Twelve

One of my favorite stories in scripture records Jesus’s successive interactions with two un-named females in desperate circumstances: a woman with a twelve-year hemorrhage, and a twelve-year old on the brink of death.

Two women; twelve years

This story appears in all the synoptic gospels (Matthew 9, Mark 5, Luke 8) and it has remarkable consistency across the three versions.

In all, Jesus is on his way somewhere else when a desperate father who happens to be a leader of the synagogue intercepts Jesus, pleading on behalf of his only daughter who is at the point of death.

Jesus immediately agrees to come and heal her.

On the way, there is another, almost “accidental” miracle: a woman in the crowd touches Jesus’s garment and is healed from her chronic, debilitating blood loss.

During the pause when Jesus identifies and commends the woman for her faith, news comes that Jesus is too late to save the sick daughter – she has died.

Exhorting the shell-shocked father to have faith, Jesus continues to the house where the child’s body (and crowds of mourners) await him. He resuscitates of the child and gives her back to her parents.

The response is predictable: astonishment, awe, and increased notoriety.

Curiosity Killed the Cat. Be Careful that it Doesn't Have the Same Effect on You

Specific significance

Jesus performed so many miracles of healing that it’s easy to overlook the profound significance of these two.

Consider:

In the culture of first century Palestine, girls and women were far below boys and men in status. Their access to everything from property ownership to worship in the Temple was stringently limited, and depended on men’s prerogative. For Jesus to redirect his journey solely to give aid to a sick little girl would therefore have seemed inexplicable to his compatriots.

Likewise in that culture, a woman with any “blood issue” was specifically “unclean” – and supposed to stay sequestered at home, until the issue ceased. The woman who touched Jesus’s garment and received healing was therefore extraordinarily courageous not just because she made her way to Jesus but because she left her house in the first place. She was literally risking her life in her pursuit of the Healer. Properly understood, Jesus’s commendation of her, “your faith has saved you,” is validation of her breaking religious laws to pursue him as well as public, emphatic affirmation of her all-in trust. In a crowd of religious men, Jesus singled out this audacious woman as being notable for her faith. Pretty radical.

The woman had been sick as long as the girl had been alive. In these paired miracles, Jesus demonstrated his capacity to bring healing to both the immediate / urgent crises and to the longstanding / chronic crises. Neither is beneath his notice; neither is beyond his healing capacity.
The specific duration of the woman’s illness and the girl’s life: twelve years. We know that there are some special twelves in scripture… 12 Patriarchs, 12 Disciples, 12 “epochs” in the Old Testament… but what do these have to do with the miracles of healing in these stories? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the real “12 connection” here is in a story of Jesus’s own life.

Jesus at Twelve

In Luke 2:41 – 52, we get the only story from Jesus’s childhood, in which Jesus is inadvertently left behind in Jerusalem after a family Passover pilgrimage there.

After a three-day search (lots of significant 3-days in scripture, too), Jesus’s parents find him in the Temple. He is holding his own in dialogue with the Temple teachers, and his response to his parents is striking: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (2:49)

Luke tells us specifically that Jesus is twelve years old when this happens.

The gospels tell us that Jesus was “about 30 years old” (Luke 3:23) when He began His ministry, but Luke is exact about lost-Jesus in the Temple being specifically “twelve years old.”(2:42) Pretty unmistakable emphasis.

What do we make of this strange coincidence of three significant twelves?

Twelve – the age of becoming

Twelve is a significant age in any child’s life.

Typically, twelve-year-olds are somewhere in the labyrinth of puberty – navigating life in bodies that are neither child nor adult.

Typically, twelve-year-olds are recognized for their increasing intellectual independence, both in educational and religious systems. (Two examples: at twelve, modern Jewish girls are bat mitzvah – invited to read from the Torah and become “adult” members of the synagogue. At twelve, Methodist kids go through Confirmation and take adult membership vows.)

Typically, twelve-year-olds still need plenty of parental oversight and provision but crave increasing autonomy.

In Jesus’s story, we see how Jesus was becoming himself. He was confident of his Father’s true identity and of his own rightful place in his Father’s house. He was wise beyond his years and able to converse wisely with his elders. Perhaps most startling to any parent of a twelve-year-old, he was also submissive to rightful authority, even at personal cost:^“Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” (2:51)

The Jesus Difference

The girl raised to life by Jesus was somewhere in the process of becoming a woman. Because of Jesus’s intervention in her story, that process was merely interrupted for a brief moment – Jesus raised her not just to life, but to new life in Him. She would live out her time on the planet as evidence of Jesus’s power… and also as evidence of Jesus’s counter-cultural priorities.

The woman healed by Jesus of her hemorrhage was also in the process of becoming. Already a veteran of womanhood, she was becoming a new woman – one whose faith “saved” her, one whose faith propelled her past the law, toward the Lord. She, too, would live out her time on the planet as evidence of Jesus’s power. Indeed, she would be a walking refutation of those who chose to remain enslaved by the law when the fulfillment of the law, Personified, had completed His work.

Modern twelves

As of July 24^th, we will have a resident twelve-year-old in our house. Hard as it is for me to fathom, my “baby girl” is officially at the age of becoming!

JoJo does twelve well… I see in her not just the daughter raised to life but also the woman courageously pursuing new life, and I am inspired and challenged by her.

But I confess that I see in our culture almost as many challenges to JoJo’s “becoming” as those faced by the women in the story of twelves. Different challenges, to be sure. Thank God, there is no legal barrier to her living into the equal status God conferred when He made men and women, alike, “in His image”! But coming of age in this culture is fraught with other perils.

The figures in our scripture story faced an occupying army and religious practice that excluded and demeaned them. JoJo and her peers face omnipresent pressures from technology that occupies more space and time than Roman soldiers ever could. The concept of “inclusivity” has itself been elevated to idolatry, and the demeaning messages bombarding youth about what it means to “become” are unparalleled in history.

The blessed paradox: what JoJo and the twelve-year-olds of today need is exactly the same as what the girl and woman of our scripture story needed. Jesus. Only Jesus! And receiving the life-giving, life-changing power that Jesus offers is as simple as following twelve-year-old Jesus’s example: seeking Him in the Father’s house, asking questions of trusted/trustworthy adults, and learning the freedom of following the One who has not just all the answers but all the hope and healing they will ever, ever need.