Jesus is on the way to honor Jairus’ request, to heal his daughter. Everyone is pressed up against Jesus. Everyone wants to see what happens here. Perhaps they are amazed that after the negative comments coming from the leadership of the synagogue, one of their own now needs help and so is a beggar just like the rest of them.
In all the jostling to be closest to the person of the hour a woman pushes her way through the crowd. She has had a vaginal discharge that has been going on for a long time and there was no evidence that it would be ending anytime soon. Her position in the town was trashed. She was an outcast. Perhaps the reason she could get so close to Jesus was that when people saw who was pushing them, they stepped away, maybe even cursed her because she had mad them unclean, much like stepping on gum in a parking lot.
She had a belief that if she was able to get close to Jesus and touched him, she would be healed. The woman made up an idea of how she could get what she needed from Jesus and implemented it. And it worked! Her self devised scheme paid off. She was healed!
Jesus stopped and wanted to know who touched him. That in itself must have looked like he was eccentric. He had been buoyed by the crowd who were single-mindedly focused on getting him to Jairus’ house to see what would happen.
“Who touched me?”
The woman sniveled up to Jesus. Perhaps she was pushed up in front of Jesus by the recently unclean people who had touched her. Jesus rewards her for her faith and tells her that her faith has been rewarded. In her own quirky way she discovered healing, not because she came to Jesus in a prescribed way, but because she had faith in his power.
Jesus could have just smiled when he felt his healing power leave him, but he didn’t. He made a spectacle of her act. And in doing so, he points out to all that she is to be accepted back into community with the town. I wonder what happened with all the “unclean” people who had just touched her. With her healing, were they all healed now?
She was!
Prayer: Help me to realize that coming to Jesus and finding healing does not require a formula or a specific ritual. It can be as powerful as just pushing your way in, possibly upsetting a few along the way, and grabbing hold of his robe.
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