Sermon by Pastor Mike Buttonnn

Being Made Well
Text:  Mark 5: 25-34

NRSMark 5
25Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. 26She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. 27She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28for she said, "If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well." 29Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" 31And his disciples said to him, "You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, 'Who touched me?'" 32He looked all around to see who had done it. 33But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

Peace to you and grace from God our Father and from the Son our Lord Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

In current discussions of health and wellness a distinction is often made between curing and healing.  Curing is typically the go-to word for restoring a body part or process to its proper function.  A bone set, a gallstone removed, or a clogged artery stented or bypassed would all be cures for diseases or conditions that would impair or possibly kill the person afflicted with such maladies.  Healing, however, is a softer and, to many scientists, a fuzzier word that wants to speak to the well-being of the whole person.  Even the most hard-nosed, data driven scientist, would agree that humans are more than just bodies.  We are social beings, spiritual beings, intellectual beings, sexual beings, in addition to being physical beings, and when all these dimensions of our being are brought together and integrated into state of wholeness, then we’re talking healing. 

Today’s lesson from Mark 5 bears out, I think, this distinction between curing and healing.  The woman who seeks out Jesus has been living a gynecological nightmare.  She has, according to our text, suffered 12 long years of unremitting menstrual distress, what the King James Version translated as an issue of blood.  The Revised Standard Version called it a flow of blood, and now the New Revised Standard Version translates as hemorrhages.  [Can you guess the gender of most New Testament translators?] In all fairness, the Greek text translates literally as a flowing or hemorrhaging of blood, but every woman here knows that she’d been – effectively -- suffering what amounts to a 12-year long period.  That condition would have left her chronically anemic, so that each day of her life would have felt like she was climbing a bone-crushing mountain of insurmountable fatigue.  The text stipulates that her condition had been made worse by the physicians she had consulted.  Since there was virtually no knowledge of internal medicine in the ancient world, much less gynecology, we can only imagine the suffering she endured in seeking a cure for her illness.  [We forget that it’s only been in the last hundred years or so that consulting a doctor became a smart thing to do.  Before the latter half of the 19th century, or thereabouts, your doctor was as likely to make you sicker or kill you as make you well.]  But besides enduring physical torment at the hands of her doctors, our text tells us that her medical bills had also landed her in financial distress, compounding, I’m sure, her declining condition. 

Further yet, there was a social price that she paid for her illness.  In the Old Testament’s Holiness Code, menstrual blood is a source of temporary uncleanness for a woman.  Because of her condition, this woman was, for all intents and purposes, rendered permanently unclean.  Of course, this was not necessarily a moral judgment on the woman, but because any physical contact with a woman during her period would also make the other person unclean, she was basically socially untouchable.  Through no fault of her own, she was barred from Israel’s worshipping community and excluded from her place in the Temple fellowship.  If this sounds harsh and cruel, it was, but we should also bear in mind that we too, without Scriptural warrant, often shun people with physical conditions that make us uncomfortable.  I could give examples, but I think you can fill in those blanks. 

So is it any wonder that this poor woman sneaks up on Jesus?  The gospel tells us that she had heard about Jesus, but what exactly is not specified.  In all likelihood she had heard that Jesus was a holy man with the power to heal.  In the ancient world it was commonly believed that when such a man touched you, power would flow from the healer to the patient.  [This notion still continues in Greek Orthodox piety.  In the Orthodox liturgy there is what we would call a gospel procession, in which the priest puts on a special vestment similar to a cape and processes through the church carrying the Bible.  People kneel as the priest passes and people on the aisles will, as they kneel, reach out to touch the hem of his ceremonial garment.  That’s not a Lutheran thing, so don’t do that here!]  But herein lies the scheme that this poor, untouchable woman hatches.  Her plan is to approach Jesus from behind, and, under cover of the great crowd pressing in upon him, surreptitiously touch the hem of his garment and thereby “steal” some of Jesus’ healing power.  What else could she do?  She was untouchable, so how could she ask Jesus to touch her?  But you know what?  It works.  “Immediately,” says our gospel, “her hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.”  But has she been made whole?  Not yet. 

Jesus also immediately becomes aware that power has flowed out of him  and he turns to his disciples to ask, “Who touched my clothes?” Now in the Gospel of Mark the disciples are consistently represented as the dumbest bunnies in the hutch, so of course, they say, “Idunno!”  [My kids would tell me the same thing when I would ask, for example, “What happened to the lamp?  How did this scratch get on the car?  Where’s the $10 I gave you yesterday?”  Invariably, they too would answer, “Idunno.”]  But Jesus persists, scanning the crowd for the person who pinched his power.  And here’s where I think the real healing takes place. 

The woman steps out of the crowd, and “with fear and trembling,” falls at Jesus’ feet to tell him the truth of what she’d done.  Jesus had every right to reprimand her for rendering him unclean, and the letter of the Law would demand that Jesus himself submit to the ritual bath for lifting that uncleanness.  Jesus does neither, but instead, he calls her, “Daughter.”  The only time Jesus uses that word to address a woman in the whole Gospel of Mark.  And in that one word, “daughter,” Jesus lifts the social and religious exile which had been this woman’s reality for the past 12 years.  He brings her back into the family of God and joins her to the Body of Christ.  But further, Jesus then commends her, saying, “your faith has made you well.”  The Greek verb “sozo” rendered here as “made you well,” can also be translated as “saved,” as in “your faith has saved you.”

But what is this faith?  Would this woman have confessed Jesus as the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father? I doubt it. I wonder if she’d even have known enough to name him Lord. I suspect that her faith was something much more basic.  Maybe her faith was more like a refusal to believe that her fate was sealed, that pain, isolation, and a lonely death were simply the cards that God had dealt her and that she had better get used to it.  Her faith would not let her believe that God had put her here on earth to waste away at the hands of quacks and so-called religious authorities.  And according to Jesus, that faith was enough to save her and bring her to a new way of being alive and well and whole in the grace of God. 

You can be cured of an illness or a disease and still be a very sick person.  But you cannot be brought into relationship with Jesus and not be well. 

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.