Healing Hands: Bring Life Mark 5:24-34
Text: 24 So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed around him. 25 And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. 26 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. 27 When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” 29 Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.30 At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” 31 “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”32 But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. 33 Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” (NIV)
Notes:
- Illustration: In 1978, Elvis impersonator who tossed scarf to screaming ladies at county fair and they fight over it. May seem odd, but we all use artifacts, things, to connect us to important experiences in our lives.
- We gather various sorts of things around us to connect us to meaningful experiences and special people in our lives. I have a knife that belonged to my papaw, a hat that belonged to my father, and this little quilt made for me by my mother when I was a baby. They connect me to the community of the dead and living who have touched my life.
- Each one of the quilts on the altar rail connects the quilter and the recipient to one another.
- The ailing woman in our story today has struggled with her medical crisis for 12 years. She is broken and she feels alone and disconnected from God and from anything meaningful. She has spent every dime she had on doctors and is worse off than before. All she wanted was to connect to something Real to assure her that life was not all for nothing. That there is meaning and purpose.
- She heard rumors that Jesus was passing through. She thought that if she could just touch the hem of Jesus’ garment she could be healed.
- She met a crowd on the way. Just like the woman, you are not alone in your desire for the Real. Everyone is looking for something Real. (Anne Lennox: Everyody’s looking for something.) She works her way through the crowd and manages to come within reach of Jesus, but can only reach his garment.
- Jesus feels power leave Him and asks, “Who touched me?” At that moment, the woman is restored to health, because she has touched the garment that touches God. She comes closer to God and His power poured into her. Just as James said, “Draw closer to God and he will draw closer to you” (James 4:8)
- Where do we find such a cloth, such a powerful garment today? Where is that saving, meaning-producing, life-giving, health-restoring garment to be found today? That garment, that tapestry of Christ’s healing power is here in the Church. Touch, feel, sense, experience the Church – worship, music, fellowship, prayer, the word proclaimed, and these sacraments of Holy Communion – and you have touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. There is healing in the Church, because in the Church you are drawn to Christ, and in Christ is power.
- There is no other garment that you can reach out and touch, feel and experience that will bring you into the powerful presence of the Lord like the Church. “Where two or three are gathered, I am in your midst,” said our Lord.
- A lot of Baby Boomers, Generation X’ers and now Millennials have a trite phrase that goes: I’m not religious, but I am spiritual. This sounds hip on the surface. They imply that the Church is a dead institution that is no longer relevant. What they are saying is that they are going to seek their own path. They will look under every quartz rock, behind every tree and from the mouth of every guru looking for a gate to the Real, to God. But we meet God when we touch his garment. His garment is the Church. Jesus Christ uses the Church to release his Pentecost Power, like a mighty, rushing wind into the world.
- Spirituality will not draw you to God without religion. The word religion comes from the Latin ligio, which means to bind or attach (think “ligament”). The prefix “re” means again. So religion binds again, reconnects.
- You want God to be real to you? You have to reconnect to God, bind again to Him. This is the work and purpose of the Church, to reconnect you to God, to Realty. You have to reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, the Church. And then you have to fall on your knees as the woman who had been healed did, and acknowledge Jesus as the one who heals, saves and forgives.
- Now, that puts a big responsibility on you, the Church. You have to keep your garments clean. You have to keep your robes of righteousness, placed upon you at your baptism, as white as snow. That means you must, as John Wesley, said, “Do no harm. Do good. Keep the ordinances of God.” In other words, you must remain faithful to Christ and His Church. Every day, you must be Light unto the world. You must reflect Christ who lives in you. You must bear the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).
- And finally, for you who are disconnected from God, who are searching, who are lonely for God, who are lost in your sinfulness, James says, “Draw close to God and he will come near to you,” but then he adds, “Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.” Reach out in this place, and receive the power of Christ Jesus, let it flow into you and heal you and save you.
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