Meeting Jesus with the Bleeding Woman

Today's person is the bleeding woman from Luke chapter eight. So please do read with me from Luke chapter eight, verse 40 to 48. Hear the word of the Lord. And now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue.

And falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter about 12 years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased.

And Jesus said, who was it that touched me? When all denied it, Peter said, master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you. But Jesus said, someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, daughter, your faith has made you well.

Go in peace. Let me lead us in prayer as we come, as we reflect on God's word together. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would be with us now by your spirit. Open our minds, but also our hearts to your word.

May we see the wonder of Jesus and his goodness to us and to all who come to him in faith. And we pray these things in his name. Amen. I work in an office. People walk right by me.

I know they don't see me. I go home. I watch my wife and my kids. They don't look up when I sit down. It's like no one cares that I'm gone.

I had a dream. I was on a shelf in the refrigerator. Someone closes the door and the light goes off. And I know everybody's out there eating, and then they open the door and you see them smiling, and they're happy to see you. But maybe they don't look right at you, and maybe they don't pick you.

And then the door closes again, and the light goes off. Now that's Leonard in the series finale of the TV show Mad Men. Some of you might have seen that. He's describing his life, and it's a life lived on the outside. A life lived on the sidelines looking in.

Endlessly feeling excluded from what's going on. Endlessly feeling like he's missing out, like he's being passed over and passed by. It's a powerful description, isn't it? It's powerful.

And it's a description, I think, that really resonates. For this is the life that many people lead. It's a life many people lead. People that we walk by every day, people maybe that we work alongside of, people that we sit next to on the tram or on the train on the way to work, or perhaps people like us. Perhaps it's actually the life some of you lead, some of us lead.

The woman who meets Jesus in this passage, which we just read, is someone just like that. She's a woman who experiences life like Leonard. She's a woman who's living on the outside. She's suffering a terrible disorder, and she spent all her money on physicians, and nobody can help her. And as a result, she's excluded.

She's excluded from those around her, her community, her friends, her family, and worst of all, she's actually excluded from God. Just read again at the verses there and just have another look at what happens in verse 40. We read there that when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of the synagogue, and falling at Jesus' feet, he implored him to come to his house. Okay.

Where's this woman? Well, it keeps going. Verse 42, for he had an only daughter, had an only daughter about 12 years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him, and here's that woman. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years.

And though she'd spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. Just look at this woman. Look at the life that she is living. Notice four things about her in particular. Four things.

Firstly, she's an interruption, isn't she? She's an interruption in the story. And because as you read, as you start reading this passage, it's not about her, is it? No. The focus is on this guy named Jairus and his 12 year old daughter who's dying.

Jesus has come to town and Jairus has pushed his way to the front of the crowd and pleaded for him to come and heal his sick daughter. And Jesus is more than happy to do that, and he's on his way to heal her. And but as he sets off to help her, that's when this woman comes into the story and she interrupts. She's an interruption. She's not the main focus, it doesn't seem.

She's also, the second thing to notice, is she's also anonymous. She's never named in this passage. I assume she has a name, but Luke didn't think it worthy of writing it down, or at least maybe nobody knew what her name was, or maybe nobody cared. And that's again in stark contrast to Jairus. We're told Jairus' name.

We're even told Jairus' job. He's a synagogue ruler. He's a well regarded and important man, totally different to this woman. I take it that's why Jairus can push to the front of the crowd and get Jesus' attention, but this woman, she cannot. She's anonymous.

She's an unnamed, unknown face in the crowd. She's an overlooked sauce bottle, perhaps, in the refrigerator. The third thing about her, notice there, is that she's suffering. And we've touched on this a little bit, but it's important to understand the extent of her suffering. We're told she's been subject to bleeding for twelve years.

Now I'm looking around here. There's no children. That's good. But there are some fully grown men here. So let me, I don't want to be too graphic for you guys.

Alright? The women will be able to handle this. It's important to understand she's had what we call today a uterine haemorrhage. She's basically had her period for twelve years. That's the experience that she's having here.

Guys, you're okay with that? You all know what I'm talking about there. That's good. And as I said, this hasn't been going on for a few days or a few weeks or a few months. It's been going on for twelve years, and no matter who she goes to, who she talks to, nobody can help her.

It's actually, she's actually experienced this exact same amount of time that Jairus' daughter has been alive. His daughter is 12 years old. She's had this condition for twelve years. Jairus' daughter has been born. She's learned to walk.

She's learned to talk. You know, she's gone to school. She's swum well at a swimming carnival. She's been, you know, she's finished primary school and headed into high school, and all that time, this woman has been bleeding. She suffered this condition.

It really is a tragic situation, isn't it? Here's the worst thing of it though, the fourth thing to notice, and that is as a result of all this, she's isolated. She's isolated. Under the Jewish law, for a woman to bleed this way made you ceremonially unclean. And that meant that you couldn't actually be in contact with the rest of the community, and you certainly couldn't go to the temple and worship God.

Listen to what the Old Testament book of Leviticus says about this. It spells out the requirements and the conditions for people with this kind of condition really clearly. In chapter 15 of Leviticus, it says in verse 25, if a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity, or if she has a discharge beyond the time of her impurity, all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness. She's been unclean for twelve years, and here's some of the implications of that for her in verse 26. It says every bed on which she lies, all the days of her discharge shall be to her as the bed of her impurity.

And everything on which she sits shall be unclean, as in the uncleanness of her menstrual impurity. And whoever touches these things shall be unclean, and shall wash his clothes and bathe himself in water and be unclean until the evening. If people went around to this woman's house and sat on her furniture, they were made unclean. If you invited her around for coffee, she made you unclean. See, she's not just suffering.

As a result of her suffering, she's unclean. Unclean in the community, unclean before God. Unable to visit family, unable to enter the houses of friends, unable to visit the temple to offer sacrifices and to worship God. Put all that together, and what do you have? You have a woman on the outside, don't you?

A woman on the outside, anonymous, suffering, isolated, cut off from God and cut off from her community. Can you imagine what this woman's life must have been like to live? Imagine that. I suspect actually some of us might be able to imagine it. Maybe not all of it.

But I think probably many of us here can relate to parts of her experience. Maybe you can relate to her suffering. Maybe you too have some kind of chronic illness, some kind of health issue, maybe a mental health issue. And you've been to plenty of doctors, you've tried all sorts of treatments, all sorts of medications, but nothing seems to fix it. Maybe you can relate to that.

Maybe you can relate to her anonymity. Like this woman, you feel like a nameless face. You turn up to work. You spend time with friends. You come along to church even, and you just feel like nobody really notices, nobody really knows you, nobody really cares about you.

Maybe you know something of her isolation. It's quite staggering, actually. There was a government study published a few years ago, back in 2021, by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and it was a study into loneliness and isolation in Australia. It found listen to these stats. These are stats about eighteen to twenty four year olds.

Most of you probably fall into that category, I suspect, looking around. Fourteen percent of Australians aged eighteen to twenty four, fourteen percent, so that's, you know, more than one in ten, one and a half in ten. They reported feeling lonely or isolated most or all of the time. Isn't that awful? But my hunch, that could well be some of us in here.

We feel lonely. We feel isolated. And then there's those of us who can relate to this lady's spiritual condition, a feeling that on account of who you are or even something out of your control, which it was for this lady. It wasn't something she'd done. Something, maybe, that's been done to you, you just feel corrupt.

You feel unclean. You feel unworthy. You know you're not clean before God, and you say that you don't feel worthy to approach Him. Friends, this is the life of this woman. It's a life of suffering.

It's a life on the outside looking in, and it's really important we appreciate that if we're going to appreciate what happens next. Come back to the passage and have a look at what happens in, from verse 44. Verse 44, we read that she came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, and immediately her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, who was it that touched me? When all denied it, Peter said, master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you.

But Jesus said, someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me. Now, apart from the slightly weird kind of sci fi thing that sounds like what's going on in the final verse, I think what happens, he raises a whole bunch of questions. A whole bunch of questions, and maybe it raises these for you too. One of the questions, as the disciples point out, is just the absurdity of Jesus' question. Who touched me?

He's in a crowd. They're crushing up against him. As Peter said, everybody's touching you, Jesus. Are you stupid? That's what he's saying.

Everyone's touching him. So there's the absurdity of Jesus' question. Another thing, another question that this raises is, does Jesus really actually not know who touched him? Because when you read the gospel accounts at other points, it seems that Jesus is pretty clued in to this kind of thing. And one of the other people we looked at in our series of people who met Jesus is the paralysed man who comes in through the roof.

You know that story, where his friends lower him down before Jesus through the roof, Jesus forgives his sins. And Jesus and the religious leaders are upset about that. And it says that they're thinking these things in their minds, and Jesus knows exactly what they're thinking. He never seems to have a problem knowing who's doing what and what people are. So does he really not know that this woman touched him? The biggest question though, for me, is, well, even if he doesn't know, is why does Jesus stop and hold this inquisition to find out?

Because did you notice time is of the essence at this point? He's on his way, remember, to heal this dying girl, Jairus' daughter, and she's quite unwell. And in fact, she actually passes away in the time that he's away. So time is of the essence. Surely, you would think this is not the ideal moment to stop, you know, and hold this inquisition into who did or didn't touch him.

You know, it's time for haste. My wife often tells me I need some more haste in my life, so maybe I can't be too hard on Jesus at this point. She, one of the stories my wife likes to tell me about my lack of, you know, doing what's needed at particular times, was early on in our marriage. We've been married for twenty years now. But in our first year of marriage, I think it was, she'd broken her ankle.

And she was in, she had crutches and had a cast on, and I was having a shower. And suddenly I heard this scream. It was my wife in the other room. I was like, oh, what's going on? And so I jumped out of the shower, as you do, rushed down, you know, I'm soaking wet, and she's lying on the floor and she's clutching her leg. And she'd stubbed the broken leg against a piece of furniture. And I was like, oh, okay. And I said to her, right, Katie, just let me go back to the shower, wash off all the suds, and I'll be back. I'll be back to help you. Right?

And look, in my defence, I did come back. I mean, fifteen minutes later, but I got distracted. I don't know what happened. I mean, that does seem a little like Jesus' approach here, doesn't it? This doesn't seem like the time for urgency, for haste.

But yet rather than rushing to heal the girl at death's door, he stops everything to work out this impossible question. Who touched me? Why? Well, there's probably a few reasons, but I think a big part of why he stops everything here is not because he doesn't know who touched him. He knows exactly who touched him.

Now the reason he stops is he wants everybody else to know who touched him, and he wants this woman to know that he knows. It's not that he doesn't care about Jairus' daughter. No. He cares deeply about her, and he'll go on to heal her, raise her back to life. But before he does that, before he goes and does that, he wants this woman, this unknown, anonymous woman, to understand that she and Jairus' daughter are equal to him.

They both matter. She is just as important and as precious to him. That for him, this unnamed, unclean woman and her twelve years of suffering mattered just as much as the important synagogue leader's 12 year old daughter. That's what he wants her to understand. He has compassion and concern for both, and so he calls her out because he wants to show her that.

Now I've read this story many times before, and every time I read it, I'm just blown away by Jesus here. Because he's so different to what we're like, isn't he? The way he treats this woman. I have to rebuke myself sometimes for this. I'd like to think that I have an equal concern for everyone.

I'm sure we probably all like to think that, you know, there's not more important or less important. Even in ministry, I'd like to think that, you know, I care about that student just as much as I care about that student. The reality is though, often I don't. I'm drawn to the more important, the more impressive, the people I naturally get along with. One example I think about with this is every year, so AFES, our national organisation, gets each group to send in a bunch of kind of statistics from the year that's just been, just to help us kind of keep track of how things are going, you know, how many students regularly attend your group or how many went to your mid year conference?

How many students were trained in evangelism? One thing they always ask is how many students made a confession to follow Jesus for the first time? So how many became Christian? And there's always a few in our group, which is wonderful. And that ought to bring me real joy, shouldn't it?

Yeah. And it does. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't love people coming to faith, but sometimes I look at who those people are, and I go, oh, we could do better than that. Like, I don't say that, but it's, they're not the superstars of the uni all the time.

You know, sometimes it's, sometimes they're, you know, they're not the university elites necessarily. They're not the smartest or coolest kids in the room. They're not the kind of people who necessarily are going to take over the university for Jesus. Now often they're the socially awkward people, the strugglers, the uncool, perhaps people like this woman. It's often what they're like. And so I can look at those names, and yeah, I'm pleased that they've come to know Jesus, but I also feel a bit disappointed.

I need to be rebuked in those moments, don't I? Absolutely rebuked in those moments. Jesus' attitude and what he does for this woman actually shows that. That's not how he thinks. He doesn't categorise people into socially awkward or socially able, smart or not, important or not.

No. Every person matters, whether they're the daughter of the synagogue leader or they're this woman who's been bleeding for twelve years. But it's not just the way we think about others that I think Jesus challenges here. He also challenges the way we think of ourselves. Now some of us have a way too high a view of ourselves, inflated.

Some of us, though, think of ourselves in really unhealthy ways. We look at our lives, and we look at who we are and all our flaws, all that's wrong with us, the wrong things we might have done, and we go, God could never love me. He'd never be interested in me. I've got this issue. I've got that issue.

He could never use me. I wonder if you ever look at yourself and think that. And there's a rightness at one level in that, isn't there? Because we are all sinners, and we do deserve God's judgement. But at the same time, when we write off God's ability to care for us, we actually devalue His mercy and His grace.

We diminish the depths of those things. If you're in that place, and I don't know many of you. I don't know where you're currently at. But if you're in that place where that's how you're thinking about yourself, I want to hear, I want you to hear this really clearly. Just as Jesus was concerned for this woman, so too is He concerned for you.

He is. He gave His life for you. For Jesus, all people are precious. The noteworthy and the notorious, the A-listers and the anonymous. Every person matters.

Every person is important. Every person is worthy of His time and attention, and this includes this woman, and it actually includes you and I. Back to the passage. As we read on, we see Jesus respond as this woman steps forward, and it's so wonderful what happens. She realises, there in verse 47, she's got nowhere to hide.

We read, when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling. Can you imagine how scared she must have been? And falling down before him, declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she'd been immediately healed. Listen to Jesus' response in verse 48. Look at what he says.

He said to her, verse 48, daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. They have to be among the most life giving words ever uttered. Right? He calls her daughter.

This is the only time Jesus calls anybody that. He calls her daughter. I think it's very deliberate because the contrast throughout has been with Jairus' daughter. And he's putting her on the same level. In fact, he's saying you're God's daughter.

You're part of God's family. You're a daughter to me just as much as Jairus' daughter is. You're welcome at my table. You're part of my family, daughter. And then he says, your faith has made you well.

Other translations have your faith has healed you. It doesn't really matter. In the original language, what we need to know is that the word Jesus uses here is different to the word the woman used the verse before. She talked about how she was immediately healed. Did you know?

It's verse 47. And then Jesus says, your faith has made you well. Your faith has healed you. The word in the original language is the word sozo in Greek. It's the word that's often translated salvation or saved.

And I think Jesus is being very deliberate here. She goes, I touched your cloak, and I was physically healed immediately. What Jesus is saying, yeah, sure, but you were healed spiritually as well. You were saved in that moment. You received forgiveness for your sins.

As she reached out in faith and grabbed onto His cloak, He took hold of her sin and her shame and ultimately did away with it on the cross. If it had been anyone else that she touched, she would have corrupted them, wouldn't she? We saw that earlier. But because it's Jesus, He's able to take her corruption and overcome it, take her uncleanness and make her clean, heal her bleeding, and so make her part of the community and one of God's children.

Your faith has made you well. The final phrase, I think, is the most beautiful of all. He says, go in peace. Today, we, peace, we throw that word around pretty loosely, don't we? I don't know what you think of when you hear the word peace, maybe, you know, a nineteen sixties hippie, or a morning on a yoga mat down by the Broad Border, or maybe some kind of inner calm. The Bible uses the idea of peace a bit differently.

It's a bit richer than those things. In the Bible, peace is about things being put back together, things being as they should be, things being restored and reconciled. It's the Hebrew idea of shalom, things as they were meant and intended to be, of people being restored and made new, relationships being brought back together, and most importantly, of people, humans and God, no longer being enemies, but friends. That's what biblical peace is about. That's what Jesus dies on the cross for to ensure that.

And that's what he means as he says to this woman, go in peace. He's saying, you've been made, you've been restored. You've been made whole. You were God's enemy. Now you're His friend.

Now you're His daughter. You were excluded from others. Now you're back part of the family. And for this woman who's lived a life of suffering, a life of isolation, a life of shame, what life giving words these must have been to receive. But they're not words for this woman alone, are they?

They're not words for this woman alone. No. Jesus actually offers these words to everyone who reaches out to Him in faith. These are words for everybody who reaches out to Jesus in faith. What she experiences, welcome into His family, salvation, peace, is what all who turn to Jesus in faith receive.

We are welcomed into His family as a son or a daughter. As we put in our trust in Jesus, we too are healed, not necessarily physically, although that will come in the new creation, but we are healed spiritually as she was, forgiven our sins, brought from death to life. And as we put our trust in Jesus, we too have peace. We are made whole, restored into right relationship with our Maker. Jesus offers these words, not just to this woman, to all who come to Jesus in faith.

Now I know most of you know that. I suspect most of you come along to church, read your Bible, you know these things. But it may be that today you need to hear that afresh. These might be words that you need to hear afresh. Perhaps you are battling with some kind of ongoing illness.

Perhaps you are struggling with loneliness or isolation, or maybe you're just really feeling the weight of your sin at the moment. Maybe that's how you're feeling, unclean and unworthy before God. Brother, sister, if that's you, take hold of Jesus' words. Reach out in faith as you have already. Put your trust in Him and know that you are now His child.

You have been healed, saved, and you too can go in peace. And if you're not in that place, that's okay. That's wonderful. But perhaps this passage is for you, a prompt to consider those in your life who are. The people you sit next to at work, the people you ride in on the train with, the people that you stand on the on your kid's sports field next to on a Saturday morning, the family members you have who actually need to know this, and maybe it's an opportunity to love those people and reach out to those people as Jesus does to this woman.

Shall we pray and ask that you help us to do that? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for who Jesus is. He is so different to us, and that's so good. Thank you for the way He was towards this woman who was suffering so much.

Thank you for what He did through His life, His death, and resurrection to make the words He offers to her, daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace, an eternal reality for her, thanks to heal, so that those things are an eternal reality for us who come to Him in faith as well.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.