus recognizes that power has gone out from him and demands to know who touched him.
The disciples' response reveals their misunderstanding: "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" (5:31). They cannot distinguish between the casual contact of crowding and the desperate reach of faith. Jesus can feel the difference.
When the woman realizes she cannot remain hidden, she comes forward "in fear and trembling" and tells "the whole truth" (5:33). Jesus's response transforms her from anonymous desperate patient to recognized community member: "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease" (5:34).
The word "daughter" is particularly powerful here. This woman, excluded from family and community life for twelve years, is claimed as family by Jesus. Her healing isn't just physical but social and spiritual - she's restored to full community participation.
Meanwhile, during this interaction, messengers arrive to tell Jairus that his daughter has died and he should no longer trouble Jesus. The contrast is striking: while the hemorrhaging woman is restored to life and community, Jairus's daughter slips away from both.
Jesus's response to Jairus - "Do not fear, only believe" (5:36) - echoes his earlier words to the woman. Faith, not social location, determines access to healing power. The synagogue leader's privilege cannot prevent death, and the excluded woman's marginalization cannot block restoration.
At Jairus's house, Jesus encounters professional mourners already lamenting the child's death. When he says "The child is not dead but sleeping" (5:39), they ridicule him. Death seems final, especially to those whose job it is to ritualize endings.
Jesus excludes the mourners and takes only Peter, James, John, and the child's parents into the room. The healing happens in intimate space, witnessed only by those who love the child most deeply. Taking her hand, Jesus speaks in Aramaic: "Talitha kum," which Mark translates as "Little girl, get up!" (5:41).
The detail that Jesus spoke in Aramaic, his native language, suggests the intimacy of the moment. This is the tender address of someone who cares deeply. The child rises and walks and eats - signs of complete restoration to normal life.
Contemporary Applications: Healthcare, Touch, and Social Restoration
Mark 5's healing narratives speak directly to contemporary struggles around healthcare access, social inclusion, and the ways marginalized bodies are treated in our society. Each story challenges different assumptions about who deserves care and how healing happens.
The Gerasene demoniac's story resonates with communities dealing with mental health crises, addiction, and complex trauma. Like the man among the tombs, people dealing with these conditions often find themselves excluded from normal community life, unable to be helped by conventional interventions, and written off as beyond hope.
The story suggests that healing for the most marginalized requires going to where they are, rather than expecting them to come to traditional care centers. Jesus crosses geographical, cultural, and religious boundaries to reach someone everyone else has abandoned. The restoration includes individual healing but also economic disruption - the pigs rushing into the sea represent the cost of prioritizing human dignity over financial profit.
The woman with the hemorrhage speaks directly to experiences of chronic illness, particularly conditions that affect women's bodies and reproductive health. Her story of medical bankruptcy, social isolation, and desperate care seeking mirrors contemporary experiences of navigating healthcare systems that often fail those who need them most.
Her healing through unauthorized touch challenges medical models that require formal procedures, professional mediation, and institutional approval. Sometimes healing happens through community care, mutual aid, and direct action rather than through proper channels.
The transformation of her status from unnamed, unclean patient to recognized "daughter" reflects the social dimension of healing. True restoration includes not just physical improvement but full community belonging.
Jairus's daughter's story demonstrates that even privilege cannot guarantee protection from loss, but it also shows how grief and restoration can coexist. The child's death and resurrection happen within loving family community, witnessed by those who care most deeply.
The progression from public healing (the demoniac's community-wide impact) to semi-public healing (the woman's recognition before the crowd) to private healing (the child's intimate family setting) suggests that divine power operates across all social contexts, but different situations require different approaches to restoration.
Intersectional Implications: Power, Access, and Transformation
Mark 5's healing stories reveal how social position affects access to care, but they also demonstrate that God's restorative power operates most freely among the marginalized. The most dramatic healings happen with those society has written off - the demon-possessed man, the ritually unclean woman, the dead child.
Each healing involves boundary crossing. Jesus enters Gentile territory for the demoniac, allows himself to be touched by an unclean woman, and enters a house of death for the child. Divine power seems to require boundary transgression rather than boundary maintenance.
The stories also reveal how healing disrupts existing systems. The townspeople fear the restored demoniac and ask Jesus to leave. The crowd cannot understand the difference between casual contact and desperate faith. The professional mourners ridicule the possibility of resurrection.
These dynamics mirror contemporary resistance to LGBTQ+ affirmation, healthcare justice, and other movements that challenge established systems. When marginalized people experience healing, restoration, and full community inclusion, it often threatens those whose power depends on maintaining exclusionary boundaries.
The progression of the chapter suggests that healing work starts with the most marginalized and moves toward centers of power. Jesus begins with the demon-possessed man in Gentile territory, continues with the excluded woman in a Jewish crowd, and concludes with the synagogue leader's family. God's restorative work moves from margins to center, not the reverse.
Questions for Reflection
As we continue through Mark's Gospel, these healing stories invite us to examine our own assumptions about healthcare, social inclusion, and divine power:
Where do you see contemporary communities writing off people as beyond help or hope?
How do different forms of social privilege affect access to healing and care?
What boundaries might God be calling you to cross in order to reach those who need restoration?
How does your faith community respond when marginalized people experience healing and claim their place in the community?
Next week, we'll explore Mark 6 and its stories of rejection, mission, and the challenges of faithful witness in hostile environments. The themes of boundary crossing and social restoration will continue to evolve as Jesus faces increasing opposition while expanding his ministry reach. Until then, may you find yourself both receiving and offering the healing touch that restores bodies, communities, and hope.