"The Hand God Loves to Hold"

Mark 5:25-34

     Dear Friends in Christ,   

    How low can you go?  That’s a question I’ve been asking myself practically every time I’ve mowed grass this summer.  You see, I like to mow my grass pretty short, my rationale being that maybe I won’t have to mow it as often as I would if I raised the deck a notch or two.  And the spring started out great.  I was mowing at level 3 on my mower, which is the lowest level I’ve ever used.  But then came the rains and the hot weather, all of which produced an abundance of water grass in my lawn.  Now if your lawn is comprised mostly of water grass as mine is, then you’ve probably experienced the same problem I have this summer: clumping grass every time I mow.  I don’t care how long we go without rain or how late in the day I mow, that water grass is always wet when you mow it and it always clumps, which means that I have had to raise my mower to higher levels each time I mow, which means that I have to mow more often, which means that the experience of mowing which I used to enjoy has turned into a real source of frustration and aggravation for me.  You get the picture? 

   Well, speaking of going low, you’d have to go really low in order to meet the woman who appears as the main character in our text for today.  Talk about a desperate human being!  She had lived much of her adult life in a lowly state.  Low on the priority list.  Low on the social scale.  Low in the respect other people gave her.  And if you were looking for her in the crowd that was following Jesus that particular day, you would have had to look very low amid the knees and feet of those curious onlookers.  For while they were scampering after Christ, she was crawling after him.  While they were pushing and shoving to get as close to Jesus as possible, she was groveling through the dust and the dirt, clinging ever so tightly to one thread of hope.  And that was that if she could just get close enough to this miracle worker she’d heard so much about and if she could just reach out and touch what the King James Version calls the hem of his garment, she might be healed.

   But healed of what? Well, v.25 of our text says that she had “been subject to bleeding for twelve years.”  That’s a long time to be sick, isn’t it?  We don’t know exactly what kind of illness this was, but it was probably some type of female disorder.  Unfortunately no doctor was able to cure it.  And our text indicates that she had gone to her share of physicians for help.  In fact, Mark makes this interesting comment.  He writes: “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.”  So the ones who should have helped her had only done further harm to her, perhaps taking advantage of her in ways that only God himself knew about, leaving her not only discouraged and disappointed, but also financially destitute.

   As if that wasn’t enough, according to the Law of Moses, her type of illness would have also rendered her ceremonially unclean, which meant she was not to be touched, not to be held, not to be approached in any way.  Can you picture a more pitiful sight?  No health.  No money.  No friends.  No family.  And can you then picture that hand of hers reaching out for Jesus?  Bony.  Gnarled.  Diseased.  Dirty from crawling in the dust.  In one word, rejected.

   I’m sure that hand wasn’t always that way.  Surely there was a time in this woman’s life when that hand was wanted.  Perhaps there was a daddy years before who used to love to cup that little hand in his big hand.  Or a boy who thought she was beautiful and wanted to hold that hand.  Or a young man who perhaps even asked her father if he could have that hand in marriage.  Maybe there was a time when a family once relied on that hand to cook, to sew, to wipe tears away from cheeks, to tuck little children into bed at night.  We all know that the hand of a mother and the hand of a wife is never still, unless that hand is diseased.

   Maybe her husband tried to stay with her initially, taking her from one doctor to another until finally his love began to wane as it appeared as though she’d never get better again.  Or maybe he gave up quickly, frustrated by her lack of energy, her lack of interest in sex, her lack of interest in life.  Whatever the case, what we have here in this story is a woman who had nothing left in her life but dilapidated dreams and deflated faith.  She’s unwelcome in the synagogue, unwanted in her community, undesired by those closest to her.  In one word, she is DESPERATE.  And it is that desperation that births an idea in her heart and that takes her from being a rejected woman to a risk-taking woman.

   Verse 27 of our text tells us that she had heard about Jesus.  Have you ever noticed how the subculture of the suffering typically has its own grapevine of where to find help.  I see this all the time when people come to our church looking for financial assistance.  If I give them some help out of our 2^nd Sunday Sacrifice fund, it usually isn’t long before I get a phone call or two or someone else knocking on my office door wanting help with their problems.  Word gets out rather quickly.  Or if you’re having trouble finding help for a particular physical or emotional problem, just start asking around and it won’t be long before someone says, “I know a doctor at Barnes or St. Louis University Hospital or the Mayo Clinic who should be able to help you.” 

   Well, this woman was definitely part of the subculture of the suffering and she had apparently heard through the grapevine about the healing miracles of this Great Physician from Nazareth named Jesus.  By the way, just a little side note here.  Wouldn’t you have loved to have been the one who told her about Jesus?  Wouldn’t you have loved to have been the one who said, “I know life has been tough for you lately, but I heard recently about a wonderful man who has a special place in his heart for hurting people like you.”  Well, you know what?  You can be that person even today.  For times have not changed.  We still have desperate people in our day and age, don’t we?  People who feel rejected, unwanted, untouchable, unlovable.  I know because I speak to them all the time.  For example, I’ve spoken to many divorced people over the years who felt that way, who felt as though their friends deserted them and even their church when they found themselves single again.  I sometimes see it in the eyes of nursing home residents when I walk the halls of Twin Willows or Doctors Nursing Home.  I sometimes hear it from our shut-ins who were once actively involved in the life of this congregation, but who now feel isolated, forgotten, and cut off as age or health problems prevent them from attending worship anymore.  But you know what, my friends?  It doesn’t have to be that way.  We can be Jesus to these people.  I know life gets busy and it’s tough to find the time.  But for just a moment, put yourself in their place.  Wouldn’t you want to know that you’re not alone, that you’re not forgotten, especially by your church family?  Of course you would.  So do what Jesus tells us to do in the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

   But getting back to our story, I think it’s important to know why Jesus happens to even be at this particular location at this particular time when this woman was there.  And we’re told that in vv.22-23 preceding our text where it says: “Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, ‘My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’”  So Jesus has come to this town at the invitation of Jairus, who is one of the most important people in that community.  In fact, he is everything that this woman is not.  He is prominent.  She is pitiful.  He is powerful.  She is weak.  He is rich.  She is poor.  He is high.  She is low.

   But by this time this woman is so desperate that she will do anything to get better again.  And if that means crawling in the dirt and interrupting the important mission that Jesus was on that day to tend to the urgent request of this prominent man in the community, she will do it.  She’s at the end of her rope, the end of her hope, the end of her options.  So like a crab on the beach, she scurries through the crowd in the hopes of just being able to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe. 

   Now why the hem?  Why not the sleeve?  Why not the rope that held his robe in place?  Or better yet, why not the hand or the foot or some other part of the physical body of Jesus?  Well, we don’t know for sure, but I’ve become convinced that this woman had in mind a distinct passage out of the book of Malachi which says: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.”  Does that sound familiar to you at all?  Probably not, but it should because every year at Christmas time we sing that popular carol “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  And in the 3^rd stanza we sing: “Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace!  Hail the sun of righteousness!  Light and life to all he brings, Ris’n with healing in his wings.”  Jesus was that “sun of righteousness” that Malachi wrote about.  But what is meant by this term “wings.”  Jesus didn’t have wings like an angel, did he?  No, he did not.  But he did have another type of wings that were attached to his robe.  At least that’s what they were called back then.  These wings consisted of 4 tassels that dangled by blue threads from the robes of Jewish men.  They were ornaments of holiness.  They were to remind the Jews of the commands that God had given them to obey.  And perhaps this woman thought, “If this Jesus really is the Messiah, if he really is the sun of righteousness that Malachi wrote about, then maybe if I can just touch one of those tassels hanging from the hem of his robe, I will experience the healing in those wings that Malachi also spoke about.”  So in desperation she reaches out to Jesus.  And don’t you know that that hand that is reaching through the crowd is symbolic of those times in our lives when out of desperation we reach out to Jesus through our prayers – prayers that are offered in the middle of the night from the intensive care unit of the hospital; prayers that are offered from the middle of a bar by a man who has finally realized that his nightly drinking binges are destroying his marriage; prayers that I’ve seen offered at Promise Keepers gatherings over the years where hundreds of men came forward to say they were tired of how their lives were going, tired of trying to make it on their own, tired of being failures.

   So what happens when a desperate, helpless hand reaches out to and touches a holy God?  Verse 29 of our text says: “Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.”  Isn’t that great?  This woman who had felt nothing but weakness for the past 12 years now feels the power of Christ enter her body, and note also that Jesus felt that same power exit his.  And even though he was on an important mission for an important man, he stopped dead in his tracks so that he could give his personal, individualized, undivided attention to this desperate soul whose touch he had just felt.  And notice what happens next.  In v.33 we read from the version of the Bible known as The Message: “The woman, knowing what had happened... stepped up in fear and trembling, knelt before him, and gave him the whole story.”

   I like those last 3 words: “the whole story.”  I wonder how long it had been since anyone had taken the time to listen to this woman’s whole story.  But when she reached out to Jesus, he did.  With one of the most prominent men in town waiting on him and the crowd pressing in on him, Jesus still makes time and takes time for a desperate woman who lives on the fringe of society.  In fact, he calls her something that he calls no one else in the Gospels.  He calls her “daughter.”  He says: "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering."

   Now that’s a nice story, isn’t it?  But what does it have to do with us today?  Well, I don’t know what desperate circumstances you may be facing in your life right now.  Maybe none, and if that’s the case, praise God because I guarantee you, you are in the minority.  But for the rest of you, whatever difficult circumstances you might be dealing with, I hope you’ve seen today that in Jesus you have a Savior who cares deeply and passionately about you and what you’re going through.  He’s a Savior who is a friend to the desperate, who invites you to reach out to him, who delights in calling you his son or daughter.  In fact, he’s already taken care of your most desperate plight and problem in life and he did it in the most wonderful, loving way when he gave his life into death on the cross as the supreme sacrifice and payment for all of your sins, all so that you could enjoy an eternity in his glorious, perfect, and peaceful presence.  So if he would do that for you, then you can be sure that when you reach out your hand to him, he won’t slap it away.  He won’t say he doesn’t have time.  He won’t tell you he has more important things to do.  Instead, you will discover what the woman in our text did and what I’ve stated in my sermon title, namely, that yours is a hand he loves to hold.

     Amen.