Who Touched My Clothes?
For Meditation
She was an outsider. Chronically ill. She’d tried time after time to be healed, and in the process, she'd exhausted all of her money and all of her options. She was utterly desperate - until an encounter with Jesus changed everything. This unnamed woman is the subject of this week’s sermon, and I think each of us will be able to see something of ourselves in her story.
What’s been most striking to me in this passage is Jesus’ question, “Who touched my clothes?”. His question did at least two things: it called the healed woman forth and it highlighted Jesus’ mission to those who have been living life on the margins.
As we go through this week, I pray that each of us has an encounter with Jesus that brings healing, wholeness, and invitation into the family of God.
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Mark 5:24b-34
24b 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.”