Mark 5:24-34

Mark 5:24-34 A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

“Who touched my clothes?” There was a large crowd around Jesus that day, just as there is a large crowd of people everywhere we go here on Earth. I believe most of Earth's dwellers see God in some way or other as just too big to be touched in an intimate way. For them, if there is a God, how can we really know him. He is just too big to know. How can anyone know the God of existence, for even a small amount of knowledge about the trillions of galaxies, and the trillions of stars within them, and the trillions of light years between the heavenly bodies declares that God is too big to be touched, too big to be intimate, too big to be known. I believe that is where most people live. The religiously uninvolved pretty much go their own way day-by-day, without attempting involvement with an unknowable God. On the other hand, many religious communities derive meaning and connection with this unknowable God by performing ritualistic ceremonies. Through these daily, weekly, yearly perfunctory ceremonies they satisfy their religious requirements to please this distant deity. Even Christians sometimes get into the mode of attending church and performing specific rituals to please this distant God.

But Jesus said, “Who touched my clothes?” Who is asking something from me, believing that I can and will give it to her? Who is in this crowd that REALLY believes I am the God of the universe and I WISH TO DO WELL for her? Jesus knew that some of his creative power went out of him. Some of his power to create the universe, the galaxies, the stars, went out of him. When the woman came forward, Jesus didn't say "woman" or "person", He called her "daughter." He could have called her "child," for those who move into a relationship of faith with the One that the world sees as the unknowable God, move into a family relationship with God himself. Because of their faith, they reflect the image of God; therefore, they are readily seen by God himself as "daughter", "son," or "child" in the family of God. We Christians are those people, his beloved family. We have moved beyond knowing the unmovable God as just the Great Creator, The Beginning of All Life, The Existence. We have moved into a place of relationship with the God of the universe. WE HAVE MOVED INTO THE RELATIONSHIP OF CALLING GOD, "ABBA FATHER." I know sometimes during trials or struggles, we may find it hard to imagine that we have a heavenly Father who truly cares about our circumstances, but that is our reality and that is why we have life within us. Christ came to dwell within those who would believe that He is and accept him by faith. As surely as Abraham was chosen to carry God's message to the world, so are we, who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord, chosen to carry this message that God himself has come down to earth to save and to heal the land. Yes, there were many people around Jesus that day, for there were many in the crowd, but there was only one that touched his hem, believing that the God of the universe had come to restore her. She left in peace, freed from her suffering.