Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well

 

 While He spoke these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshiped Him, saying, "My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live."  So Jesus arose and followed him, and so did His disciples.  And suddenly, a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment.  For she said to herself, "If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well."  But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, "Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well."  And the woman was made well from that hour.  When Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, He said to them, "Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping."  And they ridiculed Him.  But when the crowd was put outside He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.  And the report of this went out into all that land.

 

- Matthew 9:18-26 

 

 Yesterday we read that as Jesus was passing on after healing the paralytic, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office.  And He said to him, "Follow Me."  So he arose and followed Him.  Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.  And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"  When Jesus heard that, He said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.  But go and learn what this means:  'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'  For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."  Then the disciples of John came to Him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but Your disciples do not fast?"  And Jesus said to them, "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?  But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.  No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse.  Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined.  But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved."

 

 While He spoke these things to them, behold, a ruler came and worshiped Him, saying, "My daughter has just died, but come and lay Your hand on her and she will live."  So Jesus arose and followed him, and so did His disciples.  And suddenly, a woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years came from behind and touched the hem of His garment.  For she said to herself, "If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well."  But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, "Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well."  And the woman was made well from that hour.  When Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the flute players and the noisy crowd wailing, He said to them, "Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping."  And they ridiculed Him.  But when the crowd was put outside He went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose.  And the report of this went out into all that land.  My study Bible expresses the theological perspective that authority over life and death is in the hand of God alone (Deuteronomy 32:39, 1 Samuel 2:6).  As Christ is of one essence with the Father, He has this authority (John 5:21).  Here in the healing of the woman with the flow of blood for twelve years Christ's power to cleanse and to heal is demonstrated (see Matthew 8:1-4).  In the Old Testament, hemorrhage caused ceremonial defilement, my study Bible explains.  This imposed religious and social restrictions, as contact with blood was strictly prohibited (Leviticus 15:25).  But this suffering woman, while accounting herself to be unclean, nonetheless approaches Jesus secretly and with great faith, as Jesus remarks for all to note.  He brings her good cheer because of her faith, corrects her thinking (she couldn't hide her touch from Him, nor is she excluded from Him because of her illness), and finally He exhibits her faith to everyone, so that they might imitate her.

 

 While my study Bible expands upon the significance of the healing of the woman with the blood flow, in all Gospel accounts of this story the two healings are linked in the same narrative, as they are here.  That is, the ruler came to Jesus to seek help for his daughter who is at the point of death (in Mark and Luke, this man is identified as Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue in Capernaum).  On the way to heal the girl, Jesus is touched in the midst of the crowd by the woman with the flow of blood.  We first have to note the urgency.  Here in Matthew's Gospel, the ruler tells Jesus that his daughter has just died.  We get the sense that if Christ were to act quickly, He could revive her, bring her back even from death.  As human beings have feared throughout time, perhaps she's not dead but unconscious; that is, while the signs of death might be there, perhaps she is still alive and has a chance to survive through Christ's healing work.  Whatever the perspective, urgency is the order of the day.  And yet there is time for a stupendous healing of the woman with the blood flow, and for Jesus to remark to the crowd upon her great faith.  As Jesus arrives at the ruler's house, the mourners are already there,  the flute players and the wailing crowd are proclaiming her death and the noisy grief that follows.  They go so far as to ridicule Jesus, but He puts them outside, while He goes in and brings her back from death with the touch of His hand.  Elsewhere we're told that not only has the woman's blood flow lasted for twelve years, but the ruler's daughter is also twelve years old, so there are other poetic parallels between this older woman alone in her affliction, and the young girl just embarking upon maturity and still in her father's house.  Both are sheltered by Christ, and healed by Christ.  Both are healed with the touch of Christ.  The isolated woman, unwanted in community, approaches Christ with faith despite her unclean status.  She stealthily tries simply to touch Him in the crowd, unleashing the power in which she had such faith to begin with.  The young woman is pleaded for by her father; it is his "prayer" (as we're told he worshiped Jesus, indicating prostration before Him) that is the faith that engages Christ's healing power.  She is protected and pleaded for, while the woman with the blood flow is entirely on her own and meant to be excluded from society.  Mark's Gospel emphasizes her destitute state, saying that she "had suffered many things from many physicians. She had spent all that she had and was no better, but rather grew worse" (Mark 5:26).  This is a story not only about healing, but about the sheltering found in Christ, and especially for those with a limited agency for themselves.  Through faith, both women are healed.  Faith is the leveler here, for one of these is a young woman still under the protection of her father who could not keep her from death of his own power, and the other is a woman meant to be excluded from the community.  But it is also telling that both healing stories are of females in the society:  a young woman and an older woman, and the care with which Jesus takes time for both, the tenderness evinced in His response to the woman's faith who touched Him in the crowd, and in taking the young one by the hand to raise her up.  This is the Christ whose radical love teaches us that faith makes us close to Him, acceptable, worthy of His power on our behalf, whose compassion has brought Him into the world as our Physician.  In yesterday's reading, we read of the tax collectors, despised for their collaboration and predatory graft, who nevertheless gather to Christ in repentance.  In today's reading, we are given those who have instead suffered affliction, but who nevertheless must depend upon Christ for help.   Both the tax collector Matthew (the author of the Gospel) and the woman with the blood flow were regarded as unclean to the community, but the latter is "more sinned against than sinning" (Shakespeare, King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2).   Jesus provides a shelter in response to faith, a kind of haven from the the storms of life, and especially for those with little to no  power or agency of their own.  The single capacity they do have, the freedom that might be used to help themselves, is in the choice of faith, and it is this that connects with Christ's power to heal.  That is the message we take from the reading for today.  Whether that faith is on behalf of another (such as the daughter), or ourselves even in the most isolated state (such as the woman with the blood flow), the message is the same.  He is the place we turn when there is no where else to go midst the harassment of cares and afflictions in life.  Through Christ's sheltering love, on many levels we may find that, like the woman with the blood flow, it is our faith that has made us well.