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)
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