How often have you wished you would see miracles today like we read about in the Gospels? I mean, really dramatic miracles like people being healed!
Consider the many photos of bewildered preschoolers in caps and gowns. They are so cute but it misses the point. It is no different than college grads who are glad to be done when they have just started! We always graduate not “from” but “for” what comes next! In Matthew, Jesus told the story of a woman who was chronically ill. After many years she had had adjusted her lifestyle to her illness. After Jesus healed her, what would happen next? Would she live looking backward or would she be willing to forget the past and live with her new health? Healing is more than a graduation from disease; instead it is claiming and living a new life! What next?
One of saddest of today’s watchwords is ‘whatever!” What a surrender that is! If wherever we have been doesn’t prepare us for what is next, all that we can say is “whatever” there is no center, no focus, no commitment, no passion, and no plan. There is NO FAITH! Following Jesus is much more decisive and active than that!
Think about this woman’s healing from Jesus as her education for life. Slow it down and see it as four years of high school or college; and then see how all the pieces fit together. But there was more. As she was healed another issue arose. A father had come to Jesus saying, “My little girl is near death. Hurry and help, before it is too late.” Jesus started to go, but was distracted by a great crowed.
Suddenly a middle age woman reached out to touch the back of Jesus’ robe. She was sick, but not deathly sick. She a bleeding issue and no one could find the cause or cure. It wasn’t going to kill her, but did keep her from being accepted in her community, as any bleeding rendered one “unclean.”
It took faith for her to be so bold. She brushed against his robe (just a casual touch) and suddenly she felt different. Her bleeding stopped. It was a miracle. Jesus was at a fork in the road… like triage in ER… but what a surprising choice
Before she could sneak away Jesus shouted, “Who touched me?” All looked and saw a woman who had not been with them before. She had traces of blood on her clothing! The law said anyone touching a dead body, leper, or blood was unclean. Her touch had made Jesus unclean, according to that law. She had two choices. She could run and hide, or could confess her bold action.
She chose the latter, knelt, and told Jesus what she had done. He replied, “Faith has healed you, be at peace, your disease has been cured.” What a beautiful gesture on his part!! What a powerful example of how love is stronger than law and community is more important than fear.
Just as quickly another reality hit home. Because of this detour, Jesus didn’t get to the little girl’s home before she died. (With hindsight, we know Jesus went anyway and restored the girl to life, but that is another story for another day.) Right now, stay focused on this woman. Think of her confession, “If only I can touch Jesus’ garment, I will be healed.”
She was certain of his power, and felt she only needed to get close and her life would change. No miracles of science or drug store purchases had given her any relief. Jesus’ arrival gave her hope. Such faith! But that story still has legs today, and I’ll explain how it helped me in a surprising manner.
Many years ago I underwent radiation therapy to insure residual cancer cells after surgery were destroyed. My doctor felt this necessary for complete healing. It was a scary time for me, four years after surgery, to submit to radiation. Would it work? What damage would it do? Was I going to die?
As I lay in that metal tube, for the first time, I prayed. And I remembered this story of the woman who touched Jesus’ robe. Then the noises the machine made as it started whooshing and whirring as it targeted beams of radiation to destroy the evil cancer cells are. Such irony that radiation could become a cure or how energy of invisible forces of nature was touching my brokenness. It struck me that these invisible neutrons and protons really are the source of creation itself. A gift of God!
I assumed I was in therapy to save my life … and instead God used this moment of touching and healing to grow my faith … it was like a graduate level course to move me to the next step of living. That touch of radiation, as I imagined it was for me just like that touch by a woman of Jesus’’ robe … getting as close as she could to God himself.
Such energy is part of everything that is and can unleash the incredible power of destruction or the awesome gift of haling. I thought about the “big bang” which is science’s way of saying God is the author of creation. And I remembered how a woman was healed when power flowed out of a mere touch of Jesus’ body. Mark relates Jesus felt a discharge of energy. And now a machine was bombarding my own body with energy. These thoughts became my distraction, meditation, and prayer.
Listening to the whooshing and whirring of the machine, I prayed like never before, I visualized the scene of Jesus’ and the woman and wondered what it sounded like as people rushed with Jesus to the scene of a dying girl. I thought about the sounds the woman must have heard with the wind in Jesus’ robes and his sandals scuffing the dry earth. I wondered if the whooshing and whirring of the radiation machine was similar to the noises this woman heard in the instant before she was healed! Suddenly inside that noisy radiation machine, a cold empty tomb of a tube felt safe and I felt peace!
After that, every time I went into that tube for treatment, and each time the whirring and chattering and whooshing of the machine started I remembered a woman, the sound of Jesus rushing by, an energy discharge from Jesus, and the gift of faith Jesus said was the power of this woman’s healing. That became the visualization of my prayer, and comfort and peace in the midst of what was scary and noisy and a reminder of earthly weakness. I felt God’s presence.
I hope these connections helped, as this two thousand year old account from Mark’s Gospel helped me face my fears, and brought peace every time I underwent radiation therapy. As I was surrounded by alien noises and thought of a woman who reached out as Jesus went whooshing by. For me this is a powerful reminder that the inspired words of scripture are more than words to remember but an avenue for God to breathe into us and become part of us.
I find it ironic that the same energy that created a universe and is the building block of life is what touched such a life, healed it, and made it new. I find it useful to think that I too desired to touch Jesus robe and had faith that he could make me new. I find it amazing to consider that a story from so long ago became the answer to prayer, and even the words of prayer as energy was shooting into his body … and that the energy itself was created by God.
And just as Jesus went on to his next stop and restored a little girl to life, he went on to heal a man in a radiation machine, and heals each of us through the powerful energy of Easter’s “big bang!”
Maybe some see this healing of a woman as only a story, but this is a reminder how God speaks through the words of scripture and these are all our stories as well. His love, presence, power and peace are so powerful, all it takes is a touch and life will never the same again.