On July 19, 1848, exactly 150 years ago today, a convention
of women and men, most of whom had worked together in the movement
to abolish slavery, ratified the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments
and Resolutions. This declaration deliberately used the language
of the Declaration of Independence in its insistence that all
men and women were created equal. The convention and this declaration
were the beginning of a 70-year campaign to secure for women the
right to vote in this country, and it is hailed as the beginning
of modern feminism.
The desire for significance and respect is God-given. Men and
women are made in God's image, created to lead lives of dignity
and purpose.
However, those who celebrate the Seneca Falls convention of 1848
do not go back far enough in history in seeking to renew a commitment
to the dignity of all persons. Despite the fact that Christian
teaching and practice have often been accused of undermining women,
in reality it is Jesus Christ who gives meaning and worth to every
life, to women and men alike.
THE SUFFERING OF UNCLEANNESS
This sermon series focuses on questions Jesus asked. The question
in this message is "Who touched me?" It is answered
by a woman in desperate circumstances stemming from a physical
malady unique to women.
The background for this story is from the Old Testament, Leviticus
15:25: "When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days
at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that
continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she
has the discharge, just as in the days of her period." This
was the condition of the woman before us. We will discover that
she had lived for twelve years with a menstrual flow that could
not be ended. And because of the Levitical laws to which she was
subject as a Jew living among Jews, it had many repercussions
beyond just the medical condition.
Time doesn't permit discussion of all the Old Testament laws regarding
uncleanness and the reasons for them. Why certain times, places,
conditions, and circumstances rendered someone unclean would require
lengthy exposition. But briefly, we are given in the law a list
of things that were unclean, among them shellfish, pork, various
insects, a man's nocturnal emission, the touching of a corpse,
various skin conditions, mold in the plaster of a house, and a
high priest with torn clothing or a broken bone. Touching, eating,
experiencing, or being near these could render a person unclean.
All of these things were created by God and blessed by him; they
occur in nature and are good; there is nothing intrinsically offensive
about them. But we don't learn very well about the invisible and
spiritual world except by analogy, so we're given physical symbols
in order to learn spiritual lessons. (Communion is an example,
of course. Christians focus on the cross of Christ when they ingest
a bit of bread and wine.) These laws categorizing conditions as
clean or unclean for the children of Israel were meant to teach
lessons of joy and sorrow, of hope and mourning, to instruct about
life and death.
However, the individual consequences that occurred because of
the laws of ritual uncleanness didn't descend equally on everybody.
The twelve-year span of uncleanness that this woman experienced
meant that she must have lived with questions about herself: "What
is it about me that makes me the object of such unending struggle?
Where is God, and why doesn't he answer my prayers? Why am I forced
away from him, forbidden to go into the temple for refreshment
of public worship?" She was isolated from people, too. Others
would stay away to avoid ritual contamination.
Let's read Mark 5:21-23:
When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was by the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, "My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live."
This account begins with an appeal by a man of high station.
A large crowd surrounded Jesus, an important rabbi, as he heard
the appeal of Jairus and responded with compassion. They hurried
off as quickly as the crowd would permit-important men on an urgent
mission.
Then there was an interruption. A woman's story intervened. Verses
24-34:
So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"
"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?'"
But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."
The word "healed" in verses 28 and 34 is the Greek
word sozo. It means healing in the ordinary sense in which
medicine and doctors and processes of nature will heal illness
over time. But it's also the word that is used for salvation,
and we need the context to tell us which is meant in each particular
case. Clearly in the first case, in verse 28, the woman hoped
to be healed of a medical condition, and she felt in her body
she was healed of her affliction.
The question that translators have difficulty with, though, is
whether Jesus used this word the same way in verse 34: "Daughter,
your faith has healed you." Or was he saying something more
profound: "Daughter, your faith has saved you"?
I propose that the latter is right, that Jesus knew the physical
problem had already been dealt with, as did she, but that there
was a spiritual brokeness that still required a word from him.
We will return to this point.
HELP IN EXTREME SUFFERING
What should we make of the woman's difficulty? Mark gives us
a good bit of detail about her struggle. First of all, she had
a debilitating physical sickness. She must certainly have been
anemic, weakened by the continued blood loss. She was also growing
sicker and sicker. She had appealed to doctors for help, but they
couldn't help her, and the condition was getting worse.
Another problem was the kind of help she would have been offered
by both doctors and folk medics. Some of the cures available to
her would have made things worse. Alfred Edersheim, an orthodox
Jew who became a Christian, has written studies of the gospels
with helpful insights about Jewish customs. He writes: "On
one leaf of the Talmud [which is an ancient commentary on the
Old Testament, in this case Leviticus] not less than eleven different
remedies are proposed [for this problem of nonstop menstruation],
of which at most only six can possibly be regarded as astringents
or tonics, while the rest are merely the outcome of superstition,
to which resort is had in the absence of knowledge." He notes
the kinds of superstitions that this woman would have been offered
as cures or help: "...The ashes of an Ostrich-Egg, carried
in the summer in a linen, in winter in a cotton rag; or barley-corn
found in the dung of a white she-ass, etc."1 So the help
she was being offered for her affliction was not only unhelpful,
but it took a toll itself.
The problems went beyond her physical suffering, however. Twelve
years is a long time to be sick, and frustration builds when you
go to one physician after another to the point of destitution
with no good outcome. Her emotional condition must have been desperate
as well.
We can also imagine that because she was unclean, she was isolated
from family members who wanted to avoid contamination. There was
fear of the future, certainly. Things were getting worse. What
would life be like next week or the week after if she continued
at this rate? Finally, she had spent all her money, so not only
was she sick, but she was poor.
The man we considered in 5:1-20 lived in extreme circumstances.
But the self-destructiveness of a legion of demons resided in
him, the dark, howling, cutting, awful thing that his life had
become was perhaps matched by this woman's condition of depression,
withdrawal, and sorrow. We're meant to read this as heartbreakingly
difficult. And the Savior who could help these people can help
folks like us who know something of self destruction and sorrow.
The Lord both loved these people and acted to free them, and he
will do the same for us.
JESUS' RESPONSE TO AN APPEAL FOR HELP
With this background, let's consider the events here from three
angles. If we were directing a movie of this story, we would have
the camera first follow the woman. Presumably she had heard Jesus
teach or had known others whom he had healed. Somehow she decided
it was worth it to try one more time, to at least get near enough
to him to see if God would help her. We notice her off in the
distance. The crowd was trying to rush with Jesus to Jairus' house,
but a large crowd can't move very fast. She sneaked into the crowd,
and finding a crack here and an opening there, finally made it
near to Jesus. She was able to reach out and touch the edge of
his garment. And, glorious news, for the first time in twelve
years she found herself freed from her illness. The condition
that had dominated her experience for so long suddenly ended.
From a second angle, we observe the crowd, specifically the disciples.
Their unsolicited opinion, as was so often the case, was wrong.
They had the audacity to tell the Lord to be sensible and get
on with meeting the needs of the important synagogue official
at his house.
There are a couple of points I would make regarding the disciples.
First, we can learn to be more sensitive. It's not required that
we always be completely clueless as these first disciples of Jesus
were. We can learn to think as the Lord does. We can learn to
expect that there are people everywhere who want him more than
they are able to articulate, who are reaching out on some level
for the life-restoring power of God. They don't know how to ask
for help. They may not know what to say, what to do, or where
to go, but they desperately want God to love them and they want
the freedom to love him back. We can learn to see what's going
on in people's hearts and lives. We should be more tender, more
caring, more expectant, more compassionate. We're supposed to
be like our Lord.
Second, the church is not the answer. Jesus is the answer. But
sometimes we make efforts in our programs and activities to try
to meet peoples' needs at a level where we cannot, and we will
always disappoint them. The human players in the drama cannot
act as the Lord can. This woman needed Jesus. Inviting people
to join the community of fellow disciples is not the best thing
we can do. The best thing we can do is tell them of the love of
Jesus, place them in his presence, and allow them to know and
experience his life directly.
The third angle of observation is to look at Jesus. It is significant
that he stopped his urgent errand. There was a little girl dying
and an important man tugging at his sleeve, urging him, "Come
quickly!" The disciples ridiculed him. But the Lord knew
that somebody needed him. He felt power go out from himself, and
he knew that this appeal for help was more important than everything
else at that moment. The high-status man was not preferred over
the marginalized woman. Every honest cry for help receives God's
full attention.
You remember the story of the one hundred sheep (Matthew 18:12;
Luke 15:4). The shepherd left behind ninety-nine sheep that weren't
lost so that he could find the one that needed him. Each one of
us is the object of his searching love.
Jesus called for the woman to identify herself. He gave her the
opportunity without insisting. Because of her condition, all of
the touching as she worked her way through the crowd could have
resulted in scorn and rebuke. Certainly, to approach an important
rabbi and deliberately touch him, if anything had gone wrong,
could have resulted in censure and hostility. Jesus wasn't going
to insist that she say what had happened, but he gave her the
chance to know him face-to-face.
Let me explain the basis for suggesting earlier that the word
sozo in verse 34 should be translated "saved"
rather than "healed." The woman took the initiative
to approach him at first, but a saving relationship with Jesus
doesn't come at our initiative. She needed to know that the Lord
reached out for her-not that she was required to pursue an indifferent
Messiah.
Further, her initiative was anonymous. It left her back on the
outside of the crowd. No one would ever know, she wouldn't be
part of a community, she wouldn't have others who had experienced
salvation as her allies and friends, she wouldn't have brothers
and sisters, she would always be on her own, if not for Jesus'
actions.
Lastly, she needed more than just physical healing. She had a
broken heart, bitterness, frustration, questions, confusion, and
dark memories that had lasted for twelve years. Somebody needed
to heal those as well, not just the physical malady.
So courageously, the woman took the opportunity Jesus offered
her and came forward. The great act of faith in this story was
not touching his robe, but falling at his feet and telling her
whole story. Her story was about embarrassing, difficult, isolating
things, about brokenness of heart and body. In front of Jesus
and the surrounding crowd, she told it to him. This was a very
difficult thing to do, especially because, as I've said, she had
taken a risk to even touch him. The faith that allowed her to
say, "I trust you enough that you're going to love me, not
rebuke me for what I've done," was the great act of faith.
Jesus said, "Your faith has saved you." His initiative
led to a face-to-face relationship with him-a renewed spirit,
a healed soul, which went beyond just the physical healing that
she had already experienced. Salvation granted her peace in addition
to physical healing.
RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS, NOT JUST HELP
We're at the 150th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Declaration.
The best things the women's movement in western culture has done
in the last 150 years have been very good: securing for women
the right to vote opened doors to employment and education, giving
attention to reproductive health. But none of them are ultimately
liberating. It is not enough for any group to articulate areas
of need and call for the culture and the laws and the institutions
to change to meet them. We do not achieve peace and wholeness
and healing that way. The only One who can give us what we long
to have, men or women, is Jesus.
Jesus asked, "Who touched me?" He asks it still. Some
in the crowd today have reached out a hand to him for help, but
remained afraid to say the whole truth.
If you have a face-to-face relationship with Jesus, you're not
in control anymore. You can touch his robe and then run away.
But if you're in a face-to-face relationship he will call for
honesty and obedience. He's going to be in charge of who you are
and what you do and where you go and what you think. But as scary
as it is to respond to his question "Who touched me?"
it is far worse to fail to respond, to have a relationship with
God that you are in charge of, to get only an occasional
gift instead of being made whole and given peace on the inside.
It's a terrible mistake to fail to answer, when he's looking intently
for you, wanting to bless you.
NOTES
1. Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus The Messiah: New
Updated Edition. © 1993 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.,
Peabody, MA. P. 426.
Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
Catalog No. 4573
Mark 5:21-34
Fifth Message
Steve Zeisler
July 19, 1998
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