This follows on from my previous post: The Gerasene Demoniac: Prior Context.
The story of the Gerasene demoniac is followed by the integrated accounts of the raising of Jairus's daughter to life, and the healing and cleansing of the woman with a long-standing haemorrhage. These two accounts appear to be unrelated to each other, although the fact that Mark has interwoven them tells us that he sees a connection. Mark always weaves stories together for a reason.
The clue to the link is, I believe, found in the story of the Gerasene demoniac. This man lived among the tombs, we are told. Indeed, he met Jesus out of the tombs. The story of Lazarus is not in Mark's gospel, but even without that story for context, this ought to get us thinking.
Living among the tombs presented two problems for the man with Legion. First, he lived in the place of the dead. He may have been alive, rather than dead, but his infection with evil confined him to the grave. When evil takes hold of a man in this fashion, there is a separation from God and from the rest of human society that is a kind of death. He does not just need demons exorcising; he needs new life.
Second, he was unclean. In the Old Testament, to touch a corpse, or something that has been in contact with a corpse, renders one unclean – no matter how inadvertently the contact happened. To live among the tombs was another thing entirely. He was therefore unclean before God.
This man's double problem helps us draw together Jairus' daughter and the bleeding woman. Jairus' daughter was dead; the bleeding woman was unclean. However these two problems are not unrelated. The presence of sin gives us both issues - sin leaves us dead and unclean before God.
Happily Jesus is able to deal with both.
In my third and final post on the Gerasene Demoniac, I will try and draw these threads together and see what conclusions we can draw.
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