students of jesus

There was a woman who was healed of a continual flow of blood for twelve years, and everything we know about her came to us because Jesus stopped to hear her story.

Here it is in full, but I’m only interested in eight words.

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.” (Mark 5:24-34)

Here are the eight words: “trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.” If Jesus had not stopped and discovered this woman, she would have gone home healed—and we would be none the wiser. But he stopped. He looked for her, and kept on looking, and he drew the woman to our attention. And we heard her story.

The gospel narrative gives us the details of her life up front, but in fact it happened the other way around. No one knew her story until he asked. The woman made a bold reach for Jesus. The healing happened. Then he stopped and listened, and we learned. Have you ever wondered why Jesus—on his way to help a dying girl—stopped in his tracks and demanded to know her story?

He healed more than her body. This woman lived at the margins of society until Jesus drew her away from shame and isolation. He pulled her to the center of the crowd, and in so doing made us listen as well. It would have been easier for us if we heard about the healing in passing (“That’s nice: some lady got healed.”). We needed the back story because we are so often unaware of the suffering: 12 years of chronic bleeding, bouncing from doctor to doctor, spending all her money, and living with the shame. We didn’t know—nor would we have cared unless Jesus made us listen. We needed healing as well, an empathy transplant.

In his final gesture Jesus turned the attention away from himself to the woman. The healing virtue flowed from Jesus, but he reframed the healing from his power to her faith. “Daughter, your faith has healed you.” Really? Most of us only saw a desperate woman. He called her Daughter, which connected her again with God’s great family. He sent her away in peace, freed from suffering—a suffering none of us would have seen if he had not stopped. And we all went away healed in one way or another.