Mark 5:25 – 34
Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Most of us know what I mean when I refer to “the world’s oldest profession.” I’m not sure what the sociology is behind that understanding, but I’ve often suspected that “healer” or “medicine man” or “sage” or “doctor” were a close second on the list of ancient occupations.
The desire for healing from sickness; and for comfort from pain; and for survival from dying is such a natural, instinctive, basic desire for living creatures that humanity, no doubt, has turned to ‘healers’ from the beginning of time for answers and rescue. And, as you know, we still regularly turn to medicine – whether it be a doctor, a nurse, a counselor, a pharmacist, or a drug – for healing, for comfort and even for our very survival.
(Raise your hand if you do or have worked in a hospital, in a doctor’s office, a pharmacy, lab, at Eli Lilly, or anywhere connected to the health care industry in some way? How many here have been to see a doctor of some kind, for any reason, recently?)
So, without a whole lot of work, we can see – or at least imagine – where the woman in this Gospel is coming from. If you need some help with that, consider the list of our prayer concerns we included in tonight’s bulletin. You won’t find “hemorrhaging for 12 years” anywhere on it, but you will find pretty much everything else, it seems – cancer, broken bones, lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, transplants, death, and more …
Like the woman in tonight’s Gospel, we’ve either been there ourselves or we’ve loved someone who is or has been … sick for years, I mean; sick and tired of wrong answers; sick and fed up with expensive treatments that may or may not work; sick and out of money, out of energy, out of patience, and out of time, even.
You name it and we need to be healed of it. You name it and it’s in our life or in our family or in our house or in our bodies. You name it and we want it gone – or fixed – or healed.
And the temptation is to read tonight’s Gospel and pray for a miracle – and we have likely done that. The temptation is to search for a quick fix or a magic pill – and maybe we have tried that, too. The temptation is to reach out and try to touch someone or find some thing that will make the sickness and disease just go away.
And that’s why faith healers are a thing. I don’t see them on TV as much as I used to – they were really a thing back in the 80’s and 90’s – these men and women who feed that temptation. And they’re still around. On my way to Vegas a few weeks ago, I saw a church sign advertising a “Miraculous Night of Healing,” sometime in March – like there was a time and a place and a party planned for when your healing would come. (That church wasn’t in Vegas, by the way. It was off of I-74, in Indiana, between here and Cincinnati.)
Anyway, while Jesus played doctor and miracle-worker in some really wonderful ways, as far as the Gospels tell it, he never claimed to be an easy answer or a quick fix or a magic pill for anyone and everyone. Jesus was smart and sensitive enough to know that for every hemorrhage that stopped, for every demon that was quieted, for every crippled person who walked, and for every blind man that regained his vision there were plenty of others left bleeding, screaming, stumbling, and lost in the dark.
And it’s no different today. For every tumor that shrinks, for every surgery that’s successful, for every addiction that’s under control, there are millions of others left suffering and hurting and, literally, dying to be healed.
So, the answer for Jesus wasn’t easy because it wasn’t always, only about abracadabra or hocus pocus or magic of any kind – otherwise, I think he would have healed everyone, all of the time, and made a big show of it like some sort of televangelist. No, the answer for Jesus – and the answer for the bleeding woman tonight – was about faith, really, in a way that this story hit me differently during this season of “Lenten Laments,” than it has in the past.
See, I’ve been wondering if what healed the woman in this Gospel story – as much as whatever happened with her body when she touched Jesus’ cloak – was that her utter desperation, her total vulnerability, her powerful lament that she was at the end of her rope, out of options, entirely at the mercy of whatever grace she could receive from God, in Jesus … that that depth of humble faith … is what healed, not just her broken, bleeding body – but healed her soul and her spirit, too.
And there’s hope in that for me, because isn’t that what we need as much as anything when we’re falling down, sick and suffering, fear-and-trembling kind of scared?
When the pain and suffering and terror are so great… When we’re sick or scared and lonelier than we’ve ever been… When we’re in need of real healing – or when we care for someone who is – we’ll do anything to get it – just like the woman who touched Jesus’ cloak. She fought the crowd. She broke the rules. She forgot about her pride and her safety. She didn’t care about what all those people might have said about her. It was at her moment of greatest despair and lament when she found Jesus. And that’s when she found her healing, too.
And maybe that’s where we’ll find it – some measure of healing – not just in our bodies, but in our minds, our souls, and our spirits, too. Maybe the cancer won’t disappear, or go away forever. Maybe the surgery won’t fix everything. Maybe the addiction will be a constant, ever-present struggle. Maybe the cure won’t come in time, or as soon as we would like. And maybe our desperate lament can only be that that sucks; that the pain of it is unbearable; and that none of it seems fair. And God knows that’s true.
So let’s lament the illness and disease that plague us in so many ways in this life. And let’s let God receive the full measure of our anger, frustration, fear, trembling, and desperation for that – because God can handle the full measure of our anger, frustration, fear, trembling and desperation. And let’s make this lament because it really is an act of faith, after all – like it was for the hemorrhaging woman – that we aren’t in control of this; that we are humbled in the face of whatever afflicts us; but that we are more than our bodies and that God is more than all of it.
Because as unfair as all of our illness and disease can seem, it’s also not fair that we are loved so deeply and that we have the chance to experience and share that love with others. It’s also not fair that we are forgiven so graciously in ways we don’t deserve to be. It’s also not fair that we have been given the gift of faith in and hope for something greater than what our physical bodies can always endure on this side of heaven.
So let’s pray mightily about whatever healing we long for and need, here and now. And let’s expect God to do something good – miraculous, even – with those prayers and our deepest desires.
But let’s let our lament be honest and mighty, too. And let’s allow it to inspire or lead to faith that we will be well and healed … that we will be whole and redeemed … by God’s grace, on the other side of it all, come what may.
Amen
