The Man Born Blind

I am sure you have heard the term ‘spirituality’ and we know it is an important part of our lives as followers of Jesus. We are to be spiritual beings and that process of being spiritual is called ‘spirituality’. But I wonder if we really understands what that means? What does it mean to call ourselves ‘spiritual’ and what does that look like as we continue to strive to live our lives as Christ calls us to live.
There is a trend in our society today, especially by young people, to call themselves ‘spiritual but not religious’. It is a term generated near the beginning of this century as people were leaving the church in droves. However they didn’t want to be seen as anti-God or anti-Jesus, so they started this phrase to recognize they still believed in God, but they didn’t feel the necessity to associate themselves with any sort of organized religion or church. The term was then expanded to include those people who saw their spirituality not just as a matter between them and God, but also in art and literature and science. But is spiritual but not religious saying really in line with the teachings of Jesus as so many who adopt this mantra claim?
Listen to these words from the Apostle Paul from the book of Romans:
"Therefore I urge you by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."
Paul tells us that being spiritual means to present ourselves as a living sacrifice which is our ‘spiritual service’. So Paul is telling us that being spiritual means to be willing to submit ourselves to the teachings of Jesus so that we can be so transformed that we don’t have to actively think about the will of God as we live each day and make our decisions. Now, I admit, that is really hard. To become so changed that we react with the mind of Christ in the situations around us - but that is what spirituality is all about. It is not some inner peace or being attuned with ourselves - in fact it is the opposite it is not peaceful at all. We have all struggled with that idea of doing what we know God is telling us to do and not wanting to do it.
The prophet Micah reminds us: On the other hand I am filled with power—
With the Spirit of the Lord— That applies to you. You are filled with power - the real power of God. If you are like me, however, you don’t often feel that way. Filled with power….
I was an electrician before I retired and more than once I was really filled with power as I touched something I shouldn’t have and the power knocked me across the room! So if you think about the power of electricity and what it can allow things to do, the power from God we are talking about works in much the same way. A machine when plugged in to the electric that sits there idling , apparently doing nothing, can do amazing things when you need it- and when you remember that you are sitting there idling until you need that power that resides within you, you can do things you never thought were possible. That is our spirituality - that recognizing of what is within us to help us as we carry out the will of God for our lives.
How do you do that? What can we do to help ourselves recognize the power within us? What can we do to really believe we have that spiritual ability to do God’s will? It is pretty simple - and pretty much the opposite of what the ‘spiritual but religious’ folk think. As you are doing it right now. You have come to this place of worship. You are gathering with this community of faith - you together are praying and reading scripture and talking with one another and sharing your prayer concerns and hearing as God speaks to you through these words. In Ephesians we read: from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.


Our Presbyterian Book of Order reminds us that one of the great ends of the church is the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God.
Sometimes the only way we recognize our spirituality is because someone else recognizes it within us and and points it out to us. What a great joy it is to hear that someone sees the spirit of Christ within you and that you hear that and it becomes a part of you. Through you, God can affirm the spiritual nature of those around you so don’t ever be hesitant in saying to someone else what you recognize in them. That is one of the reasons we are here together as the church.
We can see this as we talk today about another of those people Jesus meets as he travels through the three years of his ministry. So far we have learned about the Woman who touched his robe, and about Nicodemus and about Mary Magdalene and today we get to meet a guy who was born blind.
Jesus is, as he always is throughout all the gospels, traveling down the road. The disciples were with him and he sees a man who was born blind. The disciples ask Jesus a question that dealt with a common belief of that day - which is that any type of physical infirmity was the result of sin either by the person or if it happened at birth often by the parents. So the disciples wanted to know why this guy was blind - did he sin or did his parents? Jesus very calmly says “Neither sinned to cause this - but I am going to use his affliction to teach a very important lesson.”
Jesus goes over to the man who was sitting beside the road, most likely begging because that is about all you could do to support yourself if you had any type of handicap. He bends down and makes a poultice with mud and saliva, which apparently was a common medical practice during that time, puts it on the mans eyes and tells him to go wash it off. The man does as he is told and when the mud comes off the man can see.
You would think there would be a lot of rejoicing in the community over the healing of this man. But no…… first people denied it was the man that they knew and others were skeptical that it even happened and others were just a little afraid of this new development. The man who was blind but now could see quickly assured everyone that yes he was the man who had been blind and this miracle had happened because of what Jesus had done for him.
The people then drag the now seeing man to the Pharisees where the former blind man had to tell his story again. The Pharisees, like everyone else were not sure this was real. They keep asking questions, like a prosecuting attorney, hoping to slip someone up so they can declare this a falsehood. The Pharisees wanted to do whatever it took to make sure Jesus would not get any credit for doing a miracle. They were intent on discrediting Jesus’ ministry and when there were obvious signs like this man who had been healed, the Pharisees tried everything in their power to find a way to trip this once-blind guy up so that they could prove his story wrong. They even went to the extreme of going and getting his parents to identify him
Now the parents reaction is rather interesting….. while they do acknowledge that this man was their son and they do acknowledge that he was born blind, but they will not say he has been healed. They will not give him any backing or any support.
So think about this man who had been born blind. Here he is - he has been blind his whole life, Jesus heals him and everyone around him gives him grief about it. There isn’t a single person in this story who is glad for him or really even believes his story. Yet the former blind man will not back down. He continues to give Jesus the credit for his healing and finally he is just thrown out.
What a great example for us of the concept of spiritual blindness. The people around this healed man, his parents, the religious leaders all refuse to accept the reality of Jesus Christ - even though they have proof right in front of them. They are blind to what Jesus can do. And the healed man shows us what a spiritual understanding of Jesus can do. Can you imagine the courage it took for this newly sighted man to continue to stand there and testify when everyone around him was denying what happened.
That is what the power of Christ within us can do. We can have that same courage, that same conviction as this man Jesus encountered one day by the side of the road.
Spirituality is knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that God lives within you and that God will help you in every situation to be the one who can tell others what Jesus has done for you. As we talked about last week with Mary Magdalene, that is all Christ asks us to do. To be willing to tell others your story about what God has done for you and God give us the spirit to give us the ability to do just that!

Amen.

Mary Magdalene

In the book of John we hear Jesus saying: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit”. I don’t know how much thought you might have given to that particular passage, but it is one of the important passages from Jesus to help us understand who we are - as individuals and as a church. So I want to take a minute and have us think about what those words of Jesus mean to us and our lives as people of God.
First, we all need to understand those verses apply to us. All of us - each of us. Jesus chose you. Everyone one of you. No one here this morning can say, “Well, maybe so and so, but not me.” And then you will think of a list of reasons why Jesus could not have chosen you - I”m not good at anything; I’ve committed and continue to commit a bunch of sins; I’m not really worth much; I’m not very smart; I don’t have much money; But none of those excuses will work. God chose you and you want to know what is even more interesting about that? There is nothing you can do about it. Once Jesus has chosen you, you can’t say “No. Not me. I’ll pass Jesus. Thanks for the offer but I don’t think so….”. Impossible. To be perfectly honest whether you do anything with it or not, you are chosen by God or you wouldn’t be here.
Jesus chose us to belong to him. The Apostle Paul follows up with the statement from 1 Corinthians: But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are,  so that no one may boast before him. I admit when I read this what I hear is God calling us foolish and weak and lowly and despised. Not terms I think any of us would like to be called - but those are probably along the lines of what you were thinking about yourselves when I suggested you think of all those reasons why God surely didn’t call you to be his……
But think about what Paul is really saying…. God chose us because we aren’t the cream of the crop; because we aren’t the ones in power or the ones who are capable. Remember the conversation God had with Moses when God told Moses that he was going to go back to Egypt to free the Hebrews? Moses listed all the reasons why he couldn’t do it - all the ways Moses wasn’t up to the task and God sent him anyway. There are a bunch of other examples - Isaiah whom God chose to be a prophet who declared he was too big of a sinner to work for God and God sent him to do the work anyway or Jeremiah who declared he was too young to work for God and God sent him anyway - and we could go on and on.
So you who are weak and lowly and foolish are the very ones God wants - and why? Because you can’t do it on your own. Simple. In order to live out the call on your lives placed there by God you have to rely on God. God calls you and you say you can’t do it and God says “Do it anyway - but don’t worry because I will help you!” And I guarantee you he will. But what he wants from you is not only to do what he asks, but to give him the credit. “How did you do that?” someone says, and you respond “Because God helped me.” Simple, easy, direct.
Back to what Jesus said: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit. Don’t make it complicated. Jesus chose you, asks you to be obedient and then to ‘bear fruit’. Which simply means you do what Jesus asks and you give him credit. You don’t have to evangelize or know a bunch of Bible facts or be a saint - you just do what God asks you and you give God credit when presented with the opportunity.
Now this does not only apply to each of you as individuals, but as to us collectively as a church. We are a small church and one of the traps small churches fall into is this feeling that we are too few to be able to do anything significant; we are too small to make a difference in the world. We look at bigger churches around us and think - “We can never be like them’. And you are exactly right. We can never be like them because we are who we are - we are a congregation chosen by God to be

obedient and to give God credit. And if God chose us then we matter to God and God knows our situation and God has a plan - of that we can be sure. The trick is being able to discern what that plan is!
My wife one time pastored a church where there were about 12 people who regularly attended each Sunday. They had some money in a fund to do church improvements and the women really wanted to update the kitchen and that is what they did. Turned out to be a really nice kitchen. So she said to them, ‘Now you have a really nice kitchen, don’t you think God wants you to use it?” And who could argue with that! So the congregation batted around some ideas for about 3 or 4 months. They would gather and pray asking for God to reveal to them what it was they could do and nothing really seemed to click. Until someone brought up the fact that there was no senior center in this small town and maybe they could do something for seniors. OK. More prayer and someone came up with the idea of a monthly dinner for anyone over 60. But there were 12 in the congregation. Could they pull it off?
The answer was yes. Once a month on a Tuesday evening, they prepared a meal for anyone over 60 who wanted to come. No charge. Just show up for a nice meal, some entertainment and a time of fellowship. They started off with about 10 coming and within the year they averaged 60 for each meal. And there was always enough food and there was always enough in the fund they started to help defray the costs and every meal God was given the credit.
See - God choses the weak and the foolish - and it works. Here this church was a perfect example.
This is the lesson we learn from Mary Magdalene. Did you know the Gospels mention Mary Magdalene’s more than any other woman other than Mary, the mother of Jesus? There have been a lot of misconceptions about Mary’s life and her previous occupation before she began to follow Jesus but nothing like that is mentioned anywhere in scripture. What we do know is that Mary is from a town called Magdala. She is called Mary Magdalene simply because she is from that town and Mary is the most common name during the time of Jesus and Mary from Magdala is used to distinguish her from the several other Mary’s who are mentioned during the ministry of Jesus. What is really significant is that Mary had a very challenging life up to the time when she met Jesus. We are told that she contained 7 demons. Now, the understanding of mental illness in the time of Jesus is far different than our understanding of mental illness today. In Jesus’ day anything out of the ordinary; anything that could not be explained was attributed to demons. All illnesses, whether physical or mental, were attributed either to God because he was punishing you or to demons. When one is said to have 7 demons, that is simply their way of saying that whatever mental illness from which Mary suffered, it had complete control of her life.
And to have a mental illness like that - she would have been like a lot of the people Jesus met during his ministry - totally ostracized by her family and by society. She would have suffered alone and in disgrace. The fact that she was not ‘put away’ was probably because she came from a family with money who may not have had any association with her, but could use their wealth to at least keep her from being sent away.
And then she meets Jesus and Jesus casts out the demons and she is restored and chosen. If we pay attention to the many people Jesus meets during his ministry, he doesn’t allow them to become part of his followers. He usually sends them home. But Mary Magdalene becomes one of the several women who travel with Jesus and help to financially support his ministry.
Mary is the very picture of what Paul was talking about. The foolish, the weak, the despised of this world. She had some much going against her - not to mention the fact she was a woman and I know you have probably heard multiple times how women were perceived during Jesus’ day - they were only considered maybe a little bit better than the cattle and sheep the Hebrews raised.


So think about what Mary was chosen to do. Mary was chosen to become a follower of Jesus - she is mentioned along with some other woman as someone who traveled with Jesus throughout his
ministry. We often read “Jesus, his disciples and the women traveled to” whatever destination was being talked about. St Thomas of Aquinas - one of the great early theologians considered she was every bit as much a disciple as the 12 we normally think of and she was given the distinction of actually being an Apostle.
The term ‘apostle’ actually means ‘one who is sent’. Mary Magdalene had the distinction of being the very first person to see Jesus after his resurrection on Easter morning. Can we even fathom what an honor that was. Not John, the disciple Jesus loved, or Peter, the disciple Jesus chose to be the leader of the new Christian movement, but a damaged, outcast woman. And he said to her, “Mary, go and tell the others I have risen.” Mary is sent to bring the good news - and in fact she is chosen by Jesus to be the very first person to share the good news that Jesus has come back from the dead……..
A damaged, outcast, woman who is sent to simply tell others what has happened and what Jesus has made possible.
You are the foolish, the despised, the weak…… And you are chosen as individuals, as Bethany Presbyterian Church, to be the ones who can share Jesus message. Nothing fancy, nothing difficult, just being obedient to the plans God has for you.

Amen.

“Are You Born Again?”

Often in association with our brothers and sisters in Christ who follow different traditions than we do; those who practice a different way of worshipping and serving God; not wrong, just different….. from them we often will hear the phrase, “Are You Born Again?” or “Have you been born again?” or even “You have to be born again!”. Since we follow a different path of understanding our relationship with God, we often look quizzically when asked this question at the person who is doing the asking, stammer a little bit not sure what to say, and then think in our heard - “Have I missed something? Should I be born again? Why haven’t I heard about this in my church?” And not knowing what to say, we wander away - sometimes vowing to avoid this person whom we know will ask us this question again and we probably still won’t have an answer……
So what is that all about? What is this being ‘born again”? If it is so vitally important in so many other traditions, why do we not talk about it in our church and our tradition? Why is it not a ‘catch phrase’ for us as it seems to be for so many others. And that is what we will do today - We will look at why this phrase is so important to some and so seemingly unimportant to us.
When Jesus began his ministry the religious leaders throughout Israel were very concerned. Understand that we look to Jesus as our savior but he was not known in that way as he began to travel and teach during his day and time. Jesus is a Jew and the Jewish faith is a faith of very specific ways of looking at things and very specific ways of doing things. There is no room for independent thinking, no room for looking at things differently. And if you tried to do this, you were quickly convinced that you needed to stop what you were doing. The group of religious leaders who were pretty much in control of the Judaism were called the Pharisees and they took it upon themselves to police what people were doing and teaching and thinking. Now in our day of religious diversity where we have a plethora of different flavors of churches around us that can do and think and teach whatever they want, it is hard for us to understand this insistence on everyone thinking the say way and doing the same thing. But the Jews believed that this is what God had told them to do - and he pretty much did. God’s intention was for his people to be a cohesive unit who all lived and worked and worshipped and pretty much did everything the same way and thought the same way about God. This was what the first 5 books of the Old Testament are all about - God’s directions for how he wanted his people to live and the directions are very specific. He gave the job of making sure everyone followed these laws to a specific group of people - the priestly tribe of Levites.
Now what happens when a specific group of people have been in charge for a very long period of time following the same set of rules and regulations…… the people in charge start ‘interpreting’ the rules and regulations so that they begin to veer off from their original intention and the rules and regulations become more important that the intent for which they were given. God intended the rules to help the people live together in a peaceful society, to make their healthier and more robust and to make them different from a world around them. But as time passed the enforcers of the rules began to make the rules more important than the people or the God they were to serve. By the time of Jesus, God’s people had traveled way off the path where God had originally wanted them to be in their relationship with the rules and with God. It is not the rules themselves were bad, but that the Pharisees had taken the rules to a place and an importance they were never meant to be.
The Pharisees took very seriously their role of being the enforcers and there was extreme justice for those who would veer from these rules and even more extreme justice for anyone who would teach other Jews to veer from the rules.
So along comes Jesus and he is wandering around Israel teaching and preaching what appeared to be a new message - and we may even perceive or have been taught that what Jesus was teaching as something new but that is far from the truth. What Jesus was actually teaching was a return to the way of life that God originally set up for the Jewish people back in the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible. Nothing Jesus taught was new - it was just a return to what God originally wanted for his people. But the Pharisees didn’t see it this way - to go back to the ‘old ways’, even if they were better, is a drastic thing to do! It means a whole system comes tumbling down that the Pharisees had built up and loved dearly. So the only thing the Pharisees could do, even if they knew in their heart that Jesus was right, was to get rid of him.
But it turned out there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus who saw something he agreed with in what Jesus was teaching. But he had to be careful. The Pharisees were so angry at Jesus that they had made it a crime to associate with or talk to Jesus. Anyone talking to Jesus would be cast out of the Temple - and for a Jew that was devastating. If you were cast out of the temple, you couldn’t worship or sacrifice and thus you would be condemned. It would be like literally being cast into hell. So Nicodemus knew that if he was going to be of any help to Jesus, he had to be discrete.
So Nicodemus arranged to meet Jesus at night so that he could hear from the source what Jesus was teaching.
The two met and Nicodemus says to Jesus - “There is something of God in you. I know in my heart that the message you are teaching is from God. So help my understand what you are teaching; what you are all about?”
So Jesus answers: “I tell you the truth” - we need to stop for a minute and understand these words. Whenever Jesus prefaces something with the words, “I tell you the truth” - he is in essence saying - What I am about to say is very important - What I am about to say is fundamental to my teaching - so pay attention! So when Jesus begins his talk with Nicodemus with “I tell you the truth” we know that we are going to hear something very important.
So that is when we hear those famous words - Jesus says to Nicodemus the phrase in question - Jesus says to Nicodemus - “You have to be born again in order to understand what I am teaching and become part of the Kingdom of God.” When Nicodemus was quite confused by this statement - just like us - but in a different way. Nicodemus saw this ‘born again’ as being a physical thing. “How can that happen?” Nicodemus asked? “I’m too old and too big to go back into my mother’s womb.”
“No”, Jesus says, “this is a spiritual thing not a physical thing. What I mean is that you need to allow God to help you see things in a new way. You need to go back to the beginning and start over - go back to what God has intended - which is a people who worship and serve God in ‘spirit and in truth’ not by following a bunch of rules. Not that the rules are bad - it is just that they need to be kept in their proper perspective. It is pretty much the same message John the Baptist was preaching on the river Jordan when he cried out, “Repent!” John the Baptist was simply trying to get the Jewish people to go back to living as God intended, not what Judaism had become.
What Jesus is trying to explain to Nicodemus is that being ‘born again’ is not an event - it is a process. It is our willingness to allow God through his Holy Spirit to change us. This change is not a lightning strike - bam! You are now changed! You are now ‘born again’ - but a journey. A journey where through the spirit of Christ we begin to focus our life on Christ and the things of Christ and the ways of Christ; a journey of allowing God to change us so that we live and think differently - not because we are following a bunch of rules but because we have allowed Jesus to come and live within us and guide what we do.
In our Presbyterian way of looking at things this process of being ‘born again’ has a big 50 cent word - it is the word Sanctification. Sanctification is the process throughout our life of growing more and more Christlike. It is a long and difficult process. It begins at our baptism and lasts our entire life here on earth. It is one of those processes where we often take one step forward and two or more steps backward - but throughout the Holy Spirit is working in us to move us in the right direction. We are never fully sanctified until which time we reach our version of the promised land - that place we call ‘heaven’ - our next phase where we realize our eternal life.
So “Are You Born Again?” yes - it is just that we see that in a different way. Not as a unique event that we can pinpoint. Our process of being ‘born again’ begins at our baptism, continues to our time of confirmation or whenever we make our statement of faith where we pledge our lives to Christ, often when we join the church and then this process continues throughout the rest of our life.
We do believe that there needs to be intentional times in our life when we publicly profess our allegiance to Jesus - In Mathew Jesus says, “Whoever acknowledges before men I will acknowledge before the Father” - at our baptism and at our joining with a congregation we have that opportunity to publicly declare our allegiance to Jesus. And when we are willing to do this, we continue that process of being “Born Again” started at our baptism, the process of allowing God to make something new of us - of allowing God’s Spirit to take over and guide us in the ways of Jesus - all the days of our life
Amen.

The Woman Who Touched Jesus Hem

How hard is it for you to ask for help? For most of us asking for help is a difficult thing to do. We don’t want to bother anyone; we don’t like to appear as if we can’t do something. Or maybe we don’t want people to know that we have problems - like everyone doesn’t know that everyone has problems. It is just part of being human. Even asking God for help is sometimes a tricky proposition. Surely God has more important things to do; surely God isn’t interested in these everyday problems I have. After all, weren’t we all brought up to be self-reliant. To take care of ourselves; to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps? Likewise, how hard is it for you to accept help when offered or are we like my 4 year old granddaughter who declares “I can do it myself!” Its hard to ask for help and it is hard to accept the help that is offered. But like Jesus always seems to do, he takes a lot of what we think and turns it upside down and asks us to look at things in a different way.
We spent all summer with the Hebrews as we traveled with them from Egypt to the promised land. They too had much to learn about looking at their lives in new ways as they learned reliance on God - and taught us the same lesson. This fall we are going to continue to travel as we walk along with Jesus. You know, just like the Hebrews Jesus was always moving - walking from one place to the next. And as he walked, he encountered a lot of very interesting people. It is those people Jesus met who we will spend time with this as we hear Jesus teaching to us through their eyes
Today we meet a woman who has been sick for 12 years. What do you do when you are sick? Maybe tough it out because we know a lot of our common problems like colds or even a mild flu come and go pretty quickly. Perhaps you go to the local pharmacy and pick up some over the counter meds to help you feel better while you are waiting it out. You might go to a doctor or one of the urgent cares around. When you are sick, you have lots of options. Now imagine living in a day and age where none of this is available. If you have an illness, you go to the priest and the priest has some tonics or some sort of ritual prayer that is to be said but there is no real cure for any type of medical problem.
This woman has been trying for 12 years to find some kind of help for her illness and all of the superstitious cures available have not helped. But not only is this woman weak from her illness and hopeless from her inability to find any kind of help, there were other complications in her life. Anyone who knew about her illness would shun her. She couldn't go about in public or shop in the marketplace where there would be other women, since a touch from her would make someone unclean. She couldn't attend ceremonial occasions, or synagogue worship. If she had been married her husband would have long ago cast her out and her family would have rejected her. So who knows how many years she was totally on her own with no help from anyone.
No doctors, no social programs, no empathy from anyone because everyone would believe she was being punished by God. Why else would she have this affliction?
But she hears about this man Jesus who has been able to heal people and she knows that nothing else has worked and even though it will take a great deal of bravery, she is going to go to him for help.
Jesus has returned to Capernaum after traveling several other places. Capernaum is pretty much his headquarters and he often returns here after he has been traveling other places. During this time in Jesus’ ministry he is extremely popular and where ever he goes there are large crowds. These are the type of crowds where you are shoulder to shoulder pressed up against someone else. If you have ever experienced a crowd like this you know how impossible it is to know who is around you; you sort of move along with the flow of the crowd because that is about all you can do. Think about the crowds coming out of a sporting even or a concert. It is kind of scary. And as you are being crushed in this crowd it is impossible to know who is around you much less who is touching you.
Also keep in mind that Jesus is on his way somewhere as this huge crowd is following him. Jairus, a leader in the synagogue, has summoned Jesus because his daughter is dying. And that is important to remember - Jairus daughter is dying and we, as Jesus’ disciples thought, would think this is much more important than some woman who had been sick for 12 years cause surely if she had been sick for 12 years she could wait a little while longer?
But as Jesus is heading to Jairus’ house, he stops in the middle of this immense crowd and says “Someone touched me.” The disciples look at him like he has lost his mind - of course someone has touched you there are crowds of people pushing and shoving you since we got into town. But Jesus again says, “Who touched me?”
Now I admit that when I read this my first instinct is to think that the “Who touched me?” is said in an accusatory way - Like ‘who dared to touch me’ or ‘who do you think you are touching me’. Almost an angry response. But it is not the case, Jesus wants to know who touched him because that person is important to him. He wants to know who that person is and perhaps that person needs more help. But the disciples are trying to move Jesus along because Jairus’ daughter is dying and they don’t think Jesus has time to shop to figure out who this person is. But to Jesus, here is a person who needs his help and he is going to take the time to help.
Now, before I mentioned this was a great act of bravery on the part of the woman. Again we have to remember a culture different than ours. In Jesus’ time, men and women did not associate with one another in public - not even married couples. It would be a punishable act for a woman to touch a man - she could be arrested for touching Jesus. But knowing Jesus was her only hope she ‘touched his hem’. She didn’t grab his arm or run up to him and accost him, she very humbly touched the bottom of his garment.
Another wrinkle in this scene - because of her disease she is considered to be ‘unclean’. A concept we have no conception of…… The Jews had a very long list of things that made a person ‘unclean’. But if you were labeled ‘unclean’ you could not associate with anyone and if you actually touched someone, you then made them unclean and they would be ostracized as well. Think about the story of the Good Samaritan. The man is beaten almost to death by robbers and therefore bleeding. The Jewish leaders who passed him by wouldn’t touch him because it might possibly make them unclean. Being unclean meant you could not enter the Temple, you could not sacrifice and you could not worship - therefore you would be condemned.
The unclean woman touches Jesus, Jesus wants to know who she is. She admits to Jesus what she has done probably thinking she has done it now because he is going to condemn her for not only touching him but by touching him made him ‘unclean’ which would drastically affect his life.
But Jesus is very kind and gracious and patient. She admits to touching him and with joy realizes that she is healed. Can you imagine how that must have felt? After 12 years of suffering it is finally over. She can go back to a normal life. She is no longer in pain, she can associate with people, she can participate in her local synagogue. It is a new life for her - and to top it all off Jesus’ isn’t angry because a woman touched him in public and risked making him unclean.
This woman was willing to seek help for her problem. And, she was willing to accept it regardless of the cost. Jesus wasn’t bothered; Jesus wasn’t mad; Jesus didn’t say to her “I don’t have time for you I have more important things to attend to”…… and Jesus always has time for us regardless of the size of the problem.
But what else the Bible teaches us is that the help we need, whether we want to admit we need help or not, can come in many different ways. It isn’t always Jesus himself who helps us, but often people around us or people in our church who are not only willing but eager to help us. After all, aren’t you willing and eager to help others?
Working tougher to help one another is one of the great privileges of people God’s children. We are in this together and think about what a great feeling it is to help - but what a great feeling it is to know people are there for you. Not to judge or condemn or criticize - all those things we worry about…. but simply to be willing to be there for you.
It the midst of the crowd Jesus takes the time to stop, to get to know this woman no one else wanted to be around, to acknowledge her healing and to give her peace.
Whatever risk it seems to you, be willing to allow yourself to not only ask for help, but to be willing to receive it. Ask God, ask your fellow church member, ask your family, your friends…. And what you will find is not only is it wonderful to receive help for whatever is wrong, but you are blessed with peace.

Amen.