There was a woman afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years. She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse. She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” Immediately her flow of blood dried up. (Mark 5.26-29)
This year’s Oscar for the Best Documentary went to a photographed story about a human and an octopus. Called, “My Octopus Teacher,” the documentary tells the story of South African filmmaker Craig Foster who needed a break from his workload, so he returned to his boyhood home on South Africa’s Western Cape.
Each morning, Foster dived into the very cold waters along this stormy coast. He quickly found a favorite spot nearby in an offshore forest where all kinds of sea life dwelt. There, one morning, he came across an octopus. He found the creature fascinating to watch, so he returned every morning to where the octopus stayed beneath a large rock.
After a few weeks, the octopus showed a measure of trust in him, reaching out a tentacle to touch Foster’s finger and then to grasp his hand. Through this touch, there was a connection and an empathy between the two living beings. In fact, as time progressed, the octopus rode on Foster’s hand through the water and even rested on his chest. For twelve months, the pair shared these moments, growing in respect and awe of one another.
The scriptures for today tell us about another special bond that develops, this one between a woman suffering from an affliction and a teacher, not an octopus in this instance, but a Rabbi from Galilee who brings healing to the woman so sorely afflicted. And again, the woman learns a great lesson from this traveling teacher who shows compassion and mercy to her.
The evangelist makes clear to us that the encounter was a life-changing one for the woman, her life before the meeting one of long suffering and deep despair, her life after the meeting one of awe and gratitude. Offering us details and descriptions of the woman’s life before she came face to face with the Teacher, the evangelist offers a picture of a woman at the end of her rope.
For twelve years she had suffered from an incurable hemorrhaging, probably related to menstrual bleeding. She had gone to numerous physicians, none of whom could help her, some of whom may have brought added misery to her life. The evangelist describes it in this way, “She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had.”
Hearing that the Teacher from Galilee was in the vicinity, she mustered the courage to come close to him, something that was prohibited to her because of her affliction, contact with blood rendering a person unclean according to Jewish law. Saying nothing, fearful yet desperate, the woman finds herself directly behind Rabbi Jesus, the crowd encircling them.
In that moment, she decides to touch his cloak, hoping against hope that touching the hem of his clothing will be enough to heal her. “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured,” she tells herself. So she reaches out and, hands trembling, softly touches a bit of his clothes, her fingers feeling the coarse texture of the cloth, her eyes filling with tears.
Something happened in that moment, something inexplicable and incredible, something that the evangelist explains with these few words, “She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.” Just as interesting, at the same moment, Rabbi Jesus felt something in his own body, a power going out of him, so he quickly turned around, saying to his followers, “Who has touched my clothes?”
Seeing his eyes upon her, the woman fell down before him and told him everything, explaining her years of suffering, her despair in finding healing, and her last ditch effort to find a cure by reaching out to touch his clothing. Hearing her story, the Rabbi speaks only a handful of words to her, “Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.”
That singular story, contained within a larger story of another healing, that of the synagogue leader’s young daughter, offers us many telling lessons, principal among them the power of faith, the woman’s faith clearly apparent to the Rabbi of Galilee. Yet, another lesson cannot be overlooked, even if less obvious, but no less important.
And that lesson is the power of connection, the restoration and renewal that can come to another person through a connection with Rabbi Jesus, as the one in need reaches out to the One with the power to give answer, the two forming a bond, a connection where healing and health can return to a person who has neither.
That lesson is highlighted continually in the gospels, time and again stories presented to us of people who suffer from ailments and afflictions of every type coming to Rabbi Jesus, begging, beseeching, or, as in this instance, barely breathing a word, wanting to be near the revered Teacher, putting their last ounce of trust in him, praying for a miracle.
And, as we will see each time, a connection is formed between the One who heals and the one who needs healing, a bond that provides an avenue whereby strength flows from the One to the other, the One allowing power to move from him to the one who is powerless, whether because of an illness of body, an infirmity of spirit, or an isolation from the larger community because of sin, station, or status.
Many called the Teacher a miracle worker, but, in essence, he was a healer, repairing what was broken, replacing what was lost, replenishing what was dried up and good as dead. This was the mission given to him by the high heavens, to heal a broken world, first by his words, then by his touch, always reaching out to others in their pain, offering them, not only words of comfort, but also that quintessential need of every human person, the need to be touched.
Years ago, Princess Anne of the British royal family, having served for twenty-three years as president of Britain’s Save the Children Fund and facing criticism because she had never once cuddled in her arms a suffering child, responded with these words, “It is irrelevant whether I pick them up or not.” She asked, “Have Hollywood stars succeeded any better in getting the message across by hugging a starving victim?”
Her words brutal and cynical, she apparently failed to appreciate the connection that comes to another human being, suffering and alone, when he or she is touched by someone who cares and who wants to help in any way possible. It is disheartening to see and to hear such an attitude in anyone, most especially in someone who espouses the ways of the Galilean Teacher, who himself never hesitated to touch the untouchable, to embrace the unloved, or to wipe away the tears from the unhappy.
Whenever we touch another, especially someone forlorn and forgotten and forsaken, whether by a gentle tap on the shoulder to someone hurting or a gracious embrace to a sobbing person, we are imitating the way of the Galilean who touched people. As one astute reader of the sacred texts once said, “The touch is the healing. It is not the cause of healing.”
Nowhere is this more apparent than in a hospital room, where visitors so often attempt to alleviate the pain or distress of the person in the bed with words, failing to see that the words may mean something to the brain, but mean nothing to the soul. A minister tells of the time he entered one such hospital room where a woman with cancer lay in her bed.
Entering the room, he saw that the woman had a friend there. More curiously, he saw that as the woman cried, her friend simply said, “Now, now, don’t cry. Everything’s going to be alright.” Knowing the woman’s condition, the minister realized that they both knew things were not going to be alright, that, in fact, she had every reason in the world to cry buckets of tears.
After the friend left the room, the minister pulled up a chair, sat down, and held the woman’s hand in his own. He said nothing for ten minutes. Not a word. Finally, the sick woman said to him, “You are such a comfort to me.” Not a single word spoken by the minister, but everything that needed to be said was spoken by one hand holding another hand. It was enough.
This was the way of the Teacher of Galilee, never afraid to touch the one whose body was broken, whose heart was bruised, or whose spirit was beat up. And in expressing that most human action, the act of touching, he made clear to the world that the Divine One wants to reach out and to touch us in our agony, desires that we know we are not alone in our suffering, and shows us that we can and will be restored by his divine touch.
So, for us who wish to walk the way of the Galilean Teacher, we also want to bring into the world that same healing, done not by words, but by a connection, allowing the power of love that resides without our hearts to flow outward, from our arms into the arms of the one who is desperate, despised or depressed, a power given to us by the One who brought healing to a broken world through his carpenter’s hands.
A scientist noted some years ago that there are approximately five million touch receptors in the human body, with more than two million in the hands alone. His research showed that the right kind of touch released a healing flow of chemicals in the bodies of both the toucher and the touched. He found that people got healthier even by the touch of their pets. Science is only telling us what was made clear by the Teacher of Galilee, a lesson that continually needs to be relearned by his followers if we are to bring again his gift of healing into the world. There is a healing power in gently touching the one in need.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 