Slices
Prepare
When an old farmer was asked what he did when he went into the church to pray, he replied, ‘Nothing, I look at him, and he looks at me.’ Are you ready to meet with God like this?
Bible passage
Jesus raises a dead girl and heals a sick woman
21 When Jesus had again crossed over by boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered round him while he was by the lake. 22 Then one of the synagogue leaders, named Jairus, came, and when he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet. 23 He pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’ 24 So Jesus went with him.
A large crowd followed and pressed round him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.
30 At once Jesus realised that power had gone out from him. He turned round in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’
31 ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?”’
32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’
Explore
This woman faces a dilemma: she believes that she can be healed if she can just touch Jesus (see also 3:10; 6:56), but scripture forbade contact with anyone in her state (Leviticus 15:25–33). So physical contact with Jesus is both the one thing she desperately needs and the one thing she must not do. This explains the sly way she went about things.
The fact that she was healed, and instantly knew that she was, may have added to her alarm when Jesus called her to identify herself, because it testified to the awesome power of Jesus.
Jesus insists on knowing who has intentionally touched his clothing. The woman’s response is to come forward and tell him the whole truth. In this way, Jesus rehabilitates this woman into society: no longer unclean, she can be close to people again. More importantly, Jesus’ actions make this a personal encounter. He insists that the woman is seen and known. Jesus is not content to be a holy battery discharging power anonymously.
Respond
You cannot come to Jesus hiding behind low self-esteem, shame or a sense of unworthiness. Nor can you use him as a means to an end, a distant distributor of answers to your problems. Look Jesus in the eye and make the encounter personal.
Deeper Bible study
‘Plenteous grace with thee is found, / grace to cover all my sin. / Let the healing streams abound, / make and keep me pure within.’1
Two very different people had exhausted all human healing possibilities. Both had reached the end of their physical and emotional roads. Only Jesus remained. The first person, Jairus, fell on his knees before Jesus in desperate anguish. This man of high status humiliated himself on the dusty ground before the itinerant healer. His daughter may have suffered a long illness, but her collapse seems to have been sudden. The mourners were gathering. The other person, an unnamed woman, had bled for 12 years. She crept behind Jesus to touch the hem of his cloak.2 Both people had tried everything they could and had reached the end of their search. One last resort remained: a choice risky to each of them. There was Jesus.
The woman’s bleeding made her permanently unclean, unable to complete the seven-day exclusion period.3 She had become an untouchable. Shrouded perhaps to avoid recognition, she risked contaminating others to reach Jesus. Competing emotions – shame, fear, desperation, hope – flooded through her as she stooped to touch Jesus in the least obvious way. In that instant, two things occurred. The woman’s bleeding stopped, and Jesus became ritually unclean. Jesus was fully divine, but also culturally a first-century Jewish man. He challenged people’s interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures but not the Scriptures themselves. Jesus lived under the old covenant and he had become ritually unclean.
This almost unnoticed event prefigured the death of Christ. The woman’s blood had made her unclean but Jesus became ritually unclean for her and made her whole. Soon Jesus will take upon himself the sin of the world. His shed blood will be enough for all our uncleanness. We too can be whole.
Jesus, Lord of life, thank you for shedding your blood for the sin of the world. Thank you for taking away my uncleanness. Thank you for making me whole.
1 Charles Wesley, 1707–88, ‘Jesu, lover of my soul’ 2 Matt 9:20; Luke 8:44 3 Lev 15:19
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Jeremiah 42,43; John 16
Pray for Scripture Union
Pray for the secondary schools in Havering, as Local Mission Partner Graceworks sets up more afterschool clubs. Pray that students will be drawn to them with open hearts and questions about who Jesus is and how he can be a part of their lives.
