“A Healing Unseen”
Rev. Jeffrey Long-Middleton
Bradford Congregational Church-UCC
Mark 5:21-43
July 1, 2018

“Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?”  – Mark 5:30ⁱ

She had been suffering for twelve years. She had seen countless doctors. None could help. Twelve years – it’s a long time even by today’s standards.

But in antiquity, twelve years could be a lifetime. Listen to what Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, wrote in Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

“To imagine the significance of age in the first-century Mediterranean, note that a person of twelve was well along in his or her life span. In the cities of antiquity nearly a third of the live births were dead before age six. By the mid-teens 60 percent would have died, by the mid-twenties 75 percent, and 90 percent by the mid-forties. Perhaps 3 percent reached their sixties. Few ordinary people lived out their thirties. . . . much of Jesus’ audience would have been younger than he, disease-ridden, and looking at a decade or less of life-expectancy.”¹

You may already know what I am about to say. The issue of blood that tormented this woman had a physiological component. She needed to be physically healed. But there was another dis-ease with which she was burdened. It is why fear filled her heart when she came, knelled before Jesus and told Him the whole truth.

If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness; as in the days of her impurity, she shall be unclean. (Leviticus 15:25) 

Anyone who touched her would be unclean, too. She had wandered into a packed crowd. People were pressing in upon Jesus. He couldn’t even tell who touched the hem of His garment. She told Jesus the whole truth and now, according the Law, Jesus had been made unclean, too.

My brother, Doug, died of an AIDS related illness in 1982. Ellen had just given birth to our second son. Our oldest child was 4. This was at a time when we were just learning about AIDS. We didn’t know much about how it was transmitted. Some people thought that if a mosquito bit you and that mosquito had bitten a person with AIDS, you, too, would be infected. So we went to our pediatrician to get his opinion about going to visit my brother before he died. He said something that has always stuck with me. “If you can’t be touched by others, you’re already dead. For twelve years this woman had been dead to those around her.

By Jesus healing this woman He also healed a community that had shunned her. Almost always when Jesus performs a healing, He heals His culture, too. God healed her, true, but God also healed those who had shunned her.

Do you know how the fifth chapter in Mark starts? Jesus heals the Demoniac. He lived in caves where the dead were buried. He was often shackled to the wall because he posed a threat to the community. He was dressed in rags and lived in filth. He may not have been a Jew, but Jesus was. For Him to be amongst the tombs was already violating the Law. Numbers 19:11  ^“Those who touch the dead body of any human being shall be unclean seven days.” Jesus heals the unclean and touches those the Law says should not be touched. He heals the dis-ease of His culture.

And then we come to Jairus’s daughter. Jesus agrees to heal her. Indeed, he is on the way to Jairus’s home when this woman with the issue of blood touches him. How long does all this take – the healing, Jesus looking for the one who touched Him, the woman telling Jesus the whole truth? We don’t know. What we do know is that in the time to heal her, Jairus’s daughter dies. How must Jairus have felt about this woman who in her uncleanness had the audacity to touch Jesus and in so doing delay Him?

The messengers who brought word of the girl’s death said there was no need to bother the teacher. The moment had passed. She was dead and the words of Numbers 19:11 ring in our ears: “Those who touch the dead body of any human being shall be unclean seven days.” Is this why Jesus said the girl was not dead but only sleeping? Would these leaders of the synagogue and town allowed Jesus to defile Himself if she were dead? He could have raised her with His voice, right? That’s what He will do with Lazarus, but the text is very specific, Jesus took the dead girl’s hand. What had been unclean was made whole. Maybe Jesus had to touch her to make the healing complete. Maybe He wanted to heal His culture of their devotion to the law while forfeiting love.

And what of us? Have we become so devoted to the law that we let it thwart compassion? Have we allowed our fear of “the other” blind us to the angels of our higher nature? Jesus does more than heal a person. Jesus heals his culture and in so doing He has shown us the way to heal our own. Let us pray….