MARK 5:25–34
To see her hand you need to look low. Look down. That’s where she lives. Low to the ground. Low on the priority list. Low on the social scale. She’s low.
Can you see it? Her hand? Gnarled. Thin. Diseased. Dirt blackens the nails and stains the skin. Look carefully amid the knees and feet of the crowd. They’re scampering after Christ. He walks. She crawls. People bump her, but she doesn’t stop. Others complain. She doesn’t care. The woman is desperate. Blood won’t stay in her body. “There was a woman in the crowd who had had a hemorrhage for twelve years” (Mark 5:25 NLT). Twelve years of clinics. Treatments. Herbs. Prayer meetings. Incantations.
“She had suffered a great deal from many doctors through the years” (v. 26 NLT). Do you smell quackery in those words? Doctors who took not the disease but advantage of her? She “had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she was worse” (v. 26 NLT).
No health. No money. And no family to help. Unclean, according to the Law of Moses. The Law protected women from aggressive, insensitive men during those times of the month. In this woman’s case severe application of the Law left her not untouched but untouchable, ceremonially unclean. The hand you see in the crowd? The one reaching for the robe? No one will touch it.
Wasn’t always the case. Surely a husband once took it in marriage. The hand looked different in those days: clean, soft skinned, perfumed. A husband once loved this hand.
A family once relied on this hand. To cook, sew. To wipe tears from cheeks, tuck blankets under chins. Are the hands of a mother ever still?
Only if she is diseased.
Maybe the husband tried to stay with her, carting her to doctors and treatment centers. Or maybe he gave up quickly, overwhelmed by her naps, nausea, and anemia. So he put her out. A change of clothes and a handful of change—that’s it. Close the door.
So she has nothing. No money. No home. No health. Dilapidated dreams. Deflated faith. Unwelcome in the synagogue. Unwanted by her community. For twelve years she has suffered. She has nothing, and her health is getting worse.
Maybe that’s what did it. She “had grown worse” (v. 26). This morning she could scarcely stand. She splashed water on her face and was horrified by the skeletal image in the pool. What you and I see in Auschwitz photos, she saw in her reflection—gaunt cheeks, tired and taut skin, and two full-moon eyes.
She is desperate. And her desperation births an idea.
“She had heard about Jesus” (v. 27 NLT). Every society has a grapevine, even—or especially—the society of the sick. Word among the lepers and the left out is this: Jesus can heal. And Jesus is coming. By invitation of the synagogue ruler, Jesus is coming to Capernaum.
Odd to find the ruler and the woman in the same story. He powerful. She pitiful. He in demand. She insignificant. He is high. She is low. But his daughter is dying. Tragedy levels social topography. So they find themselves on the same path in the village and the same page of the Bible.
As the crowd comes, she thinks, “If I can just touch his clothing, I will be healed” (v. 28 NLT). At the right time, she crab-scurries through the crowd. Knees bump her ribs. “Move out of the way!” someone shouts. She doesn’t care and doesn’t stop. Twelve years on the streets have toughened her.
Jesus’ robe is in sight. Four tassels dangle from blue threads. Ornaments of holiness worn by Jewish men. How long since she has touched anything holy? She extends her hand toward a tassel.
Her sick hand. Her tired hand. The hand the husband no longer wants and the family no longer needs. She touches the robe of Jesus, and “immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel that she had been healed!” (v. 29 NLT).
Life rushes in. Pale cheeks turn pink. Shallow breaths become full. Hoover Dam cracks and a river floods. The woman feels power enter. And Jesus? Jesus feels power exit. “Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’” (v. 30 NLT).
Did Christ surprise even Christ? Has Jesus the divine moved faster than Jesus the human? The Savior outstepped the neighbor? “Who touched my clothes?”
His disciples think the query is odd. “‘All this crowd is pressing around you. How can you ask, “Who touched me?”’ But he kept on looking around to see who had done it” (vv. 31–32 NLT).
Can we fault this woman’s timidity? She doesn’t know what to expect. Jesus could berate her, embarrass her. Besides, he was her last choice. She sought the help of a dozen others before she sought his. And the people—what will they do? What will the ruler of the synagogue do? He is upright. She is unclean. And here she is, lunging at the town guest. No wonder she is afraid.
But she has one reason to have courage. She is healed. “The woman, knowing what had happened, knowing she was the one, stepped up in fear and trembling, knelt before him, and gave him the whole story” (v. 33 MSG).
“The whole story.” How long had it been since someone put the gear of life in Park, turned off the key, and listened to her story? But when this woman reaches out to Jesus, he does. With the town bishop waiting, a young girl dying, and a crowd pressing, he still makes time for a woman from the fringe. Using a term he gives to no one else, he says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. You have been healed” (v. 34 NLT).
And Christ moves on.
And she moves on.
But we can’t. We can’t because we’ve been there. Been her. Are there. Are her. Desperate. Dirty. Drained.
Illness took her strength. What took yours? Red ink? Hard drink? Late nights in the wrong arms? Long days on the wrong job? Pregnant too soon? Too often? Is her hand your hand? If so, take heart. Your family may shun it. Society may avoid it. But Christ? Christ wants to touch it. When your hand reaches through the masses, he knows.
Yours is the hand he loves to hold.