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June 11, 2008 Who Touched
Me? On a recent
“get to know you” questionnaire for a group I am a part of, the
question was-
Besides Jesus, what person from the Bible do you hope to meet soon
after you
get to Heaven? Hmm, I went to my short list, which is not very much
shorter
than my long list. I figure there will be plenty of time. Jairus and
his daughter are on the list. When I was little, this was one of my
favorite
Bible stories. It was a very cool “Jesus raising someone from the dead”
story
in that it involved a little girl, and was way better than the Lazarus
story,
since one main point always brought forward in the Lazarus story was
that he
was stinky. You probably know the story of Jairus and his daughter: A
little
girl gets very sick. Her Daddy goes to seek out Jesus to come and heal
her.
Jesus says He will come to the house and heal her, but before he gets
there,
the servants come with the news that the little girl has died. Jesus
comes
anyway. The mourners are wailing and carrying on, as was the custom.
Jesus
tells them the little girl is just sleeping, and shoos the crowd off.
He takes
a few of His closest disciples with the parents into the girl’s room.
She is
definitely dead (but no mention of smelly). Jesus wonderfully and
simply takes
the girl by the hand and says, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” She
immediately gets up, starts to walk around, and goes and eats raisin
cakes with
her parents. I definitely want to visit with her and her parents when I
get to
Heaven. However,
tucked within that account of the miraculous, is the story of someone I
want to
meet first. The story is almost missed, a “by the way” kind of account.
Jesus
is on His way to Jairus’ home when this event happens. It is recorded
in
Matthew 9:20-22, Mark 5:24-34, and Luke 8:42b-48. Ever since I saw a
dramatization of this scripture by the King’s Daughters, at a retreat
many
years ago, I have wanted to visit with the woman with the “issue of
blood,” who
touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. Her story is brief. There are many
things we
do not know about her, but she received healing from the Lord, and the
things
we do know are important. This woman
had a severe physical problem. It was chronic. Many of us can identify
with her
right there. This physical ailment was also persistently untreatable.
She had a
hemorrhage for 12 years. Bible scholars link this to a female issue,
which
would have affected her socially and emotionally, in addition to
physically.
She must have been completely worn out. Not only had the problem been
lingering
for 12 years, but she had also exhausted all of her resources on
various
doctors and treatments, of which none worked. Luke 8:43 says, “She
could not be
healed by anyone”, with a footnote that some manuscripts add, “who had
spent
all her living on physicians”. Mark 5:25 says that this woman “had
endured much
at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all she had and was not
helped
at all, but rather had grown worse.” Can anyone relate? A stubborn
illness wearing her down physically, crippling her emotionally and
socially,
she must have been a wreck. Yet, she had the courage and faith to be
out in the
street that day. What moved her to be there? Perhaps she was in town to
go to
the market. Was she going to visit a friend in her condition? Was she
on yet
another trip to a physician to see if there might still be any hope for
her?
Mark 5:27 says that the woman heard about Jesus. We do not know when
she heard
about Him. It may have been days or weeks before that day; it may have
been
just minutes previous to her bold encounter with Him, but she heard
that Jesus
was a miracle worker from God, and she must have identified Him as her
last
great hope. After hearing about Him, and seeing the great crowd, she
must have
had a moment of decision in which her desperate need drove her to push
her way
through the crowd to get to the One who held her hope. The scripture
says that she thought to herself- If I can just TOUCH the EDGE of His
garment,
I will get well. She didn’t have to have a big encounter with Jesus.
She didn’t
have to stop Him in His important comings and goings. She didn’t have
to make a
scene. If she could just touch the edge of His clothing. Notice the
attitude in
which she came was one of absolute faith and trust. She did not think
to
herself- maybe He can do something; maybe He will be able to help me;
maybe he
will be willing to point me in the right direction. She confidently
believed,
if I can just touch His garments, I WILL get well (Matthew 9:21), I
WILL BE
SAVED (Mark 5:28). No doubt about it. Well, she did
manage to maneuver through the crowd. She came up behind Him and
touched the
hem of His garment, His outer cloak, and immediately was healed. Oh happy day! What an
instant relief this
woman received. She was free at last of this dreadful malady! Then, Jesus suddenly stops
and turns around.
Uh, oh. “Who touched me,” He says. The disciples assess the crowded
situation
and incredulously ask Jesus, Do you see this crowd? Everyone is
elbowing
around. Everyone is pressing against everyone. You are asking who
touched you?
Everyone is touching you! Jesus persists. He knows. He sees the woman,
and
again puts the question out there- who touched me? We don’t know the
tone of
His voice or His stance when He asked the question, but we do know that
He stopped
what he was doing, stopped everyone in his or her tracks and asked
until He got
an answer. I think He looked at the crowd with those compassionate, yet
all
knowing eyes, and very calmly posed His question. He knew. He was
giving her a
chance to know also. Matthew 8:22
says Jesus turned and saw her. Mark 5:32 says Jesus “looked around to
see the
woman who had done this.” She was anonymous no more. Perhaps after all
her
doctor visits, she felt as though she was just another patient, just
another
person in a sea of faces dealing with what life handed her. But Jesus
turned
and saw her. He saw her. The account in Luke 8 reveals that she saw,
too. Verse
47 states that “when the woman saw that she had not escaped notice,
(Remember,
she just wanted to touch the clothes, be healed, and be gone) she came
trembling and fell down before Him, and declared in the presence of all
the
people the reason why she touched Him, and how she had been immediately
healed.” Our little woman, who had already suffered so much, now came
trembling
before the crowd to be further humiliated by explaining why she had
touched Him
in addition to what happened when she did. But Jesus
erases all hints of humiliation or judgment. He raises her with His
words and
says, “Daughter, (Oh, what a tender term of endearment) your faith has
made you
well, (which translated literally means saved you) go in peace and be
healed of
your affliction. Jesus confirms her healing and salvation to her and
tells her
to go in peace. Wow. This
encounter is an example to us, also. Jesus was this woman’s last great
hope. He
is ours, too. We go through our lives trying to find happiness and hope
and
fulfillment in living life, but until we find all those things in Jesus
and our
relationship with Him, we really have no life. Like this woman, we have
to push
through the crowd to get to Jesus, to connect with Him. Our crowd that
we need
to push through may not be physical people. We may have to push our way
through
the busyness of work, the conflict of ideas and thought patterns, the
ridicule
and/or rejection of friends and relatives, or any of a myriad of other
things
that “crowd” us away from a close relationship with Jesus. We must be
persistent and reach Him. In reaching
out to Jesus, we must believe that He is our answer. He is our hope. He
will
make us whole. He is what we have been looking for. Remember what the
woman had
already settled in her heart- if I can just touch His clothes, I will
be saved.
After we do reach Him and receive salvation and healing, we are called
upon to
admit it. When Jesus stopped everything, He was giving her a chance to
tell
what had happened. She had a personal experience with the Lord. She had
a
personal encounter with Jesus, and she had to admit it. So do we. It is
comfortable and convenient to have encounters and experiences with
Jesus in our
everyday lives and keep silent about them. When we first come into
relationship
with Him, it is often difficult to be silent about it. We are suddenly
and
finally free. We have to tell. Everything. As long time Christians,
however, we
have a tendency to keep our everyday miracles (ha!) to ourselves. Why?
Do we
think that only we will think they are miraculous? Do we fear being
laughed at?
Put down? Do we come as the woman did, with trembling? Afraid we are
somehow in
trouble for encountering the Lord? Jesus
searches the crowd. He sees us and He asks- who has had an encounter
with me?
Stand up and be counted. In big encounters and small encounters. They
are all
miraculous when they come from God’s hand. Revelation says that it is
by the
testimonies of how God is at work in our lives, the words of our daily
testimonies, that we overcome the accuser of the brethren. We need the
testimonies to overcome Satan’s accusations of the Body. Who touched
Me? Who has been
touched by Jesus? That’s whom I want to visit with. That’s whom the
world needs
to hear from. People are perishing all around us for lack of hearing
who has
touched and been touched by Jesus. The woman had to recount why she
needed
Jesus. So do we. Oh no… do I have to tell why I needed help? I can’t.
Do you
think it was easy for the woman with the “issue of blood” to tell her
story?
She had to tell it to the whole multitude. How else will someone in our
previous or a similar condition be able to have hope? If He did this
for me, He
can do it for you. Be bold. Be courageous. Let the word of your
testimony be
what helps someone else within the Body overcome; or outside the Body
come to
salvation and silences the accuser. |
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