The woman subject to bleeding: Mark 5 v 24b-34: ‘Your faith has healed you.’
In the days when you could just turn up at a football ground and pay to go through the turnstiles I went with some friends to Anfield, the home of Liverpool Football Club, to see them play Barcelona in the European Cup (which has since evolved into the cash cow known as the Champions League). In those days the Kop was a standing terrace behind one of the goals and I can vividly remember, whenever the play came down our end, being lifted off my feet in a great wave of people and carried in the air several yards down the terrace before being carried up and back to my starting point when play moved up the other end.
Today’s story describes a chaotic crowd of people trying desperately to get close to Jesus at a time when he had quite a reputation as a healer around the towns and villages of Galilee. He is on his way to the house of Jairus, a local synagogue official whose 12 year old daughter is close to death, when something quite strange happens. When Jesus heals people it is usually done intentionally and out of love and compassion yet here is an example of an inadvertent healing which Jesus only becomes aware of after the event in that ‘power had gone out from him’ (v 30). It feels a little impersonal; almost as if Jesus worked on a battery which lost a bit of its charge as its power caused the woman’s internal bleeding to cease instantaneously. Perhaps this is one reason why Jesus doesn’t allow the woman to scuttle away unnoticed after receiving the healing she desperately craved. As we reflect on this woman who now stands face to face with Jesus let’s think about the ramifications of her condition for a moment.
We need to consider firstly what it was doing to her body. She had been ‘subject to bleeding’ for twelve long years (v 25). Whether this was caused by heavy menstrual bleeding or some other medical condition isn’t clear but whereas in today’s NHS she would have been able to visit her local GP and be referred to a consultant if necessary, back then she was in the hands of doctors with very rudimentary knowledge who charged her for the privilege of consultations which only made matters worse (v 26). Her condition was not life threatening, unlike Jairus’s daughter she is not dying, but it was both painful and distressing on a daily basis. It meant that she and anything she touched was regarded as ritually unclean (see Lev 15 v 25-27) and as a result of this she was excluded from the life of the synagogue of which Jairus, whose daughter she was preventing Jesus from seeing, was an official. The effect of this ritual exclusion was that anybody else coming into contact with anything she had lain on, sat on or even just touched would also become unclean. It’s an ancient example of social distancing and the restrictions and lockdowns we have experienced during the pandemic give us an idea of the fear that lurked behind these beliefs and practises.
So what was it doing to her mind? Because she was shunned and excluded she must have led an incredibly lonely life. For many vulnerable people the pandemic has meant many months of not being able to see family and friends and they will have an understanding of what her feelings were. However she did not have access to zoom, social media or a telephone; she was to all intents and purposes alone in the world. If the pandemic has taught us one thing it is the value of friendship; we were certainly not made to be alone. Hence the desperation of this woman who puts herself at the heart of something akin to an enormous rugby scrum to get close to Jesus. She is physically healed, something she realises instantly, but she still needs Jesus – he isn’t a magician dispensing healings without engaging with the people he comes into contact with. It isn’t battery power but God’s loving, life giving power that has healed this woman and there needs to be a conversation. That’s why Jesus keeps looking (v 32); he isn’t going to let her slip away.
There are two important things their conversation achieves. Firstly because her healing now becomes public knowledge it makes it much easier for her to be accepted back into the community. Jesus is taking a risk here with his own reputation because according to the letter of the law he himself has been rendered unclean simply by having her touch his garment (even though his disciples make the valid point that in the chaos nobody would have had a clue who had touched his clothes - v 31). But her healing and restoration have to be public; Jesus is not just concerned with her physical healing, he wants to heal the whole person. He wants her to be able to be close to any family she may have, he wants her to be able to go to the synagogue, he wants her to feel valued, wanted, loved and cared for.
Secondly it clarifies the role that her faith played in her healing, as Jesus puts it; ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you (v 34). It may not have been fully formed, but a desperate kind of hope that touching the healer’s cloak might just deliver her was enough. She was only at the beginning of her journey of faith but she was free (v 34). Not just free from the pain and discomfort of her medical condition but from the experience of waking up each day knowing that she would spend that day alone and as an object of fear. We can only imagine what that had been doing to her sense of self-esteem.
We might well feel that our faith is a fragile flower and very much prey to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. As we look at other Christians whose faith seems so much stronger and who seem to know so much more about the Bible than we do we can sometimes feel like giving up. Apart from the fact that those we regard in that way almost certainly have issues of their own we can see in this story that even a ‘last resort’ kind of faith with very little knowledge and understanding but with a deep longing for a different kind of life – whatever might mean for us in the context of our own lives – evinces a response from Jesus. And the fact that, for us, our engagement with Jesus might or might not result in physical healing, doesn’t mean that our faith and walk with Jesus is any the less meaningful and significant. Jesus’ wider concern for the mental, emotional and spiritual scars that this unknown woman would have potentially carried with her long after her physical healing is a very significant part of the story.
It is our understanding of how Jesus accepts us with all our doubts, questions, hang-ups, fears and uncertainties that will help us as Christians to offer a non-judgemental welcome to others who come searching even as they are not quite sure what they are looking for. Jesus takes anyone and everyone as they are and where they are and invites them on a journey of faith. Just like Rome, that cannot be built in a day and the Christian life is not a beauty contest in which we are endlessly comparing ourselves to others. We are all broken in one way or another and the acknowledgement of this is an essential prerequisite for growth in spiritual life and faith. As we embark on, continue or re-engage with the life of faith we will always be encountering the love of God who forgives what is past, accepts who we are today and shapes and guides our future. Even in the chaos that sometimes constitutes our daily lives, it’s all rather wonderful!
Questions: Have you ever experienced chaos in your spiritual life? How has living through that shaped your walk with Jesus today and how might it shape where you go from here?
Prayer: Lord, accept us as we are and lead and guide us into the future you have prepared for us. Amen.