A few years ago, I was walking up the stairs, when I locked eyes with a female colleague who was passing. For some reason, I could tell she wasn’t okay, and I asked her what was wrong. She burst into tears, saying “my body won’t stop bleeding and I don’t know what else to do.” I saw in her eyes the physical pain she was experiencing, her fear and anxiety over not being able to control what was happening to her body, and even her shame and embarrassment as she accepted my help gathering her things and getting to care.
As I read our rich Gospel story about the woman who hemorrhaged for twelve years and sought out Jesus, I am reminded of this image. I am reminded that whether we are male or female, at some point in our lives, the “bleeding woman” will be us. At some point in our lives, we all need help and healing. At some point in our lives, we all experience illness, addiction, or disconnection from our mind, body, or spirit. At some point in our lives, we all experience shame and guilt for things we have done and things we have left undone. At some point in our lives, like the bleeding woman deemed “unclean”, we will feel anonymous, or unworthy of love and abundant life. Even if we can’t relate to this feeling of “bleeding” now, someone we know, someone we love, surely has. And when this happens, we “bleed” with them.
Oh sometimes, we try to fix ourselves up to stop the bleeding. Sometimes, we try to fix others up. Sometimes, our efforts work, and sometimes they don’t. In the case of the bleeding woman, we know that she had done all she could with her own resources: our story tells us that she visited a great many doctors and spent all the money she had. But she was no better; in fact, she was worse. Things had gotten so bad, that she had but one option remaining. She had one giant leap of faith to make. Even in her shame and disgrace, she would burrow her way into that crowd that pressed upon Jesus, and reach out to touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak.
There were so many reasons, cultural and otherwise, why this story should not have played out the way it did:
· The perpetually bleeding woman was outcast from the temple and society,
· Jesus, a man, should never have been in contact with her “unclean” body,
· The crowd was swarming upon Jesus for his attention,
· And yet, the woman’s faith, or her leap of faith, propelled her forward, and…
One touch was all it took. One touch—with the faith that had been given to her – was all she needed to heal. One moment of divine contact. One miracle, not even initiated by Jesus, stopped her hemorrhage, returned her to wholeness, and revealed the truth of her life.
Jesus’ healing presence – the way he points to abundant life, and thriving, and saving – knows no boundaries.
This morning, we will all be invited to meet this same grace and healing power of Jesus shared with us in the Eucharist. Perhaps, for us, the act of electing to receive the body and the blood of Christ is not unlike the agency of the bleeding woman who reaches out to touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. Every week, it is an act of faith to receive this gift given to us freely from God, and to believe, to really believe, that God is saying “YES” to you. Is it not an act of faith to believe that no matter however you come this morning – hurting, worried, grieving, joyful, expectant – God says in this bread and in this wine that you are loved beyond measure for being everything that you are, that you are fed and forgiven, reconciled in Christ? Is it not an act of faith to believe that God says go forth from this meal and be liberated by Christ, for you have beautiful gifts to share?
This kind of heart knowledge is the pearl of healing. It comes to you simply because you trust in a good and gracious God, creator of all things, who sent Jesus into the world to live and die and rise, thus teaching us what God was all about. In the healing words of Romans 8:39, now nothing will separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
This is the kind of love that knows no boundaries. This is the kind of love that plays no favorites. This is the kind of love that looks upon the woman who bleads and says yes. This is the kind of love that looks upon the orphan and the refugee and says yes. This is the kind of love that looks upon the convict, and then towards the billionaire, and says yes. This love says yes to the one who can’t be bothered, and to the addict, and to the man who feels much, but cannot cry.
This love, this healing power of Jesus, knows no boundaries. This love simply says yes.
And lest we fear that those we love who do not express their faith in the same way we do will be deprived of the love of God, our Gospel today provides yet another example of how to help others touch the cloak of Jesus.
And that is simply to believe in them fervently, no matter what: to believe in their worthiness of love, in their worthiness of life, and in their worthiness of health the same way that God does. Without boundaries.
This is the kind of fervent belief in God’s unconditional love that leads Jairus, the other character in our Gospel story this morning, to pursue Jesus and healing for his daughter with every last hope, even though his daughter had already been proclaimed dead.
“Talitha, cum,” Jesus says to his dead daughter, which means in Aramaic, “Little girl, get up.” And immediately, she did, getting up to walk about as if nothing had happened.
Oh, what we wouldn’t give to see Jesus show up on the spot in the midst of tragedy and say to those we have lost in death, “You, Beloved Child of God, get up!” Would we not rejoice and sing with the Psalmist: “You have tuned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy!” (Psalm 30:11)
And yet, is not another miracle our belief that Jesus’ healing touch transcends each and every boundary we create for one another, including and up to the clearest and most significant boundary we experience as humans, that being death. Our Gospel tells us that Jesus has failed to heal someone in time, he has the power to raise her, to draw her up.
This week, let this miraculous news sink deep into your bones. Jesus’ healing touch knows no boundaries, even in death. The power of God simply refuses to be contained. Let us imagine what is beyond imagination: the embrace of the Gospel of Jesus – an embrace is too deep and too wide to leave anyone on the outs.
Will you pray with me?[1]
Dear Jesus, we are just like the father Jairus who loved and believed in his daughter to the end. And at times, we bleed like the woman who suffered and felt cut off from God and from relationships with others. We want to touch you with the faith you give us. We want to touch others with your love that knows no boundaries. Help us and heal us. In your most blessed name we pray, Amen.
[1] Adapted from a prayer written by Anne Osdieck, and posted on The Sunday Website of St. Louis University. http://liturgy.slu.edu.