God’s Word for You

Mark 5:25-30 Who touched me?

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, October 9, 2022

25 But there was a woman there who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years. 26 She had suffered much under many physicians, spending all that she had, but she did not get better. She grew worse.

This poor woman suffered from a terrible, continuous bleeding. It may have been fibroids, or a discharge from her womb; a woman suffering from her period without any end to it, not even the twenty-three or twenty-five-day respite that most women are relieved by each month.

Whatever this was, it was blood from her body, and under the Law of Moses, that made her unclean. According to Leviticus 15:19, anyone who even touched her while she was bleeding would be ceremonially unclean. Leviticus 15:25-27 says, “When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days besides during the time of her monthly period, or when she has a discharge that lasts longer than her monthly period, she will be unclean for as many days as her discharge continues, just as she is during her monthly period. During her discharge any bed on which she lies is to be treated just like the bed during her monthly period, and every piece of furniture on which she sits will be unclean, as it would be during the impurity of her monthly period. Anyone who touches them will become unclean” (EHV). Not only was this woman suffering, but her family was suffering; her friends were suffering. Her neighbors suffered, just because they had to tell their children to be careful not to touch her or to go into her house. She suffered because she couldn’t worship, either. She couldn’t enter into the synagogue, or venture south to the temple in Jerusalem. She couldn’t go shopping in the stalls of the town square. She had to have things brought to her; she had to rely on others for everything—other people who could not touch her. There must have been times when she wondered what the difference was between herself and a leper. She must have looked into her bronze mirror and wondered all of the questions: Why, how long, how come, when, if only…?

Then, Jesus came.

27 Now, she had heard what was said about Jesus. She came up behind him in the crowd and touched his robe. 28 She thought, “If I only touch his robe, I will get well.” 29 Immediately her flow of blood stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her illness. 30 Jesus knew in that moment that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”

Perhaps the woman had heard that other people were healed by touching Jesus (Mark 3:9). She wanted to do the same thing, but she didn’t think that she should touch his body, so she resolved just to touch his robe. The common robe worn by men at this time was called a shimla, a big square of cloth that served as a cloak or a blanket when needed. The Jews wore it with tassels tied with blue cords to the corners in obedience to Numbers 15:37-41. These tassels were a reminder to obey God’s whole law.

There are remarkable ways of taking what the woman did as an allegory. Some are so ingenious and brilliant that a commentator who is aware of them, or who sees a new one on his own, can hardly resist the temptation to share them; to impress upon God’s people the necessity of trusting in the whole word of God, for example, both law and gospel, or how the woman might represent Israel itself, and on and on. The recurrence of the “twelve years” twice in our account, the tassels, the healing of one person and the first resurrection miracle that Jesus performed, the pairing of a child and a grown woman, of a man (the synagogue ruler) at the top of society and a woman who was at this moment an outcast from society, healing by touching or by being touched—the details are delightful, diverse, and delicious. However, the Scriptures don’t invite us to treat the text of God’s Word as an allegory. What we have before us is a woman in desperate need, and a father (we haven’t forgotten about Jairus and his dying daughter) who urgently needed the Savior to come to his home. She touched the edge of his robe, perhaps one of the tassels, and she was healed of her bleeding.

Two more things happened: She felt in her body that she was healed. Was it a wave of relief? A sudden feeling of wellness? Was it like the wave of calm that passes through the body that some people can feel just before they fall asleep? Whatever it was, she knew that she was healed. Second, Jesus knew that he had healed her. Just how this awareness of divine power works is a mystery to us. We have little to compare it with. Was it like speech? We know when we have spoken, and with God, to speak is to act and perform his almighty power. Or was this something different, like the use of a muscle, so that when a certain task is finished, we know that it has been done and accomplished, like twisting off the lid of a pickle jar, or the satisfaction of breaking a board in a karate exercise? Jesus knew, and that’s all we can say. But the crowd didn’t know. To them, nothing at all had taken place, even though he had performed a miracle, and even though her whole life had just been changed.

All of the troubles of her life that came from her condition were over. She could go to the synagogue once again. Jairus was very probably the ruler or leader of that synagogue. She could go out without shame or concern for other people. She could visit friends. She could know love again, hold a child, share a cup of wine with a friend, dine with her neighbors, and live free of her illness, at last. People would no longer look at her and think: I will be unclean for a day if I touch her. People could simply see her as herself once again.

She had believed what she heard about Jesus’ power. She had put her faith in him. She trusted him. Now she was healed, but now something new happened, something that she didn’t expect at all:

Jesus noticed her, and he didn’t let it pass quietly. Suddenly the Lord himself was looking for her and asking: “Who touched my robe?” Was she in trouble? Was she going to be rebuked for not being bolder about her faith, or about just reaching for him without asking first? Should she have behaved differently? What thousand questions flashed in her mind at that moment when his long, urgent strides suddenly stopped? He had been on his way to the home of Jairus to heal a dying girl, but now he stopped because of her. Why didn’t he keep going? Why didn’t he hurry? Why would he wonder about her, the healed woman? Would she be responsible for the little girl’s life, just because she didn’t wait until he had healed her first? Did guilt race through her mind; had she sinned without knowing it?

That’s not how the gospel works. Jesus needed her to know the importance of her faith, and he needed this crowd to know it, too. Her action gave him the opportunity, and her questions would all be answered in a moment. Yet it’s also good for us to pause and consider this little moment, this fraction of a second as Jesus stopped, and turned, and asked: Who touched me?

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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