Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment. – Matthew 9:20-22
For so many years she had been isolated. The term “unclean” merely added to her already pronounced sense of loneliness and self loathing. Her friends were distant and her money dwindling. She felt so alone, so desolate, so unloved.
It had gone on and on for about 12 years, she estimated. She had spent money on doctors, on herbs, on advice. Nothing worked. She wavered between hope and bitter defeat, an endless cycle of excitement, then fear, then crushing despair. And she just knew that the people in her life grew tired of listening to her plight, to the ongoing saga of all of it. She hated the curse of her body that made and kept her alone.
There was nothing else she could do. The only one left to hear her was God. And so, she prayed. Even though His voice seemed to remain silent, she prayed. As she prayed she remembered Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah, who remained barren until one day God answered their cry. But they were not unclean. “Do prayers work for the impure as well?” she wondered.
She felt filthy. She beat her breast and wept before Him so many times in those desolately long 12 years. And yet she continued to pray. And one day she got an answer.
It wasn’t the answer she expected. The answer was hard. Very hard. She, an unclean woman, was told to look for a crowd of Jews somewhere by the lakeshore. Go, and she would know what to do. She knew she couldn’t do that. She would be caught. She would make everything around her as filthy as she was. It made no sense. But the answer persisted in her head, nagging and tugging at her anguished heart.
She remembered Esther, who didn’t know if she would die if she faced the king, but did so anyways. She thought of the obedience of Abraham when he was called to sacrifice Isaac. Maybe their answer made no sense, either. Maybe she needed to trust her answer. Maybe she needed to have faith. She decided she would go.
She slunk out of her dwelling that day, certain she would be caught. Somehow, there were no people around when she snuck out of her door. Only a couple of donkeys and a few goats idly watched her as she scrambled to the path leading to the lake. There was no one on the path leading to the lake, either. She rounded the curve, then saw why. A crowd had gathered on the lakeshore and in the center stood a man. The crowd had gathered around Him. And the moment she looked at Him, she knew exactly what she needed to do.
The crowd no longer existed. The repercussions of being unclean no longer mattered. In that moment, there was only Him and her. There was no question in her mind. He was the answer to her prayer. Somehow she knew that to reach out to Him would be to touch God. She simply must.
She crept to the periphery of the crowd, expecting it to part like the Red Sea before her. Of course, it didn’t. She launched herself into the swarm of tightly packed people who seemed desperate to be near this man. She squirmed and squeezed and made it closer, closer, only to see Him begin to move away from her. With one last desperate move she made it to the direction He would be passing.
Suddenly, she came to herself for a moment. “What am I doing here?” she thought, “I can’t just ask him to heal my bleeding!”. But she just knew He could.
Her plan came almost as soon as her thought. She knew she could not stand before Him, but she could kneel. As she had done so many times in prayer. And as she knelt, for a second she would touch; she would hold onto the Anointed of God. As He began to pass her, she grabbed for the hem of His cloak, her mind a swirl of confusion, desperation and hope.
However, as she reached for Him, her jumble of feelings suddenly evaporated and became something else, singular and absolute: the steely resolve of complete and unshakable faith.
He stopped abruptly.
“Who touched me?” He asked.
She knew He meant her. She knew He knew about her. She was soiled, unclean. And she had violated Jewish law in the worst way, touching this man, the cleanest, most pure human that had ever walked the earth. Her mere presence defiled Him and everyone around Him. She waited for His anger and the crowd’s anger to erupt in violence towards her.
As He looked toward her, she blurted out the truth in trembling and between her tears. Or rather, she confessed to Him about the bleeding. He already seemed to know about her prayers somehow. As if He had heard them Himself. And then He did the very last thing she expected.
He smiled at her.
Then He gently said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (Mark 5:34)
He smiles in the same way at our desperate prayers. In both our humble and seemingly inconsequential needs and our radical life changing moments, He awaits our prayer. He rejoices when we reach out to Him in our fervent hope and our deep distress. He has joy when we ask Him to take our burdens from us. He longs to wipe away our tears. To carry our anxieties. He awaits for us to trust Him fully. When we have complete, full, unshakable faith in Christ alone, I believe it makes Him smile. But when we waver, I also believe He welcomes our hesitant, trembling touch on the hem of His cloak. And He smiles at us.
Written by Janet Keefe
