As many of you are aware, I grew up in Oak Ridge. And of course, as a city founded in support of the Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge is very much a center of science and technology not just in East Tennessee, but around the world. With a population just over 25,000, there’s not tons to do in Oak Ridge, but there is a pretty impressive museum right in the center of town called the “Museum of Science and Energy.” Now, as you can imagine, as a school kid in Oak Ridge, I went on plenty of field trips to the Museum of Science and Energy. We learned about the history of our town and the making of the atom bomb. We learned about the different kinds of research being conducted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and we had the opportunity to do lots of “hands-on” science.
I remember when I was in elementary school, the museum underwent a fairly significant renovation, updating some of their displays and bringing in new ones. And one of the new things brought in at that time was this electromagnetic machine. Well, that machine quickly became the most popular attraction at the museum as far as we kids were concerned. We loved it because it made you look funny. Here’s how it worked. One or two people at a time would go up and put their hand on this electromagnetic contraption, and it would start sending electricity through the body. Eventually, the electricity would build up to the point that it made the people’s hair stand straight up on end!
Certainly, that is a very obvious example of the power of “touch.” But touch is powerful for other reasons, isn’t it? For years, psychologists tried to speculate how children might develop if they were completely cut off from human relationships. Well, tragically, they had an opportunity to observe just that in the 1980s when numerous orphanages of Ceausescu’s Communist Romania were opened to the world’s eyes after his fall from power. This dictator had mandated these bizarre social policies that had resulted in thousands of unwanted children. Many of these children ended up in vast, underfunded, state-run orphanages where they were completely isolated, often receiving no love, and in fact, no human touch at all. Sadly, although the children grew into physical human creatures, they did not become human persons. They could not speak. They could not relate to others. They could not give or receive affection. All because they had never been touched, they had never been loved.
We all know the assuring and healing power of touch in our own lives, don’t we? We know how reassuring it is for someone to hold our hand when we are trying to hold back tears. We know how comforting it is to be hugged at the end of a long, bad day. We know the joy that comes when we can greet our children and our spouse with a morning hug and a goodnight kiss. I’m sure that we have become so accustomed to touch that there are times that we don’t even think about what is happening, but if it stopped altogether, we would certainly notice, wouldn’t we? Touch really does have the power to heal us, to change us, to restore us, even to transform us. And this woman who had been bleeding for twelve years knew that.
So let’s take a moment to learn a bit more about the woman at the center of today’s passage. Like the Samaritan woman at the well last week, the Bible does not give this woman’s name. We don’t know anything about her family, but that may very well be because she has been separated from them. Her continual bleeding has made her ritually unclean, which means that she was likely separated from her family, not to mention the rest of society, and lived in some sort of community outside the bounds of her town. Matthew’s statement that she “had spent everything she had without getting any better” would imply that she was a woman of a least some means, but who was made poor in all her efforts to get better. Without a doubt, we can conclude that this woman is desperate to end her affliction. She wants to stop the physical pain and suffering, but I’m sure she is also ready to be a part of society again; to fetch water at the well with the other women, to fix meals for her children or family, and to sleep in the same house as her husband each night. Could you imagine how you might feel if you were suffering from such an illness, and your family couldn’t even be near you to take care of you and comfort you in your pain? You’d be anxious to get well, too!
I imagine that by the time we meet this woman, she is to the point where she is willing to give anything a try in an effort to quite literally “stop the bleeding.” And she has gotten word that this healer named Jesus is coming to town. Of course, everyone else in town has gotten the word, too, and as Jesus makes his way through town, the crowds press in around him, with the woman is right among them. It doesn’t matter that walking around probably causes her a great deal of discomfort. It doesn’t matter that she is not even supposed to be among these people, much less touching them as the crowd presses together. She is a total outcast, but none of these things stop the woman; she knows that if she can just place one finger on even the hem of Jesus’ garment, her bleeding will stop. This, my friends, is faith at the highest level.
The writer of Hebrews teaches us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” If we put that statement into this story from Matthew, what we might see is that faith is the KNOWLEDGE of things hoped for. This woman KNOWS that if she can get just that one touch, it will be the only touch she needs, the touch that will stop the bleeding, the touch that will cure her physical malady, and restore her to society. This is the touch, she knows, that will finally heal her. And when she touches Jesus, immediately, her bleeding stops. In the same moment, Jesus feels the power go out of him, and he turns to see who has touched him.
That’s pretty amazing isn’t it? This woman’s faith was so strong that Jesus felt the power of it when she touched him! Indeed, it was the power of God in Jesus that healed the woman, but faith was the channel through which Jesus’ power worked. Her faith was so strong that she knew that if she could just get to Jesus, he would take care of the rest. And so she pushed aside all the religious law, all the social conventions, as she made her way toward Jesus. It didn’t bother her as she pushed through the crowd, touching those around her, that she was making them ritually unclean; she knew that was just a minor inconvenience compared to her suffering. So she pressed forward, reaching for her final hope, with the sure knowledge that if she could just touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, she would be made well.
Do you have that kind of faith? Is your faith so strong that it doesn’t shy away when confronted by law, or by social expectations, or even by discouraging and doubtful voices? I’ll just be honest with you all in saying that I’m not there yet in my faith. There have been countless times in my life when my faith in Christ has compelled me to act but I simply have not because the law (religious or otherwise) has told me that I will get in trouble. I have not acted because society has told me that I was just being selfish, or that I would only stir up trouble. And so my faith wavered. It happens to all of us at times. But this woman with the hemorrhage exhibits a completely different kind of faith, and it’s a faith that every one of us needs to emulate.
Now, the challenge here, of course, is that we get this message that if our faith is strong enough and we follow Christ in complete faith, then our greatest hopes and desires will be fulfilled: our illnesses will be made well, our financial problems will be solved, there will be a roof over our heads and food on our tables, our children will be happy and healthy. But we all know that things don’t always work out that perfectly in our lives, even when we are praying fervently and in total faith. Our loved ones die despite their faith and all the faithful prayers lifted on their behalf. We lose our jobs in the to cut backs, even after thirty years of faithful service and impeccable integrity on the job. Our children give in to peer pressure, they waste away under the influence of drugs, and the repeated trips to rehab only solve the problem temporarily. Life goes on, even when we hope for the best, even when we follow Christ in full, complete devotion.
And here’s what we need to know from this woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. When life goes on, when it seems that our faith is getting us nowhere, we have to keep pressing on anyway. We have to stay rooted in our faith even still. Without being swayed or detracted by the pressures of the world around us, we have to pursue Christ with all that we have and all that we are. Sometimes, such faith will deliver exactly what we had been hoping for, and we will once again receive that wonderful reassurance. But sometimes, things will happen in a different way. We will be hurt, we will be sad, we will be tempted to abandon faith altogether. Yet there is another lesson from this story of the bleeding woman. If we can keep the faith, in all things, then Christ has the power not only to answer our greatest hopes and dreams sometimes, but to carry us through in those times when everything falls apart.
We may not be able to physically touch Christ in the same way as the hemorrhaging woman, but if we will follow her faithful example in our own lives, then Christ’s power will touch us in the most amazing and wonderful ways.
That’s the power of faith. Thanks be to God.
