layers of healing

Tomorrow is the day that we remember St Luke in the church. We know more about Luke than any of the other gospel writers. He travelled with St. Paul on his journeys, which he writes about in the book of Acts, and Paul talks about him in his letters, calling him ‘the good doctor’. Because Luke was a doctor this time around St Luke’s Day is often a time when churches think about health and healing. Our story today is a good story to help us explore different layers of healing.

Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. Just then there came a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus’s feet and began pleading with him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying.

As he went, the crowds pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak, and immediately her flow of blood stopped. 

Then Jesus asked, “Who touched me?”

When they all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds are hemming you in and pressing against you.” 

But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I noticed that power had gone out from me.” 

When the woman realized that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. 

He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

It might seem that this is just a story of Jesus’ power as a miracle worker – just touching his cloak is enough to heal the woman. But her physical healing is only part of what is happening. The woman has had her condition for twelve years. She had tried everything – spent all her money on doctors – and no one could heal her.

Because of the Jewish laws about ritual cleanliness, she didn’t just have her physical condition to deal with. She would have been seen as unclean, and isolated from the life of the community. She would not have been able to attend the synagogue. She would not have been able to get married. If she was, she could not sleep with her husband. She had become invisible, desperate and destitute.

Perhaps this is why she is so diffident – not asking Jesus for healing, but just touching his cloak. It seems that somehow her touch is very different from all those others jostling Jesus as he walks along – God knows her heart, and she is physically healed.

But this is not the end of the story. Jesus notices that something has happened. Even though he is on his way to help the daughter of Jairus,  an important man, he stops.

He wants to see this person who has reached out to him. He pays attention to this invisible woman. He listens to her story. He recognises her human dignity. He calls her ‘daughter’. He acknowledges her faith. And he blesses her: ‘Go in peace’.

There are many different layers of healing here. The physical healing of the woman. The healing of her exclusion from her community. The healing of a religious understanding which discriminates against those who are sick, or have a disability, and against women in particular. The healing of a misguided understanding of our bodies, and how God sees us. The healing of the power and economics of sickness.

There are also many different layers of healing that we may long to see in our world now. Healing of our community, when people are excluded. Healing between ethnic groups, and religious groups, and nations, when they are divided by history and hurt. Healing of our worldview, when our human centred view cuts us off from our oneness with creation and leads us to abuse nature. And the healing that we need in each of our lives – in our relationships with others, in our memories and past experience, in our way of seeing ourselves, in our relationship with God.

So like the woman in the story, our need for healing is not just something limited, but an ongoing need for God’s healing love to be at work in wide and deep ways in our lives and in our world.  

Think of this courageous, desperate woman reaching out to touch the hem of Jesus cloak…

You might like to open your hands, as you open ourselves to God’s love…

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to notice the need for your healing love in our world…

We think of those who are struggling and isolated because of physical or mental ill health… and the healing we need in our society’s attitudes to them… 

We pray for your healing, Lord

We think of our communities – disfigured by economic and social division….

We pray for your healing, Lord

We think of the places in the world that are scarred by past injuries and the endless self-harm of conflict….

We pray for your healing, Lord

We think of ourselves and our own need for the renewing and healing power of God’s love at every level of our being – mind, heart, body, soul…

We pray for your healing, Lord