Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him,
Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” (Mark 5:30)
Sometimes
you just have to make time for things. In the Gospel lesson appointed in the
RCL for Pentecost 6, Year B (Mark 5:21-43), Jesus is on his way to do an act of
mercy for a pretty important guy when he gets detoured by a very timid lady.
She needs a healing but she’s too afraid to ask for one. Mark tells us that
this poor gal had suffered from hemorrhages for twelve years, had bankrupted
herself on doctors’ bills, and was only getting worse. There wasn’t any such
thing as Medicare in the ancient Near East, so this lady was not only sick but
impoverished.
The
unnamed woman has a couple of societal strikes against her. She’s a woman,
which makes her a second-class citizen. She’s sick, which would, in the world
of this text, mark her as somebody cursed by God. She’s bleeding, which makes
her ritually impure. Finally, she’s broke. Our evangelist doesn’t tell us where
she’s bleeding from, but it might be safe to assume that this is—if I
may put it delicately—a woman’s thing. According to New Testament
scholar Matt Skinner[i],
our mysterious heroine might also have lost her ability to bear children, and
such a loss would brand her as even more cursed by God and even less
valuable in the society. It’s no mystery that she’s embarrassed to ask Jesus
for help face-to-face as Jairus, the important guy whose daughter was sick and
who Jesus was on his way to help, had done.
This
unfortunate albeit faith-filled lady puts me in mind of a cause which
deeply touches me—women’s reproductive health. If you’ve followed my blog for a
long time, you may know that my sister Maryanne died of cervical cancer in
2014. Although this type of cancer is now highly treatable, Maryanne’s
diagnosis came too late in the progress of her disease. At the time she presented
she had no healthcare because she was gig worker, her husband was on
disability, and the Affordable Care Act had not yet gone into effect. She was
able to get a pap smear courtesy of her local women’s health clinic, but no
disease was definitively detected. She was advised by the clinic to seek a CT
scan at her local hospital, but fearing the expense, she put this off until it
was too late.
I
have no time or patience for the narrow-minded, reactionary, arrogant dimwits
of evangelical fundamentalism (nor with the Great Orange Cro Magnon Man who
represents them politically) who advocate slashing the budget for women’s
health clinics because such clinics might perform abortions. These clinics
provide needed preventative services for millions of low-income American women.
If we are to call ourselves Christians, we should remember that Jesus healed
without asking to see a Green Card or a credit statement. Universal healthcare
should be a right, not a privilege. To quote the great Welsh statesman Aneurin
Bevan, “No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is
denied medical aid because of lack of means.” Fear of the cost kept my sister
from seeking the help which could’ve kept her alive.
I
find it significant in Mark’s telling of this tale that he alone of the three
synoptic evangelists mentions the woman’s financial destitution. I wonder how
many people in the United States face bankruptcy or severe financial hardship
because of medical debt?
Both
Mark and Luke note that Jesus became aware of the woman because he felt “power
had gone forth from him.” The old King James Bible translated the Greek word dunamin
as “virtue,” but it literally means “power” in the sense of strength,
capability, capacity, and means[ii]. I guess Jesus didn’t
worry about losing a little power to make a poor person healthy. He knows that
he can give and give and give because his Heavenly Dad has so much more to give
back. God’s supply of goodness is endless. We’d do well to remember that we
lose nothing when others have their needs met.
Professor
Skinner makes another cool observation about this story. Not only does the
woman receive a physical healing, but this healing and encounter with Jesus
restores her to wholeness in the society. She was afraid to approach Jesus,
sneaking up on him like a pickpocket or like someone who wasn’t sure she
deserved to approach him face-to-face. She was afraid and trembling to confess
she’d touched him, and even threw herself on the ground in shame. Nevertheless,
Jesus calls her “daughter.” She came as a nobody but left as a member of the
family.
There
are three take-aways I get from this passage. First, fear and despair can keep
us from receiving the healing we need. My sis was afraid of the cost. The woman
in the story was afraid of being shunned and rejected. Jairus was told his
daughter was beyond hope and he shouldn’t bother Jesus. Fear can lead to
hopelessness, and hopelessness keeps us from faith.
Secondly,
Jesus places no limits on compassion. We shouldn’t either. The ruler of the
synagogue and the destitute woman are all the same to him. As a church and as
individuals we should continue to advocate for universal healthcare.
Finally,
no one is invisible to Jesus. It doesn’t matter if you’re stone broke, elderly,
sick, unemployed, homebound—or whatever. Jesus has time for us all.
[i]
Matt Skinner is the professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul,
MN. He wrote the commentary on this Gospel lesson for this week’s Working
Preacher website, the well from which I draw gallons of information for
these posts and my Sunday sermons. I mention this in case you thought I was
smart enough to know all this stuff on my own.
[ii] I
actually looked this up in the Greek Bible myself.
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