Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

⁷ You have plenty of everything, after all—plenty of faith, and speech, and knowledge, and all kinds of eagerness, and plenty of love coming from us to you; so why not have plenty of this grace too?

Copying the generosity of the Lord Jesus

⁸ I’m not saying this as though I was issuing an order. It’s a matter of putting their enthusiasm and your own love side by side, and making sure you genuinely pass the test. ⁹ For you know the grace of our Lord, Messiah Jesus: he was rich, but because of you he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. ¹⁰ Let me give you my serious advice on this: you began to be keen on this idea, and started putting it into practice, a whole year ago; it will now be greatly to your advantage ¹¹ to complete your performance of it. If you do so, your finishing the job as far as you are able will be on the same scale as your eagerness in wanting to do it. ¹² If the eagerness is there, you see, the deed is acceptable, according to what you have, not according to what you don’t have. ¹³ The point is not, after all, that others should get off lightly and you be made to suffer, but rather that there should be equality. ¹⁴ At the present time your abundance can contribute to their lack, so that their abundance can contribute to your lack. That’s what makes for equality, ¹⁵ just as the Bible says: “The one who had much had nothing to spare, and the one who had little didn’t go short.”

Jairus’s daughter and the woman with chronic bleeding

²¹ Jesus crossed over once more in the boat to the other side. There a large crowd gathered around him, and he was by the seashore.

²² One of the synagogue presidents, a man named Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus he fell down at his feet.

²³ “My daughter’s going to die! My daughter’s going to die!” he pleaded. “Please come—lay your hands on her—rescue her and let her live!”

²⁴ Jesus went off with him. A large crowd followed, and pressed in on him.

²⁵ A woman who had had internal bleeding for twelve years heard about Jesus. ²⁶ (She’d had a rough time at the hands of one doctor after another; she’d spent all she had on treatment, and had got worse rather than better.) ²⁷ She came up in the crowd behind him and touched his clothes. ²⁸ “If I can just touch his clothes,” she said to herself, “I’ll be rescued.” ²⁹ At once her flow of blood dried up. She knew, in her body, that her illness was cured.

³⁰ Jesus knew at once, inside himself, that power had gone out of him. He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”

³¹ “You see this crowd crushing you,” said the disciples, “and you say ‘Who touched me?’ ”

³² He looked round to see who had done it. ³³ The woman came up; she was afraid and trembling, but she knew what had happened to her. She fell down in front of him and told him the whole truth.

³⁴ “My daughter,” Jesus said to her, “your faith has rescued you. Go in peace. Be healed from your illness.”

The raising of Jairus’s daughter

³⁵ As he said this, some people arrived from the synagogue president’s house.

“Your daughter’s dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher anymore?”

³⁶ Jesus overheard the message. “Don’t be afraid!” he said to the synagogue president. “Just believe!”

³⁷ He didn’t let anyone go with him except Peter, James and James’s brother John. ³⁸ They arrived at the synagogue president’s house, and saw a commotion, with a lot of weeping and wailing. ³⁹ Jesus went inside.

“Why are you making such a fuss?” he said. “Why all this weeping? The child isn’t dead; she’s asleep.” ⁴⁰ And they laughed at him.

He put them all out. Then he took the child’s father and mother, and his companions, and they went in to where the child was. ⁴¹ He took hold of her hand, and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means “Time to get up, little girl!” ⁴² At once the girl got up and walked about. (She was twelve years old.) They were astonished out of their wits. ⁴³ Then he commanded them over and over not to let anyone know about it, and told them to give her something to eat.