I remember walking slowly through the lobby of the Mayo Clinic, it was late in the evening and I was the only one there. But I had to see it. I had to see the place I had heard so much about. The place that seemed to be my only hope to get well. After all, this was where the best doctors worked. This was where the sickest people went. And this was where people were made well.
And I wondered—in a sort of desperation—would it be that place for me?
And a woman was there…
If you look at Mark 5:25, you’ll find that Jesus had traveled again to another part of the region around the sea of Galilee, and again a large crowd gathered around him. And this verse begins, “And a woman was there…”
She had been sick for 12 years, with some sort of hemorrhage and bleeding. In my previous post, we saw how dead bodies and pigs were unclean under the law; so was blood. So this woman, not only was she ill, but the flow of her blood had isolated her from her family, and from worship, for 12 years.
The best physicians could not cure her. It says she went to them all. She spent all her money. She tried everything she could. But it was as a spiral of trying, and searching, and grasping at straws… anything that could make her whole again. But this woman did not have peace in her body or in her soul.
But when she saw the crowd and saw Jesus in the middle of it, she knew she couldn’t come to him. No one would let her approach. So she snuck up to him. In the crowd, she hid, like she had been invisible for so long. She pressed her way through this crush of people, we’re told, knowing that if she could just reach out and touch his coat, she could be healed.
A sudden act of desperation and faith.
Of the four stories in Mark 4-6, this woman was the only one who didn’t talk to Jesus, who couldn’t talk to him. She didn’t ask for anything. She just snuck up in the crowd and in an act of desperation and faith, reached out and touched his coat.
And of these four stories, this is the only one where Jesus’ power was demonstrated without a word. And yet, either way, by voice or by virtue, he healed her. Completely.
It’s important to note that she was healed completely and immediately, not gradually as by a physician or natural means. There wasn’t time for medicine or treatment to do its work, but just the sudden supernatural power of God entering this woman, through Christ, which he also felt.
Mark 5:30 says he felt the power go through him. I don’t know if it was like the static shock you get when you scuff across the carpet and touch someone’s ear. But the woman knew immediately that the power of God had done what no doctor could, and Jesus knew immediately that someone had touched, not his arm or his elbow, but the hem of his coat.
So he called out for her, as if he needed to, who touched my coat!? It was a strange question because they were all touching his coat, crammed together in the middle of this crowd. But He did not pursue her to blame her or scold her. He pursued her to encourage her faith; for in her touch he had already given her health, now by his words, He sought to give her peace.
Daughter.
And when he spoke to her, in Mark 5:34, he called her daughter. No one called her daughter. For twelve years no one would call her their own. No one would welcome her into their house. She probably slept on the streets or in a barn. She had nothing, she had no one.
But in his public identification of her as Daughter, he identifies that the same magnitude of resurrection that is about to happen to Jairus’ daughter (in Mark5:41)—who while this is happening is at home dying—that the transformation in this woman’s life is tantamount to her being raised from the dead.
Probably not at first, but after a few months or a few years, it was as if she was dead… to the world, to her family, to God, since she could not enter the temple for worship. But now this woman who had essentially been dead 12 years is alive, and is at peace. Jesus said to her, “Your faith has made you well, go in peace.”
And we see that what Jairus would soon feel for his lost daughter, Christ felt for this woman. And what Jairus will feel when his own daughter is raised from the dead, Christ feels now for this one.
A spiral of searching.
Almost ten years ago, I got pretty sick. I went to the emergency room, spent a week in the hospital, and had every test imaginable to try and figure out what was wrong, and figure out how to fix it. In my visits to so many doctors I met many people like this woman. People who had cancer. People who had diseases that ravaged their bodies, that no doctor could heal. I remember standing in an elevator at the UofM hospital one Tuesday morning praying with a young woman who had just received a terminal diagnosis.
And while the diseases of these people were all different, their desperation was the same. It was a spiral of searching, and trying, and testing, and medicines, and hope, and lost hope… and like this woman many of them had spent all they had desperate for a cure that would make them whole and give them peace.
And they reached for everything, anything that could give them hope, anything that could possibly make them whole. And some of us are right there too: broken inside, bleeding metaphorically, and wishing the thing that made us so tired could just go away.
But the truth is, many flocked to Jesus that day.
Many bumped up against him.
Many touched his coat.
But only this one woman reached out in faith and was made well.
You see, you can be around Jesus and not really touch him. Or you can reach out in faith, and Jesus can make you whole.
You see, the beauty of what happened was not just in her physical healing. Jesus power’ was not just to heal her, but to overcome her desperate isolation, and to welcome her into his family.
Jesus said, be healed, and be at peace, and the woman was made whole.
Read the previous posts in this series:
Power over your sin. (Be clean.)
Power over the wind and the sea. (Be still.)
