The Woman Who Attempted To Steal A Miracle
Preaching
There Are Demons In The Sea
Preaching The Message Of The Miracles
The Woman With An Issue Of Blood
Pick up the morning newspaper and you are certain to be confronted by another crime committed. And it seems that one crime is more bizarre than the other. The miracle we now consider is an account of a strange and unusual crime. It is the story of a woman who attempted to steal a miracle.
In many ways, this woman was like the leper who was cured and sent to the priest. Both were untouchables and lived lonely, desperate lives. Just as today our lives are controlled by computers and their printouts, so in the days of our Lord people's lives were controlled by the holy Law. And under this law the woman with an issue of blood, as well as the leper, was forbidden to mingle with people in public places. So they both broke the law by entering into the gathering that surrounded Jesus.
However, they solved their problems in vastly different ways. The leper stormed the kingdom with violence. This woman eased her way into the kingdom unnoticed. She was quiet and secretive. But then she could be, for her disease, unlike leprosy, was not outwardly apparent. If the people had known about her affliction, they would have avoided her as they did the leper.
Her plan was simple. She would hide herself in the crowd, and when no one was looking, she would touch just the fringe of his garment, steal a little bit of his power, just enough to be healed, and then withdraw from the crowd as she had entered it, quietly and secretively. Part of her plan worked. But she was caught and exposed. To her surprise, and to ours, she was not punished for her assault on the personhood of Jesus, but she was declared to be a woman of faith. And therein we find the plot of our story and the message it proclaims.
Religious Attitude Or Faith
Before we consider the details of this miracle, we need to come to terms with the meaning and use of the word "faith." Commentators and interpreters, all through their discussions of this miracle, refer to the "faith" of this woman. They point out that it is an immature faith, a faith based on superstition and belief in magical powers. Their use of the term "faith" can be misleading. The mind-set of this woman at the beginning of the story is far from what the New Testament means when it talks about faith. It will be much more helpful for our discussion of this miracle to refer to the religious attitude of this woman when she came to Jesus rather than her faith.
Wallace, in describing the scene that day when the miracle happened, pictures thronging crowds that crushed in upon Jesus. Many who pushed in on him had troubles and problems almost as serious as the woman's, but as Wallace observes, "This woman alone had the attitude toward Jesus which enabled him to meet her personal need."1 She of all the people in the crowd "touched" Jesus. Not just physically, but in a far more profound sense. As Saint Augustine puts it, "Many thronged him, one touched him."
What was this religious attitude she exhibited toward Jesus? First, it was an attitude of fear. And much of what we call religion begins with fear. The lightning strikes, and the thunder rumbles through the sky, and primitive man searches out a god to protect him. His crops fail, or his herds become diseased and die, or hunting becomes difficult, and he searches for a god to help him. He looks for a god of good power to protect and help him from the evil forces of bad power. Such was the attitude of this woman. She was driven by fear and desperation to the point of despair. She needed to find some power greater than the evil powers that had invaded and possessed her body.
Second, she heard about Jesus as a man possessing unusual power. Perhaps she had even seen him cure others. As she watched him reach forth his hand and touch the afflicted and saw that they were instantly healed, she became convinced that she must somehow plug in on this power.
Third, and perhaps the most revealing of all, her attitude says that somehow he had that power within himself. He was not calling on some god to bless the patient; he was himself the source of the power that healed.
Most of those who gathered about Jesus viewed him as a special prophet in touch with the God their people had so long worshiped -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he spoke in the synagogue, they were impressed that he spoke as one with authority. Some even thought he was the Messiah sent from God to be their great deliverer, but they never thought of him as a god.
The woman with the issue of blood, on the other hand, saw Jesus not just as a man of authority but of divine power. She certainly did not understand the complex concept of the Incarnation; yet the details given in the account do suggest that in a primitive sense, her approach toward Jesus was as if he were god-like. Her belief in the power of Jesus was at the level of magic and superstition. Nonetheless, she possessed a religious attitude that this man was more than just a man; he was a holy man of power. That is why she reasoned, if only she could get near enough to touch him, to make contact with the magical god-like power he possessed, she could be healed.
Of course this attitude is far from what the New Testament understands as faith -- even imperfect faith. Faith, in the Bible, has to do with a personal relationship between God and his people. In the Old Testament it was spoken of in terms of covenant, an agreement between God and his chosen people. This woman's attitude toward Jesus was completely and exclusively in the realm of power. There was nothing personal in her attitude toward Jesus. She did not want to know him, or follow him, or have fellowship with him. She didn't even want to be noticed by him. All she wanted was to get in close to him, get a cure, and get out as quickly as possible.
As Wallace observes, "This woman made a very serious error in her attitude to Jesus as she came up to him in the crowd. She wanted only healing and strength from him but not personal love."2
Therefore, it is necessary in the understanding of this miracle to see this woman's actions as the result not of faith, even imperfect faith, but the result of a religious attitude marked by superstition and belief in magical power.
This realization could be important for us as well, because we might come to recognize that much we identify as faith within ourselves is not faith at all but simply the same religious attitude this woman possessed concerning power. Do we want just the power of God without commitment, surrender, and involvement with Christ personally? Do we view worship and prayer as means of plugging into the source of divine power rather than personal communion with our living Lord?
If we do hold such an attitude sometimes, this miracle offers us a word of hope. For it is the story of a woman who starts out with a religious attitude of superstition but is changed by her experience with Jesus to become a woman of faith.
Her Problem
Mark begins the story with the words, "There was a woman." We could stop here and say that this woman had a problem. In the male-dominated world in which she lived, being a woman made her, at the very best, a second-class citizen. It was a culture in which every night each little Jewish lad thanked God in his prayers that he was not a girl! As Hendriksen points out, "At that time, and in that country, for a woman to speak in public was generally considered most improper."3
She was not only a woman, but she was a woman suffering from a severe bleeding for twelve long years. Scholars attempt to identify this malady as everything from a bleeding ulcer to cancer of the colon. But as Lenski indicates, "None of the evangelists says enough about her ailment so that we can determine its exact nature."4
We do know that she had gone to many doctors who had relieved her only of her money. She was not only sick but broke when she came to Jesus. And instead of getting better, each day her condition became worse.
Hendriksen sums it up, "It would seem, however, that the best answer to the question why this woman was not healed is given by the man who himself was a doctor, namely, Luke who plainly states that her illness was humanly speaking, and in the light of the therapeutic of that day, incurable" (Luke 8:43).5
On top of all this, she was religiously unclean. Barclay comments, "The real tragedy of an illness like that was that, according to the Jewish law, it made a woman unclean."6 Leviticus 15:25-27, as all the law does, spells it out very much to the point:
Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleaness of her impurity. And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening.
She could not attend the synagogue or associate with her friends and relatives. Condemned by ritual law and the priestly cult, she could touch no one and no one could touch her. She was literally cut off from all social and religious life.
In Morris West's novel, The Shoes of the Fisherman, there is an incident in which the Pope goes into the poor section of Rome incognito. He is about to enter a house where a man has just died to bring what comfort he can to the family. He is greeted at the door by a young woman who tells him he is really not needed now, for as she says, "They can cope with death. It is only living that defeats them."
This was the condition of the woman in our miracle story. Life was in the process of defeating her. So far as society was concerned, she was like one dead. And there must have been many moments when she felt it would be better if she were dead. But then things changed; she heard about Jesus.
She Heard
Mark continues his story, "She heard about Jesus." It is interesting that in each of the miracle stories, the turning point of the patient's life is the time when someone tells them about Jesus. Suddenly the helpless condition of the person in need is transfused with hope.
Many interpreters point to the determination of this lady, born out of desperation, as the most important factor in bringing her to Jesus. The text, however, supports the fact it was a word -- a word spoken to her by unnamed friends. The story that followed would never have happened without that word of witness. The implication of the story is that this woman was at the end of her rope; when she heard about Jesus, she tied a knot in that rope and decided to hold on to the possibility that he might be the answer to all her hopes and prayers.
Pearl Buck tells of a custom in China of giving to one's friends a beautifully decorated porcelain dish with a gracefully designed lid. It is filled with candy which is eaten by the receiver. But then custom demands that the dish be refilled with sweets and given as a gift to someone else. Thus the receiving of a gift makes of each friend a potential giver.
So it is with the Word. Having heard, we are made potential tellers of the Word. Thus an unending chain is formed which reaches out to touch another and another until all have heard and that chain encircles the whole earth with the glorious good news of God's grace.
How many miracles of faith never happen because we are silent and break the chain! Because we fail to share our faith, many people are condemned to live empty, desperate, and hopeless lives.
She Talked To Herself
The text states that, before the woman came to Jesus, she talked to herself. Clovis Chappell is impressed with this detail. He points out that "what we say to each other is sometimes important, but what we say to ourselves is always crucial."7 Here the woman says to herself, "If I touch just his clothes, I shall get well." To Chappell this statement is crucial, for it shows that the word is working in her life.
"If" is an open attitude that brings hope and leads to faith. By this we know that she did not doubt the word she heard, nor did she ignore it. The word was within her and it had taken root. But the full promise of the word still waited to be fulfilled. Would it grow and blossom into faith? That for Clovis Chappell was the decisive question and issue of the miracle.
However, when we note exactly what it was she said to herself, the future of her becoming a woman of faith seems not very promising. She said, "If I touch just his clothes." This indicates that even at this stage, her actions are being motivated by a religious attitude dominated by magic and superstition.
She Touched His Cloak
Embarrassed because of her unclean condition, she did not dare confront our Lord with her need. Her plan was to become lost in the crowd and when the chance presented itself to touch just the edge of his cloak. Matthew and Luke both say, "The edge of his cloak." Sometimes the words "fringe" or "hem" are used to describe this edge. Mark simply says, "His cloak."
Most scholars agree that what is intended here is to indicate she touched the "tassels" [tsitsith] which had symbolic significance.
Jesus more than likely wore a shimla which was a square cloth used as an outer robe. At each of the four corners of the shimla hung a tassel required by the ritualistic law of Deuteronomy 22:12. These tassels had a double purpose; they identified the person as a Jew to strangers and reminded the Jew who wore them of his heritage as a chosen child of God.
Lenski points out that "the Pharisees loved to make these conspicuous in order to display their compliance with the law."8
Customarily two corners of the shimla were thrown back over the shoulders so that two of the tassels hung down in the back and swung freely as the person walked. So it is easy to imagine how the woman thought she could touch just one of these tassels and make contact with the healing power of Jesus without his noticing it.
Fringe Areas Of Faith
We might pause here to indicate that many homileticians have been attracted to this specific action of the woman in touching just the fringe area of our Lord's garment. They find in this a stimulating symbol of many people today in the church who live at the "fringe areas of faith."
Back in the Middle Ages people would steal holy water from the font and bread from the altar, using these in their rites of black magic and witchcraft because of the "power" they believed these elements possessed. They conceived of this power as neutral, able to be used for good or bad purposes, to curse or to bless.
Today many preachers believe that people often confuse a religious power-attitude with faith. The worshiper thinks a kind of "holy magic" exists within the sacraments of Communion and Baptism. They are the people one theologian has referred to as "sprinkled Christians." They want the church to sprinkle them with water when they are born, with rice when they are married, and with dirt when they die.
By these ritualistic practices, these fringe-followers of Christ feel somehow they are blessed and protected from the evil forces of our world regardless of any personal involvement with the living Lord. When communion is offered, they take it as one would a prescription of medicine. It is a pill possessing the potential power of grace.
Even the Bible as a holy book can become a fetish. Many think that having a Bible in the house, displayed in a prominent place, augments their policy with "All State" and gives them added "hands" of protection.
At a revival service, one man testified that the Bible had actually saved his life. He told that his mother had given him a little copy of the New Testament when he went off to war. He always carried it in his shirt pocket over his heart. One day during battle, a piece of shrapnel hit him directly in the chest and lodged in the copy of the New Testament. He stated, "If it hadn't been for that copy of the New Testament, I would be a dead man today!"
Now that is true, but one is tempted to add that an unabridged copy of Webster's Dictionary would have given him even greater protection.
We can smile at such a story, but how many of us, if we are truly honest with ourselves, partake of the sacraments, attend services of worship, and form habits of prayer not motivated by faith as much as by a religious attitude of fear -- fear that is more akin to superstition than to faith -- fear that if we fail to do certain rituals we open ourselves up to evil forces of fate waiting to attack us.
Superstition Not All Bad
We need to remind ourselves, however, that superstition has often been the seed bed of faith. Most superstitions were born out of the realization that we are not our own masters. The realization that there are forces and powers beyond our control which shape and form our destinies directs us to look outside ourselves for help -- and this is good. The destructive counterside of faith is not religious power -- attitudes or belief in magic and superstition as much as the prideful belief in ourselves. When we think we need no outside help because we are perfectly capable of dealing with everything that confronts us, then we are in trouble. When we think we need nothing but ourselves, then we are on the road to pure secularism which is the greatest threat to possessing true faith in our contemporary world.
The person who is superstitious at least realizes that he desperately needs help from outside himself. And that can create fertile ground, receptive to the word about power coming to him from beyond himself. Superstition, with its attempt to reach beyond itself and outside itself, is a possible receptive soil for planting the seeds of a true faith in God.
Therefore, it is better to practice the rituals of worship superstitiously rather than not at all. The tragedy is that we stop at this level of belief and fail to permit religious power-attitudes to give way to faith born of a Word from God.
No Hero Of The Faith
It is safe to assume that the woman of our miracle story was no hero of the faith. Actually she was a criminal to the faith. She committed a horrible crime against the innocent bystanders and this man called Jesus.
She had pushed her way into the crowd and contaminated each person she touched. She broke serious rules of her society and her Temple. She did not know that Jesus was the Christ, the Savior of her people, but she did know that he was a good man who had helped and healed many people. However, in her selfish desire to acquire a cure for herself, she had dared to touch this holy man.
Her touch contaminated Jesus more than ritualistically. In those days it was believed that the only way a disease could be cured was for its contamination to flow into the person of another. Animals were frequently used for this purpose, as when Jesus drove the evil spirits out of the demoniac and into the swine.
Therefore, she was actually transferring her plague to the personhood of Jesus. Maybe she didn't realize the full implications of her actions; yet what her action meant was, "Better he have the plague than me." True, as many commentators stress, she was a woman of determination, but her determination was selfish and self-centered and certainly not a virtue to be emulated or admired.
Power Gone Out Of Him
The moment Jesus was touched by the woman, Mark states, "At once Jesus felt that power had gone out of him."
This detail of the story has caused great concern for scholars. How is this action to be interpreted and what is the meaning of this word "power"?
It was a popular belief in the time of Jesus that the dignity and power of a person were transferred to what he wore. The woman's desire to touch Jesus' clothing probably reflects this quasi-magical notion. But Mark states that it was Jesus who felt that power had gone out of him. What then did Jesus mean by this?
Lowrie concludes that "the fact that he (Jesus) usually effected his cures by some sort of physical contact suggests that he was conscious of a healing power going out of him."9 This would mean that every time Jesus cured a person there was this same feeling, but only in this particular case did he mention it because of the unusual nature of the healing.
Such a suggestion really creates more questions than it answers. All we can conclude from the content of the text is that somehow this woman made contact by her touch with the power Jesus possessed.
Lane suggests that Jesus possessed the power of God as the representative of the Father. However, the Father retained control of this power, even though it resided in Jesus and could be used by him in his acts of healing. Lane therefore concludes that "the healing of the woman occurred through God's free and gracious decision to bestow upon her the power which was active in Jesus. By an act of sovereign will God determined to honor the woman's faith in spite of the fact that it was tinged with ideas which bordered on magic."10
This explanation is helpful for two reasons. First, it avoids the superstitious idea that there was a nimbus of holy presence that surrounded Jesus and which mechanically and automatically cured any who stepped within its sphere.
Second, it is helpful to understand Christ's statement that it was her faith that made her well. If the faith Christ is referring to is the result of God giving his own power into her life, then we can understand why a woman who lacked any faith of her own and possessed only a religious attitude tinged with magic and superstition when she came to Jesus could come in the end of the story to possess a faith worthy to be pointed out and praised by Jesus.
Who Touched My Clothes?
When Jesus had felt that power had gone out of him, he turned around to the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" This is another much discussed detail of the story.
Most interpreters think Jesus knew all the time who had touched him. He asked simply to make the woman confess her actions publicly and openly.
Cranfield however represents those who disagree. He states, "He does not know. And he seeks information, not because he wishes to make the miracle conspicuous -- which would be inconsistent with his injunctions to secrecy -- but because he desires to draw away from his clothes to himself an imperfect faith which was seeking help apart from a personal relationship with himself."11
This would seem to be supported by Mark's use of the term "looked round about." It is a word or expression common to Mark. It is even more forceful in the Greek. It presents a suspenseful, dramatic picture of Jesus looking all around, his eyes wandering from one face to another in the crowd, until he saw the one who had done this thing.
It is a term that could appropriately be used to describe a sandlot captain of a ballgame carefully surveying all the kids standing about, deciding whom he is going to choose to be on his team. It indicates careful, deliberate scrutiny.
Panic
When the eyes of Christ fell on the woman who had just touched him and been healed, she panicked. Suddenly she realized what her cure had cost. She had committed a horrible crime and had been caught in the act. When the crowd discovered what had happened, she would certainly be stoned to death on the spot. Not only had she contaminated them -- but their beloved leader as well.
But to her complete surprise Jesus smiles upon her and says, "My daughter, your faith has made you well." Suddenly at this point in the story some amazing realizations move in upon us.
Touching Distance
First, there is the realization that Christ places himself in a position where he can be touched. Here is the self-givingness of God. Here we see the meaning of the Incarnation, that God is with us. God does not dwell in the protective sphere of heaven, inspiring prophets with proclamations and promises, sending messages about his love and concern for us. No! He enters into our lives. As John says, he "tabernacles" with us. He becomes one with us.
Vulnerable
Second, he makes himself vulnerable to us. He opens himself to us so that we, like the woman with the issue of blood, can touch him with our sins and let the contamination which marks our being flow into himself, thereby freeing us from sin and death.
In this story of the woman cured by our Lord, we can see a foretaste of Calvary, where Jesus goes to a cross and opens his body up to take unto himself our sins, working for us a total cure that makes us whole, alive sons and daughters of the living God. The only way we can be cured is for someone to take our infirmities upon himself and suffer for us. This God is not only willing to do -- but has done for us.
Sensitivity
Third, we see in this story God's great sensitivity. The Greek words used to describe the setting indicate that Jesus was literally almost suffocated by the crowd. People were pushing in so closely upon him that he could hardly breathe. Yet in the pushing, demanding, shoving mass of humanity, he felt the touch -- the touch of one woman in need.
Sometimes when we wonder if God can care for us in such a gigantic universe of pressing needs, when we wonder if our needs are really important to God, we must remember this miracle story. Many people made contact with him that day, but he felt the delicate touch of that one little woman and responded to it.
Sandwich Miracle
The disciples, on the other hand, were not so sensitive. When they heard their master asking, "Who touched me?" the disciples answered, "You see that people are crowding you; why do you ask who touched you?" The tone of the disciples' question indicated they were anxious for Jesus to move on to the important task of curing the daughter of the local synagogue official who was a rich and powerful man.
This miracle is often called a "Sandwich Miracle" because it appears in the center of another miracle. Jairus, a leader of the community and a man with much "clout," had come to throw himself down at the feet of Jesus and beg that his sick daughter might be healed.
The disciples had been pleased and impressed. They had suffered much abuse from their friends for having left all to follow this itinerate preacher who had no respected position either in the religious or social community. Now an important personage of the town had prostrated himself before their leader. The disciples loved it. They couldn't wait to see their Lord and leader cure this important man's daughter. Then they could say to their friends, "See. I told you so. Our Master is also a man of much clout!"
But Jesus paused. He interrupted this important mission to deal with an untouchable woman's needs.
Interruption
The fact that the disciples considered this healing of the woman with the issue of blood a distasteful interruption is understandable. However, they should not have been surprised by it. Again and again during his earthly ministry, Christ was interrupted by human needs, and each time he responded.
Hendriksen is impressed with the fact that none of these intrusions ever floored Jesus so that for the moment he was at a loss what to do or say. What the disciples called an interruption became for Jesus "a springboard or take off point for the utterance of a great saying, or, as here, for the performance of a marvelous deed, revealing his power, wisdom, and love."12
For our Lord, interruptions were tranformed into golden opportunities. Christ looked upon this woman and saw in her superstitious attitude the opportunity to create a great faith.
Tschaikowsky's Andante Cantabile is one of the loveliest of his compositions. On a summer vacation, Tschaikowsky heard a Russian baker singing a popular song which began, "Vanya sat on the divan and smoked a pipe of tobacco." That is what this gifted artist started with. He saw the possibilities in the ordinary and miraculously transformed it into this great musical classic, Andante Cantabile.
So Christ with his great sensitivity felt the touch of a superstitious woman in need and recognized an opportunity to create within her great faith.
Is our sensitivity sometimes blunted when we are engaged in what we think is really important for the clout of our church in the community, so that we neglect and overlook the big needs of little people, viewing their touch as an interruption? Not so with our Lord. Responding to the request of an important official of the synagogue, he still had the time and the sensitivity to pause and help out this little woman with her big need.
The Whole Truth
Christ responded to the touch of this lady by reaching out and touching her to make her whole.
Chadwick is impressed by the fact that Jesus deals gently with this woman. He comments, "This enfeebled and emaciated woman was allowed to feel in her body that she was healed of her plague, before she was called upon for her confession."13
It is important that her confession followed her cure. She did not come to Jesus, as others had, begging for help. She sang no litany as she entered into this encounter with the Lord. She came as a secret sinner. The only thing she brought to Christ was her disease and an unexpressed desire to be well. The decisive issue of this story is therefore not what she brought to Jesus but what he gave to her.
William Kelly, writing to this point, says, "But even conscious assurance is not enough for the grace of God. She had stolen, as it were, the blessing; she must have it a free and full gift from the Lord, face to face."14
This is the gospel. She brings nothing. Christ gives her everything. He not only heals her; he makes her whole.
Three Important Terms
The miracle story ends with Jesus saying to the woman, "My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed from your trouble." Three terms concern us in this statement: "My daughter," "your faith," and "Go in peace."
My Daughter
Seldom in the New Testament does Jesus use such a personal form of address. So when he does, we can assume there is a reason for it.
Hendriksen believes that "by means of these cheering words Jesus also opened the way for the woman's complete reinstatement in the social and religious life and fellowship of her people."15
This would suggest Jesus used the term "my daughter" for the sake of the bystanders who were looking on. However, when we consider the shock which this woman must have suffered at being publicly exposed, it would seem that our Lord's use of the term was a means of indicating his love and concern for her.
Mark says, "The woman realized what had happened to her; so she came, trembling with fear, and fell at his feet and told him the whole truth." In the light of this traumatic confession, the words of Jesus, "My daughter," were words of absolution spoken to her. By this Jesus was saying, "I forgive you."
This is an exciting insight into the meaning of forgiveness. Often we tend to think of forgiveness as the blotting out of sins, the erasing of past deeds, like taking a cloth and wiping the marks from a chalkboard, or stamping across an account, "Paid in Full."
Forgiveness is that, but it is so much more. It is the re-establishment of a relationship. Jesus says, "My daughter," and by this he indicates to her and to us that forgiveness makes of us true sons and daughters of God our Father.
Some liturgical scholars argue that the act which occurs within the Service of Confession should not be referred to as "Absolution" but "The Declaration of Grace." And this is the point made in our miracle story.
To absolve is to do away with something. Webster defines absolve as "to free from penalty," or "release from an obligation."
A "Declaration of Grace," however, is not doing away with something but the bestowing of something. It is not a debt canceled, but a gift given. True, forgiveness involves both, but the positive aspect of forgiveness as the gift of a new relationship is frequently neglected or at least underplayed.
When Jesus says to this woman, "My daughter," he is speaking to us. He is saying the same thing he once said to the person who asked him about his mother and his brothers. "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" Then Jesus pointed to his disciples saying, "Look! Here are my mother and my brothers! For the person who does what my Father in heaven wants him to do is my brother, my sister, and my mother" (Matthew 12:48, 49).
Thus the first term, "My daughter," leads us to the important fact that, because Christ establishes this new relationship between us and God, we can now have faith.
Your Faith
The phrase "your faith" causes all kinds of trouble for the student of this miracle story. It is frequently used to encourage people to develop by their own sheer force of will power greater faith. "Believe strongly enough and you can accomplish anything you desire." Faith healers shout forth in their meetings, "You can be healed, if only you believe!" However, the text does not assume or justify such faith-formulas of instantaneous healing on the basis of a believer's effort.
Rawlinson expresses the opinion of most scholars when he writes, "The Lord, in any case, does not describe the cure as a case of 'faith-healing' in the modern sense, as though this woman had been cured because she believed she was cured. For him, as for her, the cure is the work of God."16
It is helpful in understanding this approach to realize that the term "your faith" should not be taken in the possessive sense but in the locative sense. Christ with this statement is identifying what had happened in her. God had been at work in her.
She had been chosen and confronted by the Father as she stood in the presence of Jesus. God had entered into her and had given her the power of healing, and this act was the act of faith. In this encounter with God the Father, she had been made well. Her faith was not something she brought to Jesus, but it was something God had given her when she came into the presence of Jesus.
We have established the biblical understanding of the word "faith" as relationship -- a personal relationship with God. Jesus locates this relationship as occurring first within the heart, which means the center and innermost being of a person. For Jesus the heart is like a cup. It is never empty. It is either filled up with the love of self, or the personal presence of the living God, the spirit of God. To possess faith is literally to be possessed by God. To have faith is to have a heart filled to the brim with God's presence and power.
Faith, in the New Testament, is a personal relationship existing between a person and God. It is a God-possessed heart and life that is a gift from God. Faith is not an activity of human effort. It is just the opposite. It is, so far as a person is concerned, a state of human passivity, surrendering to a God who desires to possess us and establish a relationship with us. Faith is God's action in us.
Speaking of Jesus' response to this woman, Lenski writes, "When faith is praised highly it is because of the contents of faith."17 That hits the nail squarely on the head. Faith is to be thought of as the "contents" of our hearts. When God enters in and fills us with himself, then we are people who possess faith.
Go In Peace
Rawlinson, referring to the term "Go in peace," comments, "The phrase is not a mere formula of dismissal, but a word of reassurance that all is well. Henceforward there will be no recurrence of her malady."18
Rawlinson is right in his observation that this phrase is more than a formula of dismissal, but he does not say enough. It is so much more than just a reassurance that there will be no recurrence of the disease. The phrase "Go in peace" is a statement of new beginnings. This woman was not being restored to her old life before she contracted the disease which plagued her. She was entering into a new and better life than she had ever known before. She was beginning a life of fellowship with God.
Saint Veronica
The story of this woman has stimulated the imagination of many of the early church fathers. Men like Ambrose, Jerome, Hilary, and others gave her the name of Veronica from Paneas. In the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus (Chapter 5, verse 26), this woman with the issue of blood is also identified as Veronica.
In the tradition of the church, Saint Veronica is the woman who on the road to Calvary came forth from the crowds that lined the streets and wiped the perspiration from the face of our Lord as he labored under the weight of the cross. Tradition says that when she withdrew the towel, the sweat of Christ had left an indelible image of our Savior's face upon the towel.
Gabriel Max has immortalized this tradition in his fascinating painting of Veronica's Veil, copies of which hang in many a pastor's study. With his artistic skill, Max has painted the eyes of Jesus so that at first glance they seem closed, but as one continues to look at the eyes, they open and Christ is staring directly into the observer's eyes.
Even if we have never seen Gabriel Max's painting, a meditative consideration of this miracle story and the tradition of Veronica's Veil can conjure up in our imaginations magnificent pictures of our own. The woman who once touched the hem of his garment and came to know the self-giving, sacrificial love, and sensitivity of Christ for her problem, the woman who was healed by this experience and was given a new chance to live again, this woman now mops the bitter perspiration from the brow of that same young man on his way to the cross.
He who had given this woman new life was about to die. And in his dying he was to give her and us an even greater life. He who once stopped the flow of blood from this woman's body in order to heal her, must not now stop the flow of blood from his own body in order to heal us all.
The story of the woman who was healed of an issue of blood is a great miracle. But the greatest miracle of all is the unstopped issue of blood that flowed from the body of God's Son and our Savior as he hung crucified for and by our sins. This miracle alone can heal and give us life today.
____________
1. Ronald S. Wallace, The Gospel Miracles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960), p. 81.
2. Ibid., p. 86.
3. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Mark, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1975), p. 209.
4. R. C. H. Lenski, The Gospel Selections of the Ancient Church (Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1936), p. 927.
5. Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 205.
6. William Barclay, And He Had Compassion (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1975), p. 47.
7. Clovis Chappell, Sermons from the Miracles (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1937), p. 155.
8. Lenski, op. cit., p. 928.
9. Walter Lowrie, Jesus According to St. Mark (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1929), p. 189.
10. William L. Lane, The Gospel According to St. Mark (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974), p. 193.
11. C. F. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 185.
12. Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 204.
13. G. A. Chadwick, The Gospel According to St. Mark (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1893), p. 155.
14. William Kelley, An Exposition of the Gospel of Mark (Pennsylvania: Believers Bookshelf, 1971), p. 75.
15. Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 210.
16. A. E. J. Rawlinson, St. Mark (London: Methuen and Company, Ltd., 1942), p. 69.
17. Lenski, op. cit., p. 929.
18. Rawlinson, op. cit., p. 69.
Pick up the morning newspaper and you are certain to be confronted by another crime committed. And it seems that one crime is more bizarre than the other. The miracle we now consider is an account of a strange and unusual crime. It is the story of a woman who attempted to steal a miracle.
In many ways, this woman was like the leper who was cured and sent to the priest. Both were untouchables and lived lonely, desperate lives. Just as today our lives are controlled by computers and their printouts, so in the days of our Lord people's lives were controlled by the holy Law. And under this law the woman with an issue of blood, as well as the leper, was forbidden to mingle with people in public places. So they both broke the law by entering into the gathering that surrounded Jesus.
However, they solved their problems in vastly different ways. The leper stormed the kingdom with violence. This woman eased her way into the kingdom unnoticed. She was quiet and secretive. But then she could be, for her disease, unlike leprosy, was not outwardly apparent. If the people had known about her affliction, they would have avoided her as they did the leper.
Her plan was simple. She would hide herself in the crowd, and when no one was looking, she would touch just the fringe of his garment, steal a little bit of his power, just enough to be healed, and then withdraw from the crowd as she had entered it, quietly and secretively. Part of her plan worked. But she was caught and exposed. To her surprise, and to ours, she was not punished for her assault on the personhood of Jesus, but she was declared to be a woman of faith. And therein we find the plot of our story and the message it proclaims.
Religious Attitude Or Faith
Before we consider the details of this miracle, we need to come to terms with the meaning and use of the word "faith." Commentators and interpreters, all through their discussions of this miracle, refer to the "faith" of this woman. They point out that it is an immature faith, a faith based on superstition and belief in magical powers. Their use of the term "faith" can be misleading. The mind-set of this woman at the beginning of the story is far from what the New Testament means when it talks about faith. It will be much more helpful for our discussion of this miracle to refer to the religious attitude of this woman when she came to Jesus rather than her faith.
Wallace, in describing the scene that day when the miracle happened, pictures thronging crowds that crushed in upon Jesus. Many who pushed in on him had troubles and problems almost as serious as the woman's, but as Wallace observes, "This woman alone had the attitude toward Jesus which enabled him to meet her personal need."1 She of all the people in the crowd "touched" Jesus. Not just physically, but in a far more profound sense. As Saint Augustine puts it, "Many thronged him, one touched him."
What was this religious attitude she exhibited toward Jesus? First, it was an attitude of fear. And much of what we call religion begins with fear. The lightning strikes, and the thunder rumbles through the sky, and primitive man searches out a god to protect him. His crops fail, or his herds become diseased and die, or hunting becomes difficult, and he searches for a god to help him. He looks for a god of good power to protect and help him from the evil forces of bad power. Such was the attitude of this woman. She was driven by fear and desperation to the point of despair. She needed to find some power greater than the evil powers that had invaded and possessed her body.
Second, she heard about Jesus as a man possessing unusual power. Perhaps she had even seen him cure others. As she watched him reach forth his hand and touch the afflicted and saw that they were instantly healed, she became convinced that she must somehow plug in on this power.
Third, and perhaps the most revealing of all, her attitude says that somehow he had that power within himself. He was not calling on some god to bless the patient; he was himself the source of the power that healed.
Most of those who gathered about Jesus viewed him as a special prophet in touch with the God their people had so long worshiped -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he spoke in the synagogue, they were impressed that he spoke as one with authority. Some even thought he was the Messiah sent from God to be their great deliverer, but they never thought of him as a god.
The woman with the issue of blood, on the other hand, saw Jesus not just as a man of authority but of divine power. She certainly did not understand the complex concept of the Incarnation; yet the details given in the account do suggest that in a primitive sense, her approach toward Jesus was as if he were god-like. Her belief in the power of Jesus was at the level of magic and superstition. Nonetheless, she possessed a religious attitude that this man was more than just a man; he was a holy man of power. That is why she reasoned, if only she could get near enough to touch him, to make contact with the magical god-like power he possessed, she could be healed.
Of course this attitude is far from what the New Testament understands as faith -- even imperfect faith. Faith, in the Bible, has to do with a personal relationship between God and his people. In the Old Testament it was spoken of in terms of covenant, an agreement between God and his chosen people. This woman's attitude toward Jesus was completely and exclusively in the realm of power. There was nothing personal in her attitude toward Jesus. She did not want to know him, or follow him, or have fellowship with him. She didn't even want to be noticed by him. All she wanted was to get in close to him, get a cure, and get out as quickly as possible.
As Wallace observes, "This woman made a very serious error in her attitude to Jesus as she came up to him in the crowd. She wanted only healing and strength from him but not personal love."2
Therefore, it is necessary in the understanding of this miracle to see this woman's actions as the result not of faith, even imperfect faith, but the result of a religious attitude marked by superstition and belief in magical power.
This realization could be important for us as well, because we might come to recognize that much we identify as faith within ourselves is not faith at all but simply the same religious attitude this woman possessed concerning power. Do we want just the power of God without commitment, surrender, and involvement with Christ personally? Do we view worship and prayer as means of plugging into the source of divine power rather than personal communion with our living Lord?
If we do hold such an attitude sometimes, this miracle offers us a word of hope. For it is the story of a woman who starts out with a religious attitude of superstition but is changed by her experience with Jesus to become a woman of faith.
Her Problem
Mark begins the story with the words, "There was a woman." We could stop here and say that this woman had a problem. In the male-dominated world in which she lived, being a woman made her, at the very best, a second-class citizen. It was a culture in which every night each little Jewish lad thanked God in his prayers that he was not a girl! As Hendriksen points out, "At that time, and in that country, for a woman to speak in public was generally considered most improper."3
She was not only a woman, but she was a woman suffering from a severe bleeding for twelve long years. Scholars attempt to identify this malady as everything from a bleeding ulcer to cancer of the colon. But as Lenski indicates, "None of the evangelists says enough about her ailment so that we can determine its exact nature."4
We do know that she had gone to many doctors who had relieved her only of her money. She was not only sick but broke when she came to Jesus. And instead of getting better, each day her condition became worse.
Hendriksen sums it up, "It would seem, however, that the best answer to the question why this woman was not healed is given by the man who himself was a doctor, namely, Luke who plainly states that her illness was humanly speaking, and in the light of the therapeutic of that day, incurable" (Luke 8:43).5
On top of all this, she was religiously unclean. Barclay comments, "The real tragedy of an illness like that was that, according to the Jewish law, it made a woman unclean."6 Leviticus 15:25-27, as all the law does, spells it out very much to the point:
Every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge, shall be to her as the bed of her impurity; and everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleaness of her impurity. And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the evening.
She could not attend the synagogue or associate with her friends and relatives. Condemned by ritual law and the priestly cult, she could touch no one and no one could touch her. She was literally cut off from all social and religious life.
In Morris West's novel, The Shoes of the Fisherman, there is an incident in which the Pope goes into the poor section of Rome incognito. He is about to enter a house where a man has just died to bring what comfort he can to the family. He is greeted at the door by a young woman who tells him he is really not needed now, for as she says, "They can cope with death. It is only living that defeats them."
This was the condition of the woman in our miracle story. Life was in the process of defeating her. So far as society was concerned, she was like one dead. And there must have been many moments when she felt it would be better if she were dead. But then things changed; she heard about Jesus.
She Heard
Mark continues his story, "She heard about Jesus." It is interesting that in each of the miracle stories, the turning point of the patient's life is the time when someone tells them about Jesus. Suddenly the helpless condition of the person in need is transfused with hope.
Many interpreters point to the determination of this lady, born out of desperation, as the most important factor in bringing her to Jesus. The text, however, supports the fact it was a word -- a word spoken to her by unnamed friends. The story that followed would never have happened without that word of witness. The implication of the story is that this woman was at the end of her rope; when she heard about Jesus, she tied a knot in that rope and decided to hold on to the possibility that he might be the answer to all her hopes and prayers.
Pearl Buck tells of a custom in China of giving to one's friends a beautifully decorated porcelain dish with a gracefully designed lid. It is filled with candy which is eaten by the receiver. But then custom demands that the dish be refilled with sweets and given as a gift to someone else. Thus the receiving of a gift makes of each friend a potential giver.
So it is with the Word. Having heard, we are made potential tellers of the Word. Thus an unending chain is formed which reaches out to touch another and another until all have heard and that chain encircles the whole earth with the glorious good news of God's grace.
How many miracles of faith never happen because we are silent and break the chain! Because we fail to share our faith, many people are condemned to live empty, desperate, and hopeless lives.
She Talked To Herself
The text states that, before the woman came to Jesus, she talked to herself. Clovis Chappell is impressed with this detail. He points out that "what we say to each other is sometimes important, but what we say to ourselves is always crucial."7 Here the woman says to herself, "If I touch just his clothes, I shall get well." To Chappell this statement is crucial, for it shows that the word is working in her life.
"If" is an open attitude that brings hope and leads to faith. By this we know that she did not doubt the word she heard, nor did she ignore it. The word was within her and it had taken root. But the full promise of the word still waited to be fulfilled. Would it grow and blossom into faith? That for Clovis Chappell was the decisive question and issue of the miracle.
However, when we note exactly what it was she said to herself, the future of her becoming a woman of faith seems not very promising. She said, "If I touch just his clothes." This indicates that even at this stage, her actions are being motivated by a religious attitude dominated by magic and superstition.
She Touched His Cloak
Embarrassed because of her unclean condition, she did not dare confront our Lord with her need. Her plan was to become lost in the crowd and when the chance presented itself to touch just the edge of his cloak. Matthew and Luke both say, "The edge of his cloak." Sometimes the words "fringe" or "hem" are used to describe this edge. Mark simply says, "His cloak."
Most scholars agree that what is intended here is to indicate she touched the "tassels" [tsitsith] which had symbolic significance.
Jesus more than likely wore a shimla which was a square cloth used as an outer robe. At each of the four corners of the shimla hung a tassel required by the ritualistic law of Deuteronomy 22:12. These tassels had a double purpose; they identified the person as a Jew to strangers and reminded the Jew who wore them of his heritage as a chosen child of God.
Lenski points out that "the Pharisees loved to make these conspicuous in order to display their compliance with the law."8
Customarily two corners of the shimla were thrown back over the shoulders so that two of the tassels hung down in the back and swung freely as the person walked. So it is easy to imagine how the woman thought she could touch just one of these tassels and make contact with the healing power of Jesus without his noticing it.
Fringe Areas Of Faith
We might pause here to indicate that many homileticians have been attracted to this specific action of the woman in touching just the fringe area of our Lord's garment. They find in this a stimulating symbol of many people today in the church who live at the "fringe areas of faith."
Back in the Middle Ages people would steal holy water from the font and bread from the altar, using these in their rites of black magic and witchcraft because of the "power" they believed these elements possessed. They conceived of this power as neutral, able to be used for good or bad purposes, to curse or to bless.
Today many preachers believe that people often confuse a religious power-attitude with faith. The worshiper thinks a kind of "holy magic" exists within the sacraments of Communion and Baptism. They are the people one theologian has referred to as "sprinkled Christians." They want the church to sprinkle them with water when they are born, with rice when they are married, and with dirt when they die.
By these ritualistic practices, these fringe-followers of Christ feel somehow they are blessed and protected from the evil forces of our world regardless of any personal involvement with the living Lord. When communion is offered, they take it as one would a prescription of medicine. It is a pill possessing the potential power of grace.
Even the Bible as a holy book can become a fetish. Many think that having a Bible in the house, displayed in a prominent place, augments their policy with "All State" and gives them added "hands" of protection.
At a revival service, one man testified that the Bible had actually saved his life. He told that his mother had given him a little copy of the New Testament when he went off to war. He always carried it in his shirt pocket over his heart. One day during battle, a piece of shrapnel hit him directly in the chest and lodged in the copy of the New Testament. He stated, "If it hadn't been for that copy of the New Testament, I would be a dead man today!"
Now that is true, but one is tempted to add that an unabridged copy of Webster's Dictionary would have given him even greater protection.
We can smile at such a story, but how many of us, if we are truly honest with ourselves, partake of the sacraments, attend services of worship, and form habits of prayer not motivated by faith as much as by a religious attitude of fear -- fear that is more akin to superstition than to faith -- fear that if we fail to do certain rituals we open ourselves up to evil forces of fate waiting to attack us.
Superstition Not All Bad
We need to remind ourselves, however, that superstition has often been the seed bed of faith. Most superstitions were born out of the realization that we are not our own masters. The realization that there are forces and powers beyond our control which shape and form our destinies directs us to look outside ourselves for help -- and this is good. The destructive counterside of faith is not religious power -- attitudes or belief in magic and superstition as much as the prideful belief in ourselves. When we think we need no outside help because we are perfectly capable of dealing with everything that confronts us, then we are in trouble. When we think we need nothing but ourselves, then we are on the road to pure secularism which is the greatest threat to possessing true faith in our contemporary world.
The person who is superstitious at least realizes that he desperately needs help from outside himself. And that can create fertile ground, receptive to the word about power coming to him from beyond himself. Superstition, with its attempt to reach beyond itself and outside itself, is a possible receptive soil for planting the seeds of a true faith in God.
Therefore, it is better to practice the rituals of worship superstitiously rather than not at all. The tragedy is that we stop at this level of belief and fail to permit religious power-attitudes to give way to faith born of a Word from God.
No Hero Of The Faith
It is safe to assume that the woman of our miracle story was no hero of the faith. Actually she was a criminal to the faith. She committed a horrible crime against the innocent bystanders and this man called Jesus.
She had pushed her way into the crowd and contaminated each person she touched. She broke serious rules of her society and her Temple. She did not know that Jesus was the Christ, the Savior of her people, but she did know that he was a good man who had helped and healed many people. However, in her selfish desire to acquire a cure for herself, she had dared to touch this holy man.
Her touch contaminated Jesus more than ritualistically. In those days it was believed that the only way a disease could be cured was for its contamination to flow into the person of another. Animals were frequently used for this purpose, as when Jesus drove the evil spirits out of the demoniac and into the swine.
Therefore, she was actually transferring her plague to the personhood of Jesus. Maybe she didn't realize the full implications of her actions; yet what her action meant was, "Better he have the plague than me." True, as many commentators stress, she was a woman of determination, but her determination was selfish and self-centered and certainly not a virtue to be emulated or admired.
Power Gone Out Of Him
The moment Jesus was touched by the woman, Mark states, "At once Jesus felt that power had gone out of him."
This detail of the story has caused great concern for scholars. How is this action to be interpreted and what is the meaning of this word "power"?
It was a popular belief in the time of Jesus that the dignity and power of a person were transferred to what he wore. The woman's desire to touch Jesus' clothing probably reflects this quasi-magical notion. But Mark states that it was Jesus who felt that power had gone out of him. What then did Jesus mean by this?
Lowrie concludes that "the fact that he (Jesus) usually effected his cures by some sort of physical contact suggests that he was conscious of a healing power going out of him."9 This would mean that every time Jesus cured a person there was this same feeling, but only in this particular case did he mention it because of the unusual nature of the healing.
Such a suggestion really creates more questions than it answers. All we can conclude from the content of the text is that somehow this woman made contact by her touch with the power Jesus possessed.
Lane suggests that Jesus possessed the power of God as the representative of the Father. However, the Father retained control of this power, even though it resided in Jesus and could be used by him in his acts of healing. Lane therefore concludes that "the healing of the woman occurred through God's free and gracious decision to bestow upon her the power which was active in Jesus. By an act of sovereign will God determined to honor the woman's faith in spite of the fact that it was tinged with ideas which bordered on magic."10
This explanation is helpful for two reasons. First, it avoids the superstitious idea that there was a nimbus of holy presence that surrounded Jesus and which mechanically and automatically cured any who stepped within its sphere.
Second, it is helpful to understand Christ's statement that it was her faith that made her well. If the faith Christ is referring to is the result of God giving his own power into her life, then we can understand why a woman who lacked any faith of her own and possessed only a religious attitude tinged with magic and superstition when she came to Jesus could come in the end of the story to possess a faith worthy to be pointed out and praised by Jesus.
Who Touched My Clothes?
When Jesus had felt that power had gone out of him, he turned around to the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" This is another much discussed detail of the story.
Most interpreters think Jesus knew all the time who had touched him. He asked simply to make the woman confess her actions publicly and openly.
Cranfield however represents those who disagree. He states, "He does not know. And he seeks information, not because he wishes to make the miracle conspicuous -- which would be inconsistent with his injunctions to secrecy -- but because he desires to draw away from his clothes to himself an imperfect faith which was seeking help apart from a personal relationship with himself."11
This would seem to be supported by Mark's use of the term "looked round about." It is a word or expression common to Mark. It is even more forceful in the Greek. It presents a suspenseful, dramatic picture of Jesus looking all around, his eyes wandering from one face to another in the crowd, until he saw the one who had done this thing.
It is a term that could appropriately be used to describe a sandlot captain of a ballgame carefully surveying all the kids standing about, deciding whom he is going to choose to be on his team. It indicates careful, deliberate scrutiny.
Panic
When the eyes of Christ fell on the woman who had just touched him and been healed, she panicked. Suddenly she realized what her cure had cost. She had committed a horrible crime and had been caught in the act. When the crowd discovered what had happened, she would certainly be stoned to death on the spot. Not only had she contaminated them -- but their beloved leader as well.
But to her complete surprise Jesus smiles upon her and says, "My daughter, your faith has made you well." Suddenly at this point in the story some amazing realizations move in upon us.
Touching Distance
First, there is the realization that Christ places himself in a position where he can be touched. Here is the self-givingness of God. Here we see the meaning of the Incarnation, that God is with us. God does not dwell in the protective sphere of heaven, inspiring prophets with proclamations and promises, sending messages about his love and concern for us. No! He enters into our lives. As John says, he "tabernacles" with us. He becomes one with us.
Vulnerable
Second, he makes himself vulnerable to us. He opens himself to us so that we, like the woman with the issue of blood, can touch him with our sins and let the contamination which marks our being flow into himself, thereby freeing us from sin and death.
In this story of the woman cured by our Lord, we can see a foretaste of Calvary, where Jesus goes to a cross and opens his body up to take unto himself our sins, working for us a total cure that makes us whole, alive sons and daughters of the living God. The only way we can be cured is for someone to take our infirmities upon himself and suffer for us. This God is not only willing to do -- but has done for us.
Sensitivity
Third, we see in this story God's great sensitivity. The Greek words used to describe the setting indicate that Jesus was literally almost suffocated by the crowd. People were pushing in so closely upon him that he could hardly breathe. Yet in the pushing, demanding, shoving mass of humanity, he felt the touch -- the touch of one woman in need.
Sometimes when we wonder if God can care for us in such a gigantic universe of pressing needs, when we wonder if our needs are really important to God, we must remember this miracle story. Many people made contact with him that day, but he felt the delicate touch of that one little woman and responded to it.
Sandwich Miracle
The disciples, on the other hand, were not so sensitive. When they heard their master asking, "Who touched me?" the disciples answered, "You see that people are crowding you; why do you ask who touched you?" The tone of the disciples' question indicated they were anxious for Jesus to move on to the important task of curing the daughter of the local synagogue official who was a rich and powerful man.
This miracle is often called a "Sandwich Miracle" because it appears in the center of another miracle. Jairus, a leader of the community and a man with much "clout," had come to throw himself down at the feet of Jesus and beg that his sick daughter might be healed.
The disciples had been pleased and impressed. They had suffered much abuse from their friends for having left all to follow this itinerate preacher who had no respected position either in the religious or social community. Now an important personage of the town had prostrated himself before their leader. The disciples loved it. They couldn't wait to see their Lord and leader cure this important man's daughter. Then they could say to their friends, "See. I told you so. Our Master is also a man of much clout!"
But Jesus paused. He interrupted this important mission to deal with an untouchable woman's needs.
Interruption
The fact that the disciples considered this healing of the woman with the issue of blood a distasteful interruption is understandable. However, they should not have been surprised by it. Again and again during his earthly ministry, Christ was interrupted by human needs, and each time he responded.
Hendriksen is impressed with the fact that none of these intrusions ever floored Jesus so that for the moment he was at a loss what to do or say. What the disciples called an interruption became for Jesus "a springboard or take off point for the utterance of a great saying, or, as here, for the performance of a marvelous deed, revealing his power, wisdom, and love."12
For our Lord, interruptions were tranformed into golden opportunities. Christ looked upon this woman and saw in her superstitious attitude the opportunity to create a great faith.
Tschaikowsky's Andante Cantabile is one of the loveliest of his compositions. On a summer vacation, Tschaikowsky heard a Russian baker singing a popular song which began, "Vanya sat on the divan and smoked a pipe of tobacco." That is what this gifted artist started with. He saw the possibilities in the ordinary and miraculously transformed it into this great musical classic, Andante Cantabile.
So Christ with his great sensitivity felt the touch of a superstitious woman in need and recognized an opportunity to create within her great faith.
Is our sensitivity sometimes blunted when we are engaged in what we think is really important for the clout of our church in the community, so that we neglect and overlook the big needs of little people, viewing their touch as an interruption? Not so with our Lord. Responding to the request of an important official of the synagogue, he still had the time and the sensitivity to pause and help out this little woman with her big need.
The Whole Truth
Christ responded to the touch of this lady by reaching out and touching her to make her whole.
Chadwick is impressed by the fact that Jesus deals gently with this woman. He comments, "This enfeebled and emaciated woman was allowed to feel in her body that she was healed of her plague, before she was called upon for her confession."13
It is important that her confession followed her cure. She did not come to Jesus, as others had, begging for help. She sang no litany as she entered into this encounter with the Lord. She came as a secret sinner. The only thing she brought to Christ was her disease and an unexpressed desire to be well. The decisive issue of this story is therefore not what she brought to Jesus but what he gave to her.
William Kelly, writing to this point, says, "But even conscious assurance is not enough for the grace of God. She had stolen, as it were, the blessing; she must have it a free and full gift from the Lord, face to face."14
This is the gospel. She brings nothing. Christ gives her everything. He not only heals her; he makes her whole.
Three Important Terms
The miracle story ends with Jesus saying to the woman, "My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed from your trouble." Three terms concern us in this statement: "My daughter," "your faith," and "Go in peace."
My Daughter
Seldom in the New Testament does Jesus use such a personal form of address. So when he does, we can assume there is a reason for it.
Hendriksen believes that "by means of these cheering words Jesus also opened the way for the woman's complete reinstatement in the social and religious life and fellowship of her people."15
This would suggest Jesus used the term "my daughter" for the sake of the bystanders who were looking on. However, when we consider the shock which this woman must have suffered at being publicly exposed, it would seem that our Lord's use of the term was a means of indicating his love and concern for her.
Mark says, "The woman realized what had happened to her; so she came, trembling with fear, and fell at his feet and told him the whole truth." In the light of this traumatic confession, the words of Jesus, "My daughter," were words of absolution spoken to her. By this Jesus was saying, "I forgive you."
This is an exciting insight into the meaning of forgiveness. Often we tend to think of forgiveness as the blotting out of sins, the erasing of past deeds, like taking a cloth and wiping the marks from a chalkboard, or stamping across an account, "Paid in Full."
Forgiveness is that, but it is so much more. It is the re-establishment of a relationship. Jesus says, "My daughter," and by this he indicates to her and to us that forgiveness makes of us true sons and daughters of God our Father.
Some liturgical scholars argue that the act which occurs within the Service of Confession should not be referred to as "Absolution" but "The Declaration of Grace." And this is the point made in our miracle story.
To absolve is to do away with something. Webster defines absolve as "to free from penalty," or "release from an obligation."
A "Declaration of Grace," however, is not doing away with something but the bestowing of something. It is not a debt canceled, but a gift given. True, forgiveness involves both, but the positive aspect of forgiveness as the gift of a new relationship is frequently neglected or at least underplayed.
When Jesus says to this woman, "My daughter," he is speaking to us. He is saying the same thing he once said to the person who asked him about his mother and his brothers. "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" Then Jesus pointed to his disciples saying, "Look! Here are my mother and my brothers! For the person who does what my Father in heaven wants him to do is my brother, my sister, and my mother" (Matthew 12:48, 49).
Thus the first term, "My daughter," leads us to the important fact that, because Christ establishes this new relationship between us and God, we can now have faith.
Your Faith
The phrase "your faith" causes all kinds of trouble for the student of this miracle story. It is frequently used to encourage people to develop by their own sheer force of will power greater faith. "Believe strongly enough and you can accomplish anything you desire." Faith healers shout forth in their meetings, "You can be healed, if only you believe!" However, the text does not assume or justify such faith-formulas of instantaneous healing on the basis of a believer's effort.
Rawlinson expresses the opinion of most scholars when he writes, "The Lord, in any case, does not describe the cure as a case of 'faith-healing' in the modern sense, as though this woman had been cured because she believed she was cured. For him, as for her, the cure is the work of God."16
It is helpful in understanding this approach to realize that the term "your faith" should not be taken in the possessive sense but in the locative sense. Christ with this statement is identifying what had happened in her. God had been at work in her.
She had been chosen and confronted by the Father as she stood in the presence of Jesus. God had entered into her and had given her the power of healing, and this act was the act of faith. In this encounter with God the Father, she had been made well. Her faith was not something she brought to Jesus, but it was something God had given her when she came into the presence of Jesus.
We have established the biblical understanding of the word "faith" as relationship -- a personal relationship with God. Jesus locates this relationship as occurring first within the heart, which means the center and innermost being of a person. For Jesus the heart is like a cup. It is never empty. It is either filled up with the love of self, or the personal presence of the living God, the spirit of God. To possess faith is literally to be possessed by God. To have faith is to have a heart filled to the brim with God's presence and power.
Faith, in the New Testament, is a personal relationship existing between a person and God. It is a God-possessed heart and life that is a gift from God. Faith is not an activity of human effort. It is just the opposite. It is, so far as a person is concerned, a state of human passivity, surrendering to a God who desires to possess us and establish a relationship with us. Faith is God's action in us.
Speaking of Jesus' response to this woman, Lenski writes, "When faith is praised highly it is because of the contents of faith."17 That hits the nail squarely on the head. Faith is to be thought of as the "contents" of our hearts. When God enters in and fills us with himself, then we are people who possess faith.
Go In Peace
Rawlinson, referring to the term "Go in peace," comments, "The phrase is not a mere formula of dismissal, but a word of reassurance that all is well. Henceforward there will be no recurrence of her malady."18
Rawlinson is right in his observation that this phrase is more than a formula of dismissal, but he does not say enough. It is so much more than just a reassurance that there will be no recurrence of the disease. The phrase "Go in peace" is a statement of new beginnings. This woman was not being restored to her old life before she contracted the disease which plagued her. She was entering into a new and better life than she had ever known before. She was beginning a life of fellowship with God.
Saint Veronica
The story of this woman has stimulated the imagination of many of the early church fathers. Men like Ambrose, Jerome, Hilary, and others gave her the name of Veronica from Paneas. In the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus (Chapter 5, verse 26), this woman with the issue of blood is also identified as Veronica.
In the tradition of the church, Saint Veronica is the woman who on the road to Calvary came forth from the crowds that lined the streets and wiped the perspiration from the face of our Lord as he labored under the weight of the cross. Tradition says that when she withdrew the towel, the sweat of Christ had left an indelible image of our Savior's face upon the towel.
Gabriel Max has immortalized this tradition in his fascinating painting of Veronica's Veil, copies of which hang in many a pastor's study. With his artistic skill, Max has painted the eyes of Jesus so that at first glance they seem closed, but as one continues to look at the eyes, they open and Christ is staring directly into the observer's eyes.
Even if we have never seen Gabriel Max's painting, a meditative consideration of this miracle story and the tradition of Veronica's Veil can conjure up in our imaginations magnificent pictures of our own. The woman who once touched the hem of his garment and came to know the self-giving, sacrificial love, and sensitivity of Christ for her problem, the woman who was healed by this experience and was given a new chance to live again, this woman now mops the bitter perspiration from the brow of that same young man on his way to the cross.
He who had given this woman new life was about to die. And in his dying he was to give her and us an even greater life. He who once stopped the flow of blood from this woman's body in order to heal her, must not now stop the flow of blood from his own body in order to heal us all.
The story of the woman who was healed of an issue of blood is a great miracle. But the greatest miracle of all is the unstopped issue of blood that flowed from the body of God's Son and our Savior as he hung crucified for and by our sins. This miracle alone can heal and give us life today.
____________
1. Ronald S. Wallace, The Gospel Miracles (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1960), p. 81.
2. Ibid., p. 86.
3. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Mark, New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1975), p. 209.
4. R. C. H. Lenski, The Gospel Selections of the Ancient Church (Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1936), p. 927.
5. Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 205.
6. William Barclay, And He Had Compassion (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1975), p. 47.
7. Clovis Chappell, Sermons from the Miracles (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1937), p. 155.
8. Lenski, op. cit., p. 928.
9. Walter Lowrie, Jesus According to St. Mark (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1929), p. 189.
10. William L. Lane, The Gospel According to St. Mark (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1974), p. 193.
11. C. F. B. Cranfield, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959), p. 185.
12. Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 204.
13. G. A. Chadwick, The Gospel According to St. Mark (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1893), p. 155.
14. William Kelley, An Exposition of the Gospel of Mark (Pennsylvania: Believers Bookshelf, 1971), p. 75.
15. Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 210.
16. A. E. J. Rawlinson, St. Mark (London: Methuen and Company, Ltd., 1942), p. 69.
17. Lenski, op. cit., p. 929.
18. Rawlinson, op. cit., p. 69.
