“A HEALING TOUCH”

A Sermon by Rev. Kristin Sundt

June 15, 2008

Text: Mark 5:25-3

PBS, which aired a program about Chronic Illness in America back in 2001, defines chronic illness as “a condition that lasts a year or longer, limits activity, and may require ongoing care. More than 125 million Americans have at least one chronic condition, such as diabetes, cancer, glaucoma, and heart disease. Nearly half as many have more than one chronic condition. People with different chronic conditions face common problems, including high medical costs that are often not covered by insurance, leading to enormous bills that can mean bankruptcy for some families. Complicating the financial issues confronted by family caregivers is the difficulty in keeping a job or even working at all.”1.

Chronic Illness Alliance in Australia prefers this definition of chronic illness:" it is an illness that is permanent or lasts a long time. It may get slowly worse over time. It may lead to death, or it may finally go away. It may cause permanent changes to the body. It will certainly affect the person's quality of life."2.

In our Bible text today we meet a woman who has been ill for 12 years. She most likely is suffering from an abnormal menstrual flow. She is struggling with a chronic illness, a difficult fate in itself. Because of her continual menstrual flow she is also considered ritually unclean according to the purity laws in Leviticus chapter 15. This means that everything she touches becomes unclean. Anyone who accidentally shares some common space with such a person also becomes unclean. To be restored back to the community, a person who is unclean has to go through purification rituals; but as long as the woman is bleeding, she is considered unclean.

Like many people with a chronic illness this unnamed women has been under the care of many doctors. Their treatments have not made her any better; she is actually worse off and her money has been used up to pay for all the medical care she has received. She must have been a woman of some means, now there is no money left.

Women in Jesus’ time were expected to be accompanied by a man in public. This woman has no man to represent her. She is also unclean because of her prolonged menstrual flow and is not a person likely to be out in public. These social and religious barriers do not deter a courageous and desperate woman. She has heard about Jesus and is determined that he is able to help her. She does not try to engage Jesus in a public way like others who are cured by him in the New Testament; she simply decides it is enough to touch Jesus’ clothes. This part of the text has a magic undertone not easily understood by us today. However, it is interesting to note that Jesus plays a rather passive role in this healing. Jesus doesn’t make a conscious decision to heal this woman; he heals her through a touch initiated by her.

Touch is an important part of all our lives. We cannot live without it. Babies need to be cuddled and held to grow and develop normally. You may remember the children in orphanages in Romania a few years back who were deprived of human touch and left to fend for themselves, and the terrible consequences of such neglect on the children. Children & youth need to be shown appropriate affection and touch in order to grow up to be harmonious and productive adults. Adults, too, can benefit from human touch through a handshake, arm around the shoulder or a hug especially when facing difficult or happy occasions. Though nothing can substitute for human care and contact, pet ownership can provide health benefits to an older adult, especially if he or she is socially isolated and has few family members and friends. You may remember the phrase used by AT&T in one of their commercials a while back: “Reach out and touch someone”.

Even our Sunday morning worship services allow for touch through the time in the service called Passing of the Peace. This is when we extend the Peace of Christ to fellow church goers and we have the opportunity to great one another. Ann Weems has written a poem called Touch in Church in her book Reaching for Rainbows: 

“What is all this touching in church?
It used to be a person could come to church and sit in the pew
and not be bothered by all this friendliness and certainly not by touching.
I used to come to church and leave untouched.
Now I have to be nervous about what's expected of me.
I have to worry about responding to the person sitting next to me.
Oh, I wish it could be the way it used to be;
I could just ask the person next to me: How are you?
And the person could answer: Oh, just fine,
And we'd both go home ... strangers who have known each other for twenty years.
But now the minister asks us to look at each other.
I'm worried about that hurt look I saw in that woman's eyes.
Now I'm concerned, because when the minister asks us to pass the peace,
The man next to me held my hand so tightly I wondered if he had been touched in years.
Now I'm upset because the lady next to me cried and then apologized
And said it was because I was so kind and that she needed
A friend right now.
Now I have to get involved.
Now I have to suffer when this community suffers.
Now I have to be more than a person coming to observe a service.”

Ann Weems ends her poem by saying that “All this touching in church” – “it’s changing me” 3

The woman who had been chronically ill for 12 long years with a bleeding disorder was healed by touching Jesus. She no longer is a social outcast and is restored back into society. Jesus now calls her “daughter” and tells her that her faith has healed her. Homiletic professor Kathy Black is in her book Healing Homiletic, Preaching and Disability of the opinion that “the woman’s actions may have been motivated by sheer desperation rather than by faith.” An interesting way of looking at this text don’t you think?

It is not hard to understand that desperation can set in if a person is left to suffer for years with no end in sight. Not only was this woman physically ill, she also was excluded from participating in society. Everything of value had been taken away from her. There was nothing left. Another person in a similar situation may have given up or turned away from religion all together, the women in our Bible Story today somehow had the notion that Jesus could make things different. She defied the rules given by society and had the audacity to touch Jesus without his knowledge. It must have taken a lot of courage to do what this woman did. Jesus was her last and only hope.

We may not experience a cure like this woman in the Bible, who had suffered for years with a chronic illness. We will most likely continue to struggle with illness and other challenges as they come our way. God’s promise to us is that we are not alone. We belong to God, who touches us in many tangible ways. God claims us as sons and daughters; and through meeting God in places like Sunday morning worship including the Passing of the Peace, we experience healing and wholeness in spite of our physical limitations and circumstances. Through being “touched” by God we are equipped to do God’s work on earth. Go in peace! Amen

1. "Who Cares: Chronic Illness in America" aired on PBS, November 2001.
2. Chronic Illness Alliance website http://www.chronicillness.org.au/
3. Ann Weems: Reaching for Rainbows p.35
4. Kathy Black: A Healing Homiletic, Preaching and Disability p.157