Jul 23 | Resistance Lectionary Part 4: The Touch Test

Citation: Mark 5:25-34

This story occurs in the middle of another healing story: that of Jairus’s twelve-year-old daughter raised from the dead. It is clear that they are linked, although scholars have different opinions as to how. What both stories do show us is that Jesus cares deeply for the health, well-being, and empowerment of women.

The woman with the haemorrhages, like all those healed by Jesus, is not just someone with a painful and embarrassing problem. All healing stories are about so much more than magic. According to the Levitical laws, this woman’s problem made her perpetually impure and therefore unable to participate in the life of the community. No one was even allowed to touch her. Likewise, she was not allowed to touch anyone, but most especially not a holy man like Jesus. But she is so desperate, in so much pain (surely not just physical but emotional and spiritual as well) that she doesn’t let it stop her. Thinking he won’t notice, and that it’s less spiritually harmful than touching exposed skin, she touches his cloak. At her most vulnerable, her most isolated, she reaches out…and it works!

But Jesus feels her presence.

Imagine the bravery it would have taken to come forward and admit, “Yes, I touched you.” The crowd would likely tell Jesus about her problem, and she would have to deal with whatever wrath or scorn came her way.

Instead, he calls her “daughter,” and then proclaims that it is not his great power, but her great faith, that made her well. Then, confusingly, he tells her to go in peace and be healed of her disease. Hasn’t that already happened?

Jesus speaks these words not for her, but the people around her. He validates her action, which would have been condemned by others for its impropriety, and then he tells them that it worked. And therefore, of course, they are free to welcome her back into the community, to work, worship, and be well among her family and friends again.

Here, we see a Messiah who is happy to use his privilege to help women in need, no matter the cost.