In preparation for Sunday’s sermon I considered many texts that could be used to talk about Christ’s compassion in us. The healings, the feedings, the weepings of Jesus all exude lessons of compassion. One particular story however stood out, the woman healed of bleeding in Mark 5. I chose to not include that text in Sundays’ sermon due to the delicate nature of her ailment and the diverse age range of children in our audience. But, if I could preach a PG-13 version of this Sunday’s message it would be from Mark 5. Here we have a woman who suffers from a non stop period! Talk about a major problem. This is in the day before modern feminine hygiene products and she would have had to go down to the river to wash her rags daily in full view of the public! She would have grown a great stigma about her and perhaps an odor. It’s conceivable she couldn’t conceive and because of that her husband may have divorced her under their laws. What makes everything worse is that her ailment made her completely untouchable to anyone! If she merely touched the clothes of any other person that person would be unclean for the rest of the day. While her primary problem may have been a physical ailment, she had acquired a social problem that was far worse.
With all of these personal health issues why does Jesus call her out in the midst of a crowd? She snuck up, touched him and wanted nothing more than to run away. Jesus foiled her plot by stopping and asking, “Who touched me?” Why? Because he wanted to heal her social stigma as well! He wanted not just to stop the bleeding but also the exclusion and the judgment. He wanted to silence the whispers behind her back. He wanted to restore her to the community to heal the whole person. It was awkward, it was embarrassing for her (and him once it all came out), but it was worth it. This is how we as the church are to minister to people, we need to minister to the whole person. We need to stop throwing money at them, stop sending doctors to them and start including them in the community. When we do that will we heal the whole person and start being like Jesus.
