by CCW | 10 November 2013 16:31
It is a very touching scene, if you will pardon the pun! The mise-en-scene or context is actually a scene within a scene. It opens us out to the drama of salvation. But it is a kind of interlude, something which happens in between something else. In this case, a healing happens while Jesus is on his way to raise the daughter of “a certain ruler” who is presumed dead. It happens in a crowd; an event which is at once public and private.
An unnamed woman, desperate and ill, afflicted with a debilitating sickness, an issue of blood twelve years, “came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment.” It is a touching act, quite literally of course, but there is such a gentleness of wisdom in this scene which is quite revealing. We are allowed to know the inner thoughts of the woman in her reaching out to touch Jesus. “For she said within herself, If I may touch his garment, I shall be whole.” And we see his marvelously gentle yet revealing response, “Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” Her desire for healing is more than the physical healing of her affliction; it is about wholeness. She seeks to be made whole by reaching out and touching Jesus as if there were something mystical and magical even about his robes, like Prospero’s “magic garment” (The Tempest). A kind of superstition, we might think; certainly an attempt to steal surreptiously a cure from Jesus unawares.
The attribution of special properties to the clothing of special persons is an interesting concept. At the very least, it suggests that she sees something special in Jesus and by extension to anything and everything associated with him such as his clothing. But it is an inaccurate and incomplete, and even dangerous view of God’s dealings with our humanity. It confuses the person with the things. It mistakes the real nature of God’s redemption of our humanity. The touch is real and yet unnecessary. Whether we touch him or not, Jesus can touch and heal us either close at hand or from afar, as we have seen in other Gospel stories.
In a way, we are learning something about the nature of God in relation to human redemption. It is our thinking that is being challenged. We have had the healing of the servant of the Centurion who believed the Word which Jesus had spoken, “go thy way, thy servant liveth”. We have seen the healing of the untouchables, the ten lepers who “stood afar off” and cried out to Jesus for mercy. All were healed but only one turned back and “fell down on his face at [Jesus’] feet giving him thanks.” About him alone, Jesus said, “go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole,” the same words that he now says to this unnamed woman who has touched the hem of his garment from behind, as if to steal a cure from him unawares.
But no. Her touch is, well, a touching gesture, but the real miracle and point of the Gospel lies in Jesus “turning him about” and seeing the woman and speaking to her face to face. We are only made whole in the knowing love of God for us by our being brought face to face with Jesus. The whole of his incarnate life is about God’s turning to us to bring us into fellowship with him in the Communion of Saints, themes which are signaled, too, in the Epistle reading from Colossians. The hope of heaven is the condition of our being with one another, “being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;” ultimately being made “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Powerful stuff which the Gospel illustrates marvelously.
An interlude, an event in between another, and yet one which reveals something of the essence of the Gospel. God seeks our wholeness. It is found in our knowing Jesus Christ and in his knowing us, in his “turn[ing] him about” to look at us face to face. This drives away all the pathetic superstitions and nonsense of our lives. To be known in the knowing love of Christ is more than reading palms, magical crystals, or any of the other gnostic nonsense that is present in our contemporary world. Such things reveal a yearning and a desire for something more, to be sure, but they seek it in all the wrong ways, seeking some sort of spirituality, but apart from God, and seeking it in ways that are simply idolatry, attributing some property of God to the things of this world.
“No one has ever seen God” is deep and ancient spiritual wisdom because to confuse God with the things of the world is always idolatry. But Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God, “who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (John 1.18). Jesus turns to us to gather us into his loving fellowship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. In him we find the love that makes us whole. It is not really a private matter, a secret and magical affair. No. God wants us to know that we are made whole in him, in his knowing love for us.
Such is the power and the truth of our liturgy. We participate in nothing less than the knowing love of God for us. Every Sunday, Jesus turns about and faces us and gives himself to us in the simple gifts of bread and wine become his body and blood. Something of the true nature of salvation and redemption is signaled in the sacraments; the things of nature and human labour are made the vehicles of redemptive love. The Creator is the Redeemer who enters into the fabric of our world and day to bring us home to himself. That homeland of the spirit is the Communion of Saints.
The desire to touch, to hold and possess is transformed and redeemed by Jesus. It is a very real desire. It expresses the hopes of a despairing woman in a desperate world. But she is not healed by her secret touch but by Jesus’ knowing love. There are times, to be sure, where Jesus reaches out and touches us and we are healed and made whole. But his whole incarnate life is really about God reaching out to touch us with the knowledge of his deep love for our humanity. That is what makes this story so touching. Her touch opens her out to love and redemption. She is made whole and we learn the conditions of our being made whole. It is found in the knowing love of God for us in Jesus Christ who uses our secret desires, even our secret touches to make us whole. Such is the wonder of redemption.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXIV, 2013
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