Mark 5:24b-34

A young writer who was struggling financially went to the park one day to think.  He had been engaged to a lovely young woman for four years, but he was afraid to go ahead and get married, because he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to provide for them.  Also, he wanted to do some traveling in Europe to work on his writing, but again he was too afraid to do it, to risk leaving what security he did have without any guarantee that he would be able to earn a living somewhere else.

As he sat there thinking about all this, the young man looked up just in time to see a squirrel jump from one tall tree to another.  The little animal aimed for a branch so high that it looked like certain squirrel suicide.  The squirrel leaped out, and even though he missed the limb that he was trying to get to, he managed to land safely on a branch a few feet below it and then climb up to his intended destination.

An old man who was sitting on the other end of the bench grinned at the young writer and said, “Funny thing, I’ve seen hundreds of ‘em jump like that, especially when there are dogs around and they can’t come down to the ground.  A lot of ‘em miss, but I’ve never seen any get hurt in trying.”  He sat quietly for a moment, and then added, “I guess they’ve got to risk it if they don’t want to spend their whole lives in one tree.”

You know, sometimes I think that I would be quite content to spend my life in one tree.  If only I could find the right tree!  There is a lot of security in just staying put.  It is hard to take risks, whether it’s the risk of moving to a new town or a new job, the risk of entering a new relationship, the risk of having a child, or the risk of making a financial investment.  And yet, we can’t really go through life without taking a few risks.  Someone said,

To laugh is to risk playing the fool.  To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.  To reach out for another is to risk involvement.  To expose feelings is to risk exposing our true self.  To love is to risk not being loved in return.  To live is to risk dying.  To hope is to risk despair.  To try is to risk failure.  But risk we must, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

I like the story of the woman with the bleeding because I admire her courage in taking a risk.  This woman had been suffering from bleeding for twelve years.  While the gospel writer does not tell us what kind of bleeding, it is safe to presume that it was uterine bleeding.  This was a common illness in those days, but it was very difficult to cure.  The Talmud actually gave eleven different cures that could be tried, everything from tonics and astringents to superstitious rituals, such as carrying the ashes of an ostrich egg in a linen rag, or carrying  barley corn that had been found in the dung of a white female donkey.  The woman had no doubt tried them all, because it says that she had been to many doctors, and spent all she had, but no one had been able to cure her.

The type of illness that this woman had not only affected her physical health; it also made her continuously ritually unclean.  That meant that she could not attend synagogue services or enjoy the fellowship of friends.  She was unable to touch others or be touched, because her impurity could be transmitted to others.  Anyone who even sat in her chair would be made unclean.  A woman with this condition was a social outcast and had to live in almost total isolation.  When she dared to go out of her house, anyone who saw her coming would be sure to keep their distance from her.  I can imagine that this woman was embarrassed and ashamed, to say nothing of being weak from anemia and tired all the time.

On top of all that, from a theological viewpoint, people assumed that if a person was sick, then they must have committed some sin for which God was punishing her.  And with the kind of illness that this woman had, you can just imagine what people might have guessed her sin to be!  So there was a definite stigma attached to this particular illness in women.

And yet, when this woman heard that Jesus was coming, was in her town, she took the risk of coming out to approach him.  She knew that he had healed a demon-possessed man, and even cured a leper, another untouchable member of Jewish society.  So maybe, just maybe, there was hope for her.  Maybe Jesus could succeed where all other sources of healing had failed.  All it took was bold faith.  And so the woman decided that she would come up behind him and just touch the hem of his robe.   Maybe that would be enough.

That isn’t as crazy as it sounds.  Mark 3:10 tells us that many who suffered from illnesses pushed their way forward to touch Jesus, and Mark 6:56 says that everyone who touched him was healed, even if they just touched the hem of his garment.  So the woman came up from behind, hoping that she would not be noticed, and reached out her hand, and touched the bottom of Jesus’ robe.  And immediately the bleeding stopped.  And the woman could feel in her body that she had been made well.

Can you imagine what that felt like?  After twelve long years of suffering, her illness was cured.  Just like that.  It was gone.  And the woman turned to go home.

But then Jesus called out, “Who touched me?”  He had sensed that power had gone out from him as this woman was healed.  And he wanted to know who had been the recipient of the healing.  His disciples thought he was nuts to ask that question; with the crowd milling around, a lot of people had touched him.  But this touch was different.  And Jesus looked around him carefully to see who had touched him.

The woman was afraid to answer.  After all, she had violated Jewish piety regulations by daring to touch Jesus and had made him ritually unclean just by touching his robe.  Maybe she felt that she had stolen power from Jesus or somehow passed her illness to him.  But she finally came forward, trembling, and fell down at his feet, and told him the truth about what had happened to her.

You might wonder, why did Jesus call attention to this woman?  Why did he make her come forward?  Why didn’t he let her just go in peace?  After all, she had suffered enough humiliation and embarrassment over the past twelve years.  But Jesus had a purpose for what he did.  He called her “daughter,” to let her know that he cared about her, that she was a person who was worthy of being called the daughter of God.  He commended her for her faith, the faith that had driven her out of her home, into the crowd, and given her the nerve to reach out and touch him.  He announced publicly that she had been healed; that meant that she could be restored to the life of her community, once she had performed the required rituals to regain her purity.  She did not have to live in isolation anymore, and no one needed to be afraid to be close to her.  She was restored to normal life again.

This woman decided that it was worth the risk to go out and find Jesus and touch his robe in order to try to find healing for her illness.  She had the courage to try, because she had a hope that would not quit.  We sometime think of hope as a fragile thing.   But hope is strong and tough.  Peter J. Gomes, in his book The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, writes,

Hope is not merely the optimistic view that somehow everything will turn out all right in the end … Hope is the more rugged, the more muscular view that even if things don’t turn out all right and aren’t all right, we endure through and beyond the times that disappoint or threaten to destroy us … Hope works where nothing else does.  If we want to know how and where hope works, we should look at the most desperate places and among people who suffer, for that is where hope is both necessary and evident.

There are a lot of people out there like this woman.  They live with humiliation and shame over something in their lives, and they wonder if they can ever be healed of that.  Others live with illnesses that carry social stigma, like alcoholism, or AIDs.  Others have suffered with pain for so long that they don’t know where else to turn for help.  Still others have spent all they have on doctors and medicine and still haven’t found a cure.  Others have committed some sin that they feel they will always have to pay the price for.  These people need to have a rugged hope, they need to find the courage to risk coming to Jesus, because Jesus will offer healing and grace and wholeness to all who take that risk.

An interesting article appeared in the Nashville, Tennessee newspaper about an incident that took place in Memphis.  The headline read, “Saved By Hope.”  A woman named Hope Phillips was sitting in her car at a stop light with her husband and son one Sunday afternoon, when she saw a man drive into the water of the Wolfe River Harbor in an apparent suicide attempt.  Then she saw the man climb out onto the roof of his car.  And Hope knew that she had to do something.

She jumped from her car, ran into the water and swam out to the man, who was about 25 feet from the shore.  She used a tree branch to pull him toward the bank, and her husband helped her get him out of the water.  He told them that he was a student at the University of Tennessee.  He kept saying, “I’m not worth anything.”  Hope said to him, “You are worth something.  You’re here, aren’t you?”  Then he asked her name.  She said, “Hope.”  He asked her again, “What’s your name?”  Again she answered, “Hope.”  She repeated it again.  Then he smiled at her. And she said, “Then I knew he didn’t want to die.”  Police came and took the man to the hospital.

“Saved By Hope.”   We could put that headline over the story of the woman with the bleeding.  She had hope, and that hope gave her the courage to take a risk.  And it was worth the risk, because she left that day healed of her illness and restored to her community.

It is always worth the risk of coming to Jesus.  No matter where you are, or where you’ve been, or what you’ve done, or what you haven’t done.  Come to Jesus.  You will find healing.  You will find grace.  You will find forgiveness.  You will find acceptance.  You will find peace.  Come to Jesus.  It’s worth the risk.