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Mark 5:21-43

Touched

My story is in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But I am never named. Indeed, I hardly have my own

story; what happened to me is slipped inside another story - the raising of a Jarius daughter. So I have come, come across the border between heaven and earth to tell you my story.

I fear - I fear you will not understand what it was like. To be unclean. Your world is so different

- but in mine, and in so many other places throughout time, the things of the world are divided

into what is clean, and what is unclean. It is still this way in some corners of the earth. Clean

and unclean. Its a way to say what is normal and good; but also a way to name and shun what people believe brings disease and suffering into a society. So much disease and suffering and

pain in the world - and people try to protect themselves by labeling things unclean.

And in Israel, it came from the Law of Moses. Things like swine were unclean to eat; people

missing an eye or a hand were unclean and could not serve as priests; and three forms of

uncleanness got you excluded from society. Touching a corpse. Touching a leper. And

touching someone with a bodily discharge, like me.

It started, the way of all woman, in the normal manner. In our law, a woman with an issue of

blood was unclean. When the blood stopped, you would bathe and be unclean for seven more

days, but after that, you were clean and whole, you could be touched and hugged, you could go

out into the village.

But not me. Because once it started, the bleeding never stopped. I came of age as a woman -

and became unclean. Impure. Defiled.

It is like carrying a dread disease. If I touched another - even a glancing touch - my impurity

infected them. I was a walking, breathing symbol of all that was foul and unclean in the world.

I went from being a girl with parents who loved me, a village where I could run and play, the

synagogue where I could hear the rabbis teach and we would sing; we would go to Jerusalem

every year or so and I would stand in the courts of the great Temple; there were boys who eyed

me because I was not unattractive and I knew just how to swing my hips as I walked - oh, there

was life ahead for me - and how I loved life, the sheer delight of waking and laughing and

running and hugging - I would be married one day and know married intimacy; I would bear

children and nurse....oh, life beckoned, life awaited...

And then the bleeding began. And never stopped.

For twelve years!

How can I make you understand what it felt like? Perhaps when you were younger - perhaps you

were overweight or pimple-faced, or too poor to dress well - and you were shunned. You sat

down at a table, and others would get up; you walked down a hall and people would get quiet

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and look away; or worse, point and laugh. Or perhaps even now you feel it - your world is so

cruel - you are the wrong race, you have failed in life, you made a grave mistake, and others may

be outwardly pleasant, but they keep their distance. Your society does not name what is clean

and unclean, but it happens still.

For me...our whole society was based on purity - and I was impure. I just wanted to be held - I

would reach out to my father - I was still just a girl - and he would pull away. My mother, at

least, could touch me during her own monthly uncleanness - until she went through the change -

and from then, no one.

No man could touch me...would touch me - so while the other girls in the village married and

had the pleasures of the marriage bed, had the joy of bearing children, had the simple comfort of

the embrace of another - I lived in a corner of my parents house. I would walk down to the market - and people would scatter before me like chickens running before a wolf. Once I tried to

buy some figs and the merchant wouldnt touch me, wouldnt even touch my money.

Religion? Was that a comfort? Hah! The prophet Ezekiel said that going near a menstruating

woman was just as bad as committing adultery or worshiping an idol. Other prophets used

woman like me as an example of Israel defiled before God by idolatry. I was the embodiment of

uncleanness itself.

You see, they thought it was my fault. It was so clear to us then - if one suffers, one has sinned,

and one is being punished. No sympathy. No compassion. Someone must have sinned, and I

was being punished. By God. For my sin. It was just. It was deserved.

I prayed and fasted, begging God to make the bleeding stop. My parents made sin offerings at

the temple for me - I could not go in myself. And sometimes, the blood would stop for a day, or

two, or one time - three whole days - but never the seven that I might be made clean. It always

came back; the fear of its return smothering my hope in the cradle.

Doctors? Oh, I tried them! Dont you think I wanted to be made clean?! I drank potions that would gag a goat; I smeared ointments on tender places that burned me like coals; I stood up to

my waist in freezing water to staunch the flow of blood; but the only thing that dried up was my

purse.

For twelve years it went on. There was nothing left inside me. I was not a human being, I was

not a woman; I was filth wrapped in a cloak.

They were like the faintest echoes of a mountainside, those first rumors about him. Then word

about him spread like a fire burning dry August grass. Could he be the One, the Messiah? It was

said demons screamed at the sight of him and scurried down to darkness; it was said his touch

could make blind eyes fill with light and the crippled leap to their feet!

But his touch wouldnt rest on me it would make him unclean. No respectable rabbi, and certainly no prophet, would touch one like me. BUT when I heard he was going through a

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nearby village, I decided what I would do. I wrapped my face in a covering and hurried off.

It was like a moving sea of people surrounding a single point - Jesus. The noise of babbling

voices, wailing women...the stink of unwashed bodies as I came near the crowd...and my plan - if

I can just touch him, just touch him, I will be made well...I pressed into the crowd, my unclean

contact unknown to them...I thrust my arm between two people on the edge of the crowd as Jesus

walked by and my fingertips just brushed his cloak...and it was like, it was like...my whole body

flushed with warmth, the hair on my arms and neck stood on end, I felt a burst of heat, inside -

and I knew the bleeding stopped.

I drew my arm back...and he stopped. Jesus. Stopped.

He spun around. Who touched me? he demanded.

There were dozens of people pushing and jostling around him, but out of all that touching he

knew my fingertips had brushed his cloak - because he felt the power flow out of him and into

me. He kept looking - those eyes searching and searching, he wouldnt move on, I thought I could just slink away, but I knew what I had done...I had made him unclean - he knew it, he was

a prophet, remember, so I came forward to add this sin to the others that caused my affliction.

I stumbled toward him on weak knees, fell down before him, expecting a cuff across the face or a

verbal assault....I was just so desperate, all I wanted was to be well again - I looked up at him

with clasped hands and told him what I had done - and he looked at me with his dark eyes that

had in them the depth of infinity; he smiled and said, Daughter, your faith has saved you. You are healed. Go in peace.

(Laughter) Later I understood - you cannot make Jesus unclean - he takes our uncleanness into

himself. The uncleanness flowed out of me, and into him, where it was extinguished as easily as

a flickering candle.

(Sighs). You all - do you understand yet what it was like? Unclean? Perhaps - if you have had a

dread disease, like cancer, you understand. Some of your friends stop coming to see you,

because they are afraid. Or if you have had a disfiguring illness, or a birth deformity. Or if you

simply are not attractive by the standards of your beauty-worshiping world - I think you

understand. How people shrink back from you. Or if you grew up with parents who crushed

your spirit; or if you were taught of a merciless God who hates sin and the sinner even more.

Perhaps some of you do know what it feels like. To be unclean, to be one whom others will not

touch.

Or perhaps through your sin you have defiled yourself. And in a way you are unclean because

the stain of sin has spread throughout your body and soul and blocked you off from the love of

God.

Hear me, dear friends. The Lord Jesus takes our uncleanness into himself and makes us holy and

beautiful. To him the stain of it is like a drop of ink in the wide ocean. And though we are but

creatures, frail and small, the touch of my trembling, outstretched finger was not too trivial for

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him to stop and notice, and so it would be with you. For He who made the whole world becomes

small enough to enter our own little worlds and to know the details of our pain; he comes in such

a way that it seems that only he and you are left in the whole world.

Do you wonder why he stopped and made me confess to my healing? Because my healing was

not yet complete. I was healed in body, but not in spirit. All those years of being shut out from

God, the bitterness of it like the taste of bad medicine in my mouth. He stopped, and spoke, and

called me daughter - because he wanted me to know that I was his child, I was loved, and that

though my touch was so fleeting we had now connected for all eternity. Your faith has saved you, he said, and so I was. In body - but in spirit, too, forever.

And that is the greatest healing of all. He is there, my friends - long before you feel his touch, he

is already embracing you, long before you turn back to him, he has already raced towards you -

to make you his own forever. I came to him wanting only to be healed...I got far more than I

ever asked or dreamed.

The gift He gave me is offered to you as well. And like me all you need to receive it is to believe

Jesus can give it.

And yet, I have another word for you.

I am astounded by how good-looking you are...how clean...how nice you smell. There are no

lepers here, wrapped in rags; no disfigurement; you are dressed-up, made-up, fixed up. So I ask

- would you touch - one as me? As I was, those long years ago?

Jesus paid a price for touching ones like me. The Pharisees, who though they were so clean,

labeled him unclean because he went among the outcast and despised, touching them, eating with

them, healing them. Boy, were they wrong! If Im a follower of the Lord, if you are followers of the Lord - and by following Jesus means we are to live as he did - I wonder, are you willing to

touch the unclean? To let them come in here, in this beautiful room, among you beautiful

people? To love them and let them love you?

Some churches in your land are social clubs where pretty people gather together, protected

against the unclean of the world. They say they welcome all - yet what they really mean is we

welcome those who are just like us - and they leave the unclean to the mercy of your culture

which worships the idols of beauty and success. Make sure, my sisters and brothers, make sure

you welcome the unclean - because you are to be to them what the Lord Jesus was to me - you

are to be the ones who touch, through you flows the healing love of the Lord Jesus Christ - and if

you do not touch them, who will?

After he walked off, down the road, Jesus healed many more. And then he walked all the way to

Jerusalem, where he climbed a cross, and where he bled to make us all clean and whole. Trust in

him, and you will be made whole; trust in him, and he will use you to make others whole.

(walk off)