A New Testament Story 07-21-15

Notice how in the following New Testament story both aspects of the word are brought together. The story involves an older woman who had been experiencing bleeding and hemorrhaging for twelve years. She had gone to multiple doctors and consumed all of her finances on treatments that never worked. And to compound her predicament, her religious leaders, according to their beliefs and policy, had declared her spiritually unclean, which meant that she was banned from the synagogue and spiritual community. She could not access those meaningful religious rituals that would give her a sense of God’s acceptance. So not only was she physically debilitated, she was also emotionally, spiritually and relationally hampered, feeling both the judgment of God and community. A sorry case.

Hearing that Jesus of Nazareth, the rabbi who was whispered to be the Messiah, was healing people and was going to be passing by, she determined to at least get close enough to Him to touch His garment. “Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind Jesus and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed from that moment.” (Matthew 9:20-22, NIV)

Jesus deals with this broken woman on two levels. The word “healed” is used three times and is actually translated in two different ways. In the first instance, the woman wants to touch Jesus’ robe in order to get “healed” physically. In the second instance, when Jesus speaks to her, He says that her faith has “saved” her. And from that moment, says the story, she is “healed” and “saved.” Not only has her body been restored, so has her faith, her psyche and heart. Her physical healing has brought her into reconciliation with herself, with God and with others.

Her need is on three levels: physical health, spiritual health, and relational health. She’s not only broken and incomplete physically, she’s also broken emotionally, spiritually and relationally from a sense of rejection, judgment, failure and unworthiness. She’s in need of wholeness.

So Jesus “heals” her. He heals her body. But He also heals her heart by speaking to her (a woman!) in public, proclaiming her “shameful” problem out loud in front of that same public, and then publicly affirming her faith and new wholeness. Jesus “saves” her. And her life takes on completeness and wholeness and health in new and transforming ways. There’s never any mention of Jesus “saving” her in order to give her confidence in an afterlife. Her “salvation” on this day is all about Jesus giving her a whole new experience of life at that moment and ever after. She has been reconciled and restored.