Healing
Summary
In Luke 8, a woman who has spent twelve years unclean, unhealed, and unseen reaches through a crowd to touch the edge of Jesus’ cloak. Pastor Dominic Jackson revisits this familiar story with fresh attention to the religious and cultural world around it. He shows that the woman’s act was not desperation alone but faith. Her touch recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah who would come “with healing in his wings.” Jesus answers not with condemnation but by calling her “daughter,” restoring her dignity and her place in the community. Dominic invites us to see ourselves in every part of the story: in the woman who needs healing, in the crowd that pushes others out, and in Jesus, who was never too busy to be interrupted by someone in need.
Questions for reflection
The woman in this story is known only by her condition, not her name. Are there labels, past mistakes, or reputations that you’ve allowed to define your identity? What would it look like to see yourself the way Christ sees you?
Many of us feel we need to “get clean” before coming to God. How does this story challenge that instinct? What keeps you from bringing your whole self to Jesus?
The woman’s faith showed itself in a bold, costly act. What would it look like for you to reach out to Jesus with that kind of boldness right now?
The crowd likely believed they had good religious reasons to keep this woman away. Who might we be tempted to push to the margins, and what reasons do we give ourselves for it?
Jesus was on his way to something urgent, yet he stopped for someone others overlooked. How interruptible are you? What tends to keep you from noticing the people around you?
Sometimes healing comes simply through attention and dignity. Who is someone you could truly see and honor this week?
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Dominic Jackson: We’re going to look at a text—one that we actually looked at three years ago, for the few of us with—not me—the few of you with good memories. I don’t even remember what I preached on three weeks ago sometimes. But you might be thinking, wait, this sounds familiar. In case it does, the reason I’m sharing this before we look at our text is that often, when I come across stories or passages—sometimes ones that I’ve read often, that I’m familiar with—it’s so easy for me to just kind of zone out, or just say, like, “Okay, I know how this one ends.” And so I just wanted to invite all of us here to try to put yourself in the crowd of the story that we’re going to look at. And I want to take it in a slightly different direction this morning.
We believe there’s power in reading and rereading these stories. And so if you’re willing and able, would you please stand with me for the reading of God’s word? Hearing this not as a history book, a textbook, a moral story, but as an account of the living, breathing Son of God, and a story that we, through the Holy Spirit, are invited into.
Our reading today comes from Luke 8:40–47. It reads: “Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying. As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. ‘Who touched me?’ Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.’ But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me.’” This is the word of God.
You may remember, a few years ago, a news story that was circulating. I saw it in a couple of news sources. I think The New Yorker did an op-ed on it. And it’s a story about a small town—a Southern town, a college town—where drinking and driving became such a big issue. And this town decided to take matters into their own hands. In an attempt to stop people from getting DUIs—because fines didn’t work, jail time didn’t work, public pleas didn’t work, community service, nothing seemed to work—this town decided to try something new.
Just like in most places, when a person was caught drinking and driving, there was a little bit of jail time, they had to pay a fine, they had to do community service—cleaning up trash at the side of the road, or picking up the park, whatever that was. But here’s what this particular town decided to do. Maybe this was inspired by The Scarlet Letter, if you remember that story from middle school. Maybe it was just out of a desperation to stop accidents. Regardless, here, when a person was doing community service in front of the entire town, they had to wear a bright yellow or orange vest. And on the back of these vests, in giant letters, it read, “I am a drunk driver.” Or other vests had varying versions of the same message: “I am a reckless drunk.” Or, “I was caught drinking and driving.”
Now, I don’t know how successful this punishment was. I don’t know if they still do this or not. I don’t really know anything about this. And I definitely understand the desperation. Drinking and driving is incredibly serious and reckless. I understand that. But what I keep coming back to when I reflect on this, since I heard this story, is—I can’t help but wonder, not excusing it again, but what would it be like to wear a vest telling the entire community about the sin that I had committed? What would it be like to become not who I am, but what I have done? Where I’m displaying my past, displaying my sin—literally putting on my shame and guilt every morning—allowing my reputation to become my identity.
And how would other people interact with me? I imagine being in line at Subway, going to order a sandwich. What would the people next to me do? Probably want to create some distance, whatever my sin was on the back of my shirt. How would this slowly start to change how I even saw myself? Keep this in mind when we look at our story today. But first, let’s pray together.
And as we’re preparing to pray, I would just invite you—if you have anything in your hands, if you want to just set that down; if you have anything in your head, in your heart, a to-do list, things you’re holding on to from this last week, frustrations at parking, the weather, whatever it is—just for a moment, let’s put that to the side.
Lord, I pray for your guidance. I pray for your direction, your truth. But most of all, I pray for your presence. Holy Spirit, though you need no invitation, we, as a posture of trust and expectancy, invite you into this place—into this room, into this message, into the songs we sing, the conversations we have, and into us as living, breathing vessels. We invite you in. And so allow a message like this, from a flawed, broken human, to somehow have supernatural power. We believe something special happens when we gather together praising you, seeking you, desiring to be stretched and molded and discipled to be more like you, Christ Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
If you have a copy of the Scriptures, you can turn to the Gospel according to Luke, where we’re going to be this morning. If not, the words will be on the screen. And while you’re turning there, some of you might be thinking, okay, what in the world does any of this have to do with DUIs and bright vests and things like that? We’ll see if there’s a connection there in a little bit. But first, let’s take a look at our text one more time—Luke chapter 8, starting with verse 40. And we’re going to move through this line by line and just kind of break it down.
Again: “Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying. As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him.”
And so Jesus is on his way. He’s got somewhere to be. He is on his way to go heal somebody—a dying child, the daughter of a very, very important political, religious figure, right? And the fact that Jairus was a synagogue leader is interesting. Think about every interaction that Jesus has had with the synagogue leaders up until this point—every single time. I’m just guessing, but I would imagine it’s safe to assume this man, Jairus, was probably outspoken against the ministry of Jesus, like all the other synagogue leaders had been. Maybe even an enemy to Jesus up until this point. Because when his daughter is sick, out of desperation, he goes to see this man, the one he has heard rumors about, to see if just maybe—maybe he could save my little girl.
But the problem is, Jesus has gotten really popular at this point. Word is spreading. This rabbi, Jesus—he’s teaching boldly, sometimes confusingly, but he’s giving these amazing sermons. He’s performing miracles. He’s healing people without a copay. He’s doing all of these amazing things. And so this giant crowd forms around him. In fact, the text says that it almost crushed him.
But remember, Jesus has got somewhere to be. He’s super busy. An important synagogue leader needs his help. And most importantly, he’s running out of time. This little girl is dying. Every second matters. And so Jesus pushes through the crowd. Are you imagining this? I’m thinking about being at a concert, and the first band is done, and you’ve got to push through the crowd to go to the bathroom or get a drink or whatever. And then you’ve got to push your way all the way back. I’m just imagining this crowd all around him. But he’s trying to get to where he needs to go—until he’s interrupted.
Verse 43: “And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her.” And so Dr. Luke, our biographer here, diagnoses this woman as having a uterine hemorrhage. And in other accounts, this woman is simply referred to as the bleeding woman. She doesn’t even get a name. This is her entire identity. The bleeding woman, the woman who bleeds—that is how she is known in her community.
In other parts of the Bible—notably John 9, if you’re familiar with that story—Jesus and his disciples are making their way through town, and they come across a guy with a disability. And the disciples start asking Jesus, “So who sinned? Was it this guy, or was it his parents?” Maybe his grandparents. Like, somebody obviously sinned if this guy has a disability—because this was the thought at the time. It was assumed that if you had a disorder, disability, ailment, anything at all, either you sinned or your parents sinned, because this was clearly a punishment from God. That was the belief at the time. And since it was a punishment, a curse, not only would this become a person’s entire identity, it would also become their role in society. The same as for a leper—a reject, an outcast, right? The unclean, the unlovable. Who was in, who was out. There was no place for them.
And also, notice Luke says that nobody could heal her. In Mark’s account of this same story, he adds a specific detail. Mark 5 says, “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.” Maybe Luke leaves this detail out because he’s a doctor—out of, like, respect for his profession or something. I don’t know. But what we know is this woman suffered greatly. Because at this time, doctors were in many ways almost more like magicians than they were care providers.
At this point, one place in the Talmud gives this instruction to Jewish doctors: if a woman has an issue of blood, take three Persian onions, boil them in wine, and give them to her to drink, and say, “Cease your discharge.” If this does not cure her—this was it. This was how this would be approached. In another section of the Talmud, the Jewish writings of the time, it was recommended that the afflicted woman lather herself with the droppings of a white donkey. It’s terrible. This is the sort of medicine this poor woman would have probably experienced. And all of these so-called cures would have left her broken and in worse health than before. And 12 years of this—could you imagine?
So why was she treated this way? Outside of wanting to get better, why was it such a big deal? Why all of these crazy attempts at controlling her bleeding—assuming that it was just, like, a long period? What is going on? Well, more important than her health or her discomfort was a desire to cleanse her soul.
According to Leviticus 15—your favorite book of the Bible; I know you guys were reading it this morning during your quiet time—but for the couple of us who weren’t: according to Leviticus 15, Jewish people could not go anywhere near blood at all, or they were deemed ceremonially unclean. And so when it was that time of the month for a woman, the women had to go away for a time—away from everyone else. Not just because of limited resources for ladies—there was no aisle at Walgreens, right? But most importantly, no one could come in contact with blood, because this would make them unclean. And they would have to stay away from the temple—both of them, the woman and anyone near the woman—for a week, seven days. Then there was a whole cleansing procedure, followed by sacrifice. They would have to take two doves or two pigeons and offer a sacrifice at the temple to get right—it was viewed—to get right with God before they could be welcomed back into society. And everyone would have to avoid them.
And so if your kid fell and skinned their knee—I was going to say skateboarding; they probably weren’t doing a lot of kickflips 4,000 years ago. I don’t know what Jewish kids played 4,000 years ago, but whatever. If your kid fell and skinned their knee, you had to decide, am I going to comfort my child, or am I going to go to temple this week? They had to avoid blood at almost all costs. And there were lots of reasons for this—we could go into it another day—but this was the practice.
By the way, if you read the rest of this chapter, there are plenty of commands for men too. Read the whole thing. There are specific verses about dandruff, about rashes, about other bodily functions. If it has to do with your body, it’s probably in there—very detailed and specific. But still, this seems foreign to us, right? Can we all acknowledge this is weird? Because it is, right? Okay. Not just because this was a world before our understanding of hygiene even existed, but also because this was an old covenant world, an old covenant understanding of God. A world of honor and shame, accepted and rejected, clean and unclean. And this is so foreign to our world—and it should be.
So if the instructions were to avoid a woman who was bleeding until a week after she was done, what does this mean for a woman who never stops bleeding? Think back to all those instructions. Stay away from her. You will be unclean. You will have to stay out of the temple. You will be humiliated. Cursed, essentially. She will contaminate you. There’s even a passage in the Mishnah that says even if her breath touches you, or if her shadow falls on you, you are deemed ceremonially unclean. And so, either out of religious zealousness or simply selfishly thinking about their place in society—whatever it was—this entire community would have turned their back on this woman.
I mean, think about what this means for a second. Twelve years. Twelve years. No one has touched her for 12 years. No hugs. No kiss on the cheek. No laying a hand on her just to pray over her. Levitical law meant that she needed to eat every meal by herself. No church, obviously. No temple. No friendships. And as she got older, she would watch as the women in her community took their place in society, got married, started to have kids—and she took her place on par with a leper.
Notice, her family isn’t mentioned anywhere in the text. Where was her dad, trying to find healing for his daughter? Why wasn’t he out seeking healing? Why wasn’t he trying to get Jesus to heal her? Had they abandoned her? Maybe. And she has no more money. She has suffered greatly trying to get help. And 12 years later, she’s supposed to be married with a few kids, according to the custom. She probably has never even held hands with a boy. And here she is—alone, forgotten, pushed away.
But then she sees a glimmer of hope. Jesus is coming to town, right? Could he be the one? Could he be the answer to all of her problems? So what does she do? Verse 44: “She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped. ‘Who touched me?’ Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.’” Thanks, Peter. I love that Peter is always stating the obvious, right? Thanks, Peter. Yes, correct. “But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.’”
Notice Jesus here, scanning the crowd, looking: who was it? Verse 47: “Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed.”
I can imagine her saying this with shame, with her head down, approaching this rabbi, Jesus. I mean, she had broken so many ceremonial and religious rules. She wasn’t even supposed to be in town, let alone in a crowd. If there were, I don’t know, 500 people, that is 500 people she had contaminated, who couldn’t go to temple that week if they knew what was going on with her. Her presence was affecting everyone. And worst of all, she touched a man—a man who was not her husband, and not just any man, a rabbi. Are you kidding me? What was she thinking? She did this while menstruating. What was going on in her mind? Are you kidding me?
And so, probably with her head down, she says, “It was me. I was the one.” No doubt waiting on Jesus to make an example out of her, to reprimand her, to shame her, to use her as a teaching point in front of everybody there.
How does Jesus respond, though? Verse 48: “Then he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.’” Notice how he responds. Notice the first thing that he does is welcome her in—claim her as his own. The only time he ever uses that word in the whole Scriptures. He gives her worth, dignity. He sees her, acknowledges her. He calls her daughter. You can imagine that people around probably gasped at this, right? You can’t even imagine the social and cultural shock that the people around would have felt, hearing this rabbi say these words to her—this outsider, this unclean person, this sinner, this untouchable person. And he calls her daughter. How do you think that felt for her? I imagine she was healed in so many more ways than just physically.
Now, it’s a beautiful story—one that, if you’ve been around church circles for five minutes, you’ve probably heard. Jesus welcomes in the outcasts, the rejected, the marginalized. That’s kind of his MO, right? It’s just Jesus being Jesus, right? But there are a few things happening here, and I think if we are not looking, it’s easy to miss them.
First, notice that it was this woman’s faith that healed her. And if you’re like me, you might be thinking, what am I missing here, right? What am I missing in this story? Not only were there tons of people crowding around Jesus—I’m sure quite a few of them were asking, “Heal me, heal me. I have this going on.” People who had at least, I don’t know, a twisted ankle or something were reaching out to Jesus. And so what was it about this particular woman? Have you ever wondered that? What was so significant about her faith? Jesus says it was her faith that healed her. What a strange thing to say. Why was her faith so evident? What are we missing?
Well, there’s one more detail about this woman that radically changed the way that I read and understand this story. Remember, Jesus, at this point, did not quiz her. He didn’t ask her theology questions, right? He didn’t ask her how many Bible verses she read that week, or anything like that, or ask her to write a doctrinal statement on her faith, right? He didn’t even ask, “Who do you think that I am?” before she was healed. I think it’s because he didn’t have to. Have you ever wondered, again, what is it about her that stops Jesus in his tracks?
Well, turn with me to the last book of the Hebrew Scriptures, Malachi. This is the last prophetic word from God, from Yahweh, for 400 years. This is the closing of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, right? Four hundred years between this book and the birth of Jesus. And this is the last message of God—the last Scripture, from the last chapter of the last book. We have God warning and welcoming, right? This is it. This is all they’re going to be left with for a few hundred years. So he’s packing a lot in here.
And he’s explaining that there is one who is to come. You should read it in your free time. It’s amazing and beautiful. There’s one who’s coming—one who is like the law of Moses and the prophet of the returning Elijah. There is one greater to come, one who will bring justice but will also bring healing to the hurting. The Jewish people are told that God had not forgotten them, and though there would be a period of silence, one day the Messiah would come.
And there are tons of prophecies all over this and the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. He would come with power and judgment and restoration. He would have a public ministry. He would be a suffering servant, a friend of the hurting, and eventually a perfect sacrifice. He would go unnoticed by most. He would teach in parables, it said specifically. He would be despised, rejected, and he would bring hope and healing. And though most, according to the Scriptures, wouldn’t recognize that he was right in front of them, this is who the Jewish people were waiting for.
These were the prophecies about the coming Messiah. They essentially had a checklist. And every time somebody came and said, “It’s me, I’m back, I’m the Messiah,” it was like, “Okay, he doesn’t check that box. We can’t check that box. It’s clearly not him.” And so they had all of these prophecies. And here is one more prophecy. Let’s look at Malachi 4, verse 2: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves.”
The Son of righteousness. It’s a reference echoed in Psalm 84, Isaiah 60, as well as Revelation 22—a reference to the Son of God and his healing power. But we read that it is in the edge of his wings that one can be healed. The word is kanaf. It can be translated as edge, or corner, or wing. And for hundreds of years, the Jewish people would be reading these passages, memorizing these passages. They were all waiting on their Messiah, knowing that, among so many other prophecies, when this Messiah showed up on the scene, he would bring healing with him—healing in his wings.
And yet nobody, by the way, imagined that the Son of God would be like a bird or have physical wings. You won’t read that in the Scriptures anywhere. Everyone knew exactly what was being referenced here, because this word had a very different meaning. Important to note: at this time, and even today, Jewish rabbis would honor the directions found in Numbers 15. I think we have a photo here. Jewish leaders were instructed to wear a prayer shawl, with tassels hanging—you’ll even sometimes see them hanging underneath the clothes of Jewish religious leaders. And these tassels—there are 613 threads to represent each one of the commandments. There are five knots to represent the five books of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. This was meant to be a reminder of all that God has done, the commands he has given them, the possibility of returning to slavery if they forgot who they were and where they’d been.
And this prayer shawl was often referred to as the wings of a rabbi. Because when a rabbi would move through town, with it all over their shoulders, and the wind would hit it just right, it would open up like wings. It resembled that.
And so let’s look at Luke one more time, real quick, to see it in light of this. “As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.”
We see here that this woman was not only brave enough to enter into this space, breaking so many social and cultural expectations—she is one of the first people to recognize Jesus for who he is: the Messiah. Not just a good teacher. Not just a healer. Not just a miracle worker. He is the one they have been waiting for. Her faith is on full display when she, remembering the words of the prophet Malachi, recognizes that the Sun of righteousness was right in front of her—the Son of God, the Messiah. And if she could just get close enough to touch the edge of his cloak, the tip of his wings, her faith would heal her. And it did.
And Jesus stops, realizing that she knows exactly who he is, and that she is putting her faith, her trust, in him. This—this is the faith that we see in her. One of the first in the entire Scriptures to recognize the Messiah is here—the one her people had been waiting for. And this faith heals her.
So what does this mean for us today? I think it’s important for us to look at this story from a couple of different perspectives. With the time we have left, I would love to just ask three questions.
The first is: how do you connect with the woman who was hurting? I imagine that when it comes to this story, there might be some of us who have felt like her. Maybe we even feel that way now as we sit here. Or, like the news story I read, right—some of us wear a vest every single day, even if nobody else around us can see it. We’re the only ones. We put it on every day. It’s how we see ourselves. And our identity is marked by our past, or our mistakes, or how our culture sees us.
I’ve met some people whose vest says uneducated, or felon, drunk, cheater, dropout, liar, victim, bad parent—the amount of guilt that so many parents I talk to hold on to—addict, unintelligent, promiscuous, a failure, unlovable. Whatever it is. And like the woman who doesn’t get a name, our names are forgotten, replaced by how we are seen or how we see ourselves.
And so what I want to focus on here is this: notice this woman’s reputation—her past, how she was known in town. This is actually what brings her toward Christ. Instead of allowing her past to keep her at a distance from experiencing true freedom, she allows her reputation to be the bridge that brings her toward him. See, our past can either define us, or it can invite us. And what are we being invited into? The same as the woman: true freedom that can only come from God. What would it be like to see ourselves—to find our identities—not by how the world sees us, or how our culture or community sees us, or even how we see ourselves, but by how Christ sees us?
And so maybe the invitation this morning is to take off your vest, the one that nobody else sees but you, and lay down your burdens at the feet of Jesus to find healing. Because the beauty of the gospel is, we can’t out-sin God’s grace and love. No matter what you have done, remember: the one who knows us the best knows everything that we’ve ever done. The one who knows us the best still loves us the most.
And the reason I mention that is because so often, when we are hurting, or we have sinned, or we feel unworthy, our initial reaction is basically to retreat into ourselves, right? To push others away—to push my church family away, to push my friends and family away, and to push God away. Why? Because what is the thought when you are defiled or dirty or undeserving—if the voice in your head is telling you that is who you are? The same as with the woman: the unclean will blemish the clean, right? Isn’t that the thought process? And we approach the Holy of Holies, the Perfecter, the one true God, in the same way. And so many of us have convinced ourselves that our sin should keep us away from God. We feel like we have to get clean and then go to Jesus, right? But it’s the opposite. It is through Jesus that we can get clean. We see this in the example of the bleeding woman.
And so I would ask, in which ways are you like her? Worth acknowledging—to state the obvious—she was a victim of her culture, by the way, right? Can we acknowledge that? She was marginalized simply for being a woman and for having a medical issue. But maybe in your story and my story—maybe you’re not blameless. She was. But maybe, in your story, you’ve made mistakes. And so I would ask, how are you living in the shadow of your past? Or maybe a better question: we look at the woman in her pain, but we should also connect with her in her boldness. So in what ways are we reaching out to Jesus like she did in the crowd? Whatever it is you’re holding on to—whatever secret sin no one else knows about, or whatever shame or guilt or pain you have, or have experienced, or was done to you—I would encourage you to reach out to him.
The second question for us to consider this morning: instead of just seeing ourselves as this woman, in which ways are we like the people in the crowd? Who have we pushed out? Who are the ones we would prefer to throw out of town if we could, to keep ourselves pure—or at least to convince ourselves that we are? Who’s on the margins? Who’s left out? Who are the unlovable in our community?
And notice, by the way, the people felt justified. They could make a really good argument. They could make a theological argument. They could point to Bible verses—their Bible—about why it was the right thing, the godly thing, to push this woman out. If they had known she was bleeding, they probably would have turned away from Jesus and turned their attention toward her in anger and judgment and condemnation—all because of their religiousness, their zealousness. So how do we do the same?
I’ll never forget one morning I was driving to church. I was a brand-new youth pastor. And it was one of those mornings where everything that could go wrong was going wrong. My alarm didn’t go off. I went to pour coffee, only to discover I didn’t have any more coffee. I hit every single red light. But since I was driving at, like, some ungodly speed, I still might make it. I could still show up on time and judge everyone else who was late, or whatever, right? I was very zealous at this time, right? So I remember I’m getting closer—I’d run out the door so I could get my favorite spot in the sanctuary, or whatever. And I’ll never forget, as I got closer, I noticed there was traffic. And this was the one street in LA where there wasn’t traffic. And I’m like, what is going on?
And as I got closer, I realized that there was a stalled car. Someone must have run out of gas or something. And so people were having to go around this person. As I got closer, I saw this guy, and he was pushing a Ford Explorer—a ’90s Ford Explorer, a.k.a. a tank. But since he was by himself, he not only had to push it, he had to steer it. And by the way, growing up, my mom would always make us hop out of the car and help somebody push their car out of traffic or whatever. This was just second nature. But I remember, as I was getting closer to this guy, thinking, “Any other time, man—any other time, man, I would stop and help you. But I’ve got to get to church.”
Have you ever missed an opportunity to be the church because you were more concerned with going to church? Have you ever missed a chance to be the hands and feet of Jesus because you were worried about your image, or your reputation, or your religious rituals? Jesus says, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these … you did for me.” That’s Jesus talking. And what did I do for my Lord? I slowed down a little bit as I swerved by him. No doubt, 10 minutes later, I was in church with my hands up, worshiping him. So how has your religiousness gotten in the way of your devotion, your faith?
Lastly, one more person to look at in this story. We looked at the woman, we looked at the crowd, and I’ll ask: in what ways can we be like Jesus? How might we bring healing to another person? Jesus says to go and do likewise—to love our neighbors. If you know that story, right—what does the lawyer ask as soon as Jesus says that? He wants to know from Jesus, “Okay, but who’s really my neighbor?” right? Or another way to ask this: “Okay, yeah, Jesus says love our neighbors. Yeah, but what about their theology? What do they believe? What kind of church do they go to? What is their religious belief? What about their sexuality? What do they post online? What is their reputation like? What is their past like? What is their immigration status? Can they really be my neighbor if they’re not supposed to be here to begin with? What about how they vote? What about their past? What about—” and we could keep on going. To which, according to the meme, Jesus points back to the command to love our neighbor and asks, “Did I stutter?” right?
And so I would lovingly ask: in what ways are we extending a hand to someone in the crowd? Who are we bringing healing to? Remember, Jesus was on his way somewhere important—which, by the way, we didn’t get to, but he totally helps Jairus’s daughter. Spoiler alert: it ends well. But Jesus was incredibly busy. He had somewhere to be. And yet he stopped. Jesus, who was doing the most important work on this earth in all of human history, was incredibly interruptible.
Have you ever thought about this? The vast majority of the miracles we see weren’t planned. Jesus is on his way somewhere, and he keeps getting stopped, over and over. And I would ask: how interruptible are you when you see someone in need? Do you, like I did all those years ago, gauge whether or not you’re going to help them based on what your schedule looks like that day? How are you being an agent and a vessel for renewal and reconciliation?
Sometimes healing just comes with attention. And I don’t mean healing, like, a guy’s broken leg, or a skin disease, or anything like that. I’m talking about healing their pain—their clouded picture of themselves, the lies they have been told. I’m talking about a healing that takes place in their heart. I mean, if you can heal people physically, go for it. But I’m talking about the opportunity that every single one of us has.
I was in a car with a friend recently, and we were at a stoplight, and there was a guy standing outside on the island with a sign—probably experiencing homelessness and asking for money. And my friend rolled down the window and said, “Hey, I’m sorry, I don’t have any money right now. I don’t have any cash. I don’t even have any food. But I wanted to ask how your day was going. And I wanted to ask your name.” And the look on this guy’s face—it was probably the first time all week, maybe all month, that he had been asked those questions. Everyone else ignoring him, trying not to make eye contact with him, right? Or maybe stuffing a crinkled dollar bill in his hands before rolling up the window as quickly as possible. But my friend gave him something better: dignity. Just like Jesus did with that woman, right? And so I would ask, how might we do the same this week?
Because the truth is, we have all—to varying degrees, obviously—but we have all been the woman in the story at some point. All of us. Sitting alone at lunch in school—flashbacks to middle school, right? Or having your reputation dragged through the dirt. Having coworkers or people gossip about you. We’ve all been left out at some point. Maybe you’ve even suffered abuse, or are part of a group that has experienced generational trauma. Regardless of your experience or your background, we have all been the outcast. And we’ve also all been, at some point, the cultural norm in the room. Maybe it was our religiousness, maybe it was just fitting in, but we’ve all been in the in-crowd at some point, I would imagine.
But just because we’ve been the outcast, and just because we’ve been in the majority—if you hear one thing I say today, the real question is whether or not we also love like Jesus did. That part’s up to us. We’re all going to be in, at some point, and we’re all going to be out. But whether or not we choose to be the hands and feet of Jesus—that’s up to us. And so who might you be interrupted for this week? Who might you bring dignity and compassion and attention, healing and restoration to, through the power of the Spirit of the living God? How might God use you this week? Let’s pray.
Lord, as we look at a story like this, in many ways it could be our story. Not to the degree this woman experienced it, but all of us have at some point felt rejected, left out, pushed away. I want to especially pray for anyone who is experiencing that now. I pray for anyone here who reads a passage like this and can’t help but think, “This is more than just a story or a moral lesson. This is my life. I have felt marginalized. I have felt like an outcast, like a victim of a broken system—maybe even in church, maybe even here.” And so I pray for freedom and renewal, and most of all for your welcoming Spirit, for all those for whom this story might hit close to home.
I also pray that we can find ourselves in the crowd of this story, asking in which ways we, too, have left others out, and how we might bring them in. And then lastly, I pray, Holy Spirit, help us to be more like Christ Jesus. Help us to see ways in which we can offer a hand to someone in need—a listening ear, a loving embrace, an open door. I pray this all in Jesus’ name. Amen.