In the gospel lesson for next Sunday[1],
Mark tells us about a woman in the crowd around Jesus. But Jesus is in a hurry to get on his way
elsewhere. The woman is not named. Mark says she had been haemorrhaging for 12
years: She had endured much under many
physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather
grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and 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.” Her condition had made her
ritually and socially unclean – not to mention anaemic and exhausted. She had run out of money and she had run out
of options. I think it is important to
note that she was not acting from what we might call intelligent faith – she
was not seeking to encounter Jesus -- she came
up behind him, it says, in the despairing hope that his clothes might somehow
transmit his healing power.
In all three synoptic gospels we learn that she immediately
felt healed. It is not explained how she
would know that – it was intuitive.
Moreover, Jesus sensed that he had been touched. The woman then told him what she was doing, and
in all three gospels Jesus responds: Your
faith has made you well, go in peace. It
is not claimed that Jesus healed her.
Jesus didn’t assume that, and neither should we… unless we want to
believe that he could heal without knowing or intending to, or that even his
clothes carried healing properties.
Your faith has made
you well… “Your faith…?” What she
had was desperation over her long-term condition, a need however not to bother
or be a nuisance to Jesus, but simply to touch his clothes secretly and
anonymously. While we might be critical,
Jesus sees this at another level. He
knows immediately that something subliminal has happened, and he is quite ready
to pause on his rush to the home of Jairus’s dying daughter, and to give this
woman time and attention. This is the
healing situation – Jesus gives us his attention, and we respond… it may well
be that we are at the end of our tether otherwise. We don’t know, of course, precisely the
extent of this woman’s “healing”, but we do know that she is now on a new
path. She is not now merely a helpless
victim of disease and circumstance. She
has a way forward. That is why Jesus
says, your faith has made you well, go in peace.
Faith, as we repeatedly say, is never something we are graciously
offering to God, but rather a gift that we receive, the prosaic ability, it may
be, simply to take the next step, put one foot in front of the other… rather
than remaining stuck in memories, living in permanent victimhood, insisting
that God and the universe understand how poorly they have treated you. Jesus enables that step. It is not about everything coming right, so
much as seeing a path to walk, a door opening, a trail to follow in company
with him. Yes, the woman’s understanding
was elemental, if that… more like superstition.
But she took the step, Jesus knew she had, he turned to her and told her
she could go on in peace.
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