Now let me be clear; I have been the dad of a girl for 25 years, but over the last 11 months, I have been blessed with two new daughters-in-law, and, therefore, as my daughters now outnumber my sons, I am officially declaring myself a Girl Dad. So, as I am processing this new part of my life, I wanted to take a look at what the Bible says about fathers and daughters.
My favorite example of this relationship occurs in Mark 5, where we hear the story of Jairus, a Jewish leader, who comes to Jesus as a last resort to save his daughter from imminent death. He was not a follower. He was not a believer. In fact, he would have been in a position of clear opposition to Jesus’s teaching, but his love for his daughter broke through all of these issues and caused him to plead with Jesus to come to his house. One key phrase used in Mark to describe Jairus before Jesus is that “he fell at his feet” (5:22). In the Jewish tradition, bowing, let alone falling prostrate, is a sign of humility and is only to be done before God. Therefore, Jairus’s falling at the feet of Jesus was, most likely, one of two things: A clear admittance that Jesus was God, or more likely, the act of a desperate father.
But before we can see the dramatic conclusion to this story, we are introduced to an example of a literary device common in the Book of Mark called intercalation, or a Markan Sandwich. This technique interrupts a story with another story before finishing the original tale. The purpose of this technique is to force us to see how elements of each story are interpreting each other and creating a more complex level of meaning. In Chapter 5, Jarius is the bread before and after, but we have a different character as the meat of the sandwich. On the way to Jairus’ house, Jesus is surrounded by a crowd of people when he is touched by a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years. This ailment has made her not only physically ill and financially destitute, but culturally unclean. The woman is healed and freed from her bodily and social bondage.
It is only then that Jesus goes to Jairus’ house and heals his daughter. There is much more to both of these stories, so please read them on your own, but the point I want to make is not connected to either story.
When seen as one narrative element, we are invited to see how these two stories interpret each other. I have seen commentary that points to the connection between the daughter and the bleeding woman, such as they were both considered unclean, or untouchable, when Jesus healed them, and that the girl’s age of 12 years mirrors exactly the length of time that the woman had been bleeding. But what interested me is that in 5:34, Jesus calls the woman “Daughter.” This is the only time that Jesus refers to anyone in the New Testament as ‘daughter.’ This, then, is the true connection between the little girl and the bleeding woman.
Over the last year, I remind you, I now have three daughters, and every time I read the story of Jairus and the bleeding woman, I feel the lengths that they were willing to go in pursuit of Jesus. The father abandons his understanding of his world, his religion, and his appearance in the community, all in order to bring a man, of whom he had only heard rumors, to his house. I would imagine that Jairus’ love was so deep and so intense that there was nothing he would not have done. And the woman who had spent more than the last decade apart from her family, her community, and, I’m sure that she felt, her God, was willing to risk further abuse in order to get to Jesus. All of the crowd around Jesus would have been aware that Leviticus 15:9 would have mandated that anyone of them who came in contact with this woman would have been unclean until evening and been forced to separate from everyone else. By calling this woman who He had never met, ‘daughter,’ he is forming a relationship that can only be seen as a parallel to the love that Jairus demonstrates for his daughter. Jesus is telling this woman, who had been abandoned by all of those who may have loved her, that His love is as deep and as intense as that of Jairus. There is nothing He would refuse to do for this one person deemed unfit by her community. He would humble himself; He would make her feel seen; He would heal her, and He would eventually give up His life for this one, his ‘daughter.’
But just as Jesus pursued the bleeding woman,
At once, Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. “(Mark 5:30-32).
She and Jairus are rewarded for their pursuit of Jesus. Jesus tells the woman, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering,” and later He tells Jairus, who had already been informed that his daughter was dead, to “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”
Having grown up a Presbyterian (this is not a slam on Presbys) and raised by two teachers, I was raised to question, doubt, and search for the logic in what God does, but these two characters show me a much different path: throw away your understanding of how the world works and what is expected of you and pursue Jesus with reckless abandon. It is not your works, your logic, or your past that help you. It is your faith that sets you free.
I will admit that I am not very good at this yet, but I am working on it. I wish to be the father/ father-in-law/ old dude who is willing to abandon everything in order to bring safety and healing to the young women God has placed in my life. And this is my wish for Emma, Sammi, and Alissa, that they follow Jesus with the courage of the bleeding woman and the passion of Jairus, that the risks and rewards offered by this world will pale in comparison to being seen as the daughter of the one true king.
