One encounter can change everything. A single moment of recognition can rewrite your whole story.
We do not know her name, but we do know her pain. In fact, that’s the way Mark introduces her to us. Twelve years of bleeding. Twelve years suffering under a parade of physicians who cannot heal her. She has run out of resources, out of time, out of patience.
As serious as her physical condition is the reality of her social isolation. Unclean and therefore without community, she was alone and vulnerable, at great risk. Mark’s description underscores the harsh truth that her illness now defines her. Nameless. She is a
bleeding woman.
As I read the context before the encounter, I keep thinking that somewhere in that town there was a family to which she belonged. Somewhere in that town, perhaps not far from this road, there was a home in which she was raised. Somewhere not far away, there were parents who had given her a name. But by the time we meet her this morning, those people—that home, that family, the name itself—are distant memories.
When you are desperate, your senses are finely tuned for any sound or sign of hope. She heard about him. About Jesus. We have no idea how she heard, but she did. She heard about him.
Her encounter with him does not follow the script. Last week, Jesus was walking the shore of the Sea of Galilee, and he himself found four fishermen, minding their own business. He called them to follow, and they dropped their nets and followed after him. That’s the archetype. That’s the story. That’s the pattern. Jesus finds and calls disciples who follow after him.
But not so with this unnamed woman. She presses in, through the crowd. She does not approach Jesus. She does not introduce herself. She cannot risk another rejection. Twelve years have taught her to stick to the shadows. It’s best to go undetected. Keep a low profile. And yet, she is convinced that all she needs to do is touch his clothes and she will be healed.
I love Mark. He’s spare on details. He reports the next moment with a matter-of-fact tone that obscures the miracle. Immediately, just like that, the bleeding stops. So does the suffering. She is free again.
The healing that had eluded her for a dozen years comes in the blink of an eye. In my own mind, I see the relief on her face as she begins to quietly, slowly back away just as quietly as she had come. Afterall, the need has been met. The body is healed. The transaction is complete.
The temptation is to turn our attention at just this moment. It’s tidy. It’s efficient. It’s all done. The least disruptive of Jesus’ miraculous healings. Maybe we should just let her go. She got what she needed. It is efficient.
The idol of efficiency reigns supreme these days. Nothing is more important than getting something done a little faster than last time you got it done, with fewer steps and moving parts. Tech companies offer us the promise of frictionless intimacy. The illusion of relationship without the messiness that comes with actual human encounter. Touch.
The attraction of these chatbots is plain to see. They are always responsive, and they never tell you what to do. They are agreeable. Never distracted or tired or hard to reach. And they come with absolutely none of the friction that always accompanies human people. You know, things like opinions and perspectives and needs and limitation. Intimacy free from friction. And if you get bored or frustrated? Just flip off the switch.
That same idol of relentless optimization, of friction-free living, of minimal disruption now drives our public discourse as well. Actual, living, breathing, God-created human beings distilled to statistics, or status, or category, or label. Like those chatbots, and that bleeding woman, those sorted into categories are stripped of their identity.
What are we to do in such an era with the core truth of the Christian faith that God has a face, and a name, and a story? What are we to do with the conviction that in God’s turning toward us, we find the command to turn toward one another? People with names and faces and stories. When efficiency is your god, those names and faces and stories matter little, if at all. The reality is that we all fail to obey, to turn toward
one another.
The reality is that I do not know the names of those human beings who sleep in downtown doorways. I do not know their names. I do not know the names of the young men and women sent to war across oceans. I do not know the names of the living souls behind the chain-link fences of detention centers. And so, with no names to call, we speak in categories. You know how they sound. The homeless. The troops. The enemy. The illegals. Labels with no faces.
In an age of efficiency, not knowing names gives us the illusion of distance. And distance is what enables efficiency. We can keep scrolling. Turn the page.
Move on.
But even as we do, deep down, don’t we know it? Don’t we know that every single one of them has a story? Don’t we know that there is a family to which they belong? Don’t we know that someone looked at their human face on the day they were born and gave that face a name?
If you have ever been reduced to a category, if you have ever been stripped of a name, you know the toll it takes on you. You know the suffering of this unnamed woman was more than physical. You know that the transaction alone will not be enough to heal her.
Something else you should know about this story in Mark’s fifth chapter. It’s kind of an intermission. It’s wedged in the middle of another story. Jesus is already on his way somewhere, and it’s somewhere very important. You see, the daughter of a powerful man, a leader in the community, someone whose name you would know on the street, his daughter has fallen ill. And that man, Jairus is his name, has asked
for Jesus.
Jesus, this could be your big break. All you need to do is heal Jairus’ daughter and your reputation will grow like wildfire. You’ll be on the front page of the newspaper. Your healing gift will give you notoriety and prominence and fame. So, that woman? She had her cure. You’ve got somewhere to be.
The disciples know that, which is why they respond the way they do when Jesus asks who touched his clothes.
Really, Jesus? A sea of people and you want to know which one of these nameless people touched you? Don’t you remember where we are going? You don’t keep Jairus waiting, not for some random person in the crowd.
Perhaps you’ve learned this about Jesus. Jesus is not efficient. He is insistent. He stops the whole procession dead in its tracks. Jesus will look for this woman as long as it takes him to find her. He is looking
for her.
Mark tells us that she came before him trembling. The Greek word here is Tromos. It suggests more than emotional anxiety. It is a physical response. She is shaking. Tromos, that little Greek word, will show up one time more in Mark’s Gospel. It’s the final verse of the final chapter, the end of Mark’s Gospel, when a group of women encounter a tomb that is empty. And as they flee from it, Mark says that tromos had seized them. They are shaking.
The bleeding woman, bleeding no more, is trembling for exactly the same reason. She has had an encounter with the divine. And like those women on Easter morning, she has no idea what will happen next, what will happen to her, what will become of her. So she stands before Jesus, and she tells him the whole truth.
It’s not an apology for her boldness or a description of what just happened. He already knew those things. This is not a transaction. It is her testimony. Mark says she told him the whole truth.
She told him the whole truth. For twelve years she’s been invisible. She told him the whole truth. Twelve years, not one single soul has asked me a question. For twelve years, no one has listened to my story. For twelve years, Jesus, I have been a category, a label, a bleeding woman.
And when she tells the truth, I am convinced she raises her voice, speaking loud enough for the crowd around her to hear. She will not miss her moment. This divine encounter. Her voice may be trembling, but she raises it to tell the whole truth.
And I have no idea about the crowd, but I know Jesus listens. I know that he does not interrupt her or look past her or try to silence her. He hears her whole testimony. And when she is finished speaking, the first word on his lips is: Daughter.
That’s who she is. She is somebody’s daughter. There were people who looked at her face on the day she was born and gave that face a name. She belongs to a family. “And now,” Jesus says, “you belong to my family.”
You might know that among the earliest followers of Jesus, it was common to refer to members of the community as brother or sister. It was more than a greeting. It was a radical redefinition of identity. Many of these followers had been rejected or sidelined by their biological families for betraying their ancestral gods. They were disowned and shamed by the households of their birth. To belong to the Way of Jesus was to be embraced by a new family, with spiritual and material support.
We still use that term. Sisters and brothers in Christ. What if we meant it? What if we took on the responsibilities of a family? The messiness and inefficiency. The humanity and holiness.
Every time we celebrate a baptism and welcome a new member to the family of faith, one of the children of our church presents the baptized baby with a Bible. It’s always a sacred moment. And I have to report that a few weeks ago, we weren’t sure it was going to happen. At the soundcheck before worship, the child chosen to present the Bible was trembling. Tromos. He didn’t want to hear his voice over the sanctuary speakers. He wasn’t sure this role was for him. As we were walking in, we were also strategizing about how to fill that role just
in case.
And then, in the worship service, the moment came. You all saw it. That child walked across the center of this chancel, Bible in one hand and microphone in the other, and spoke the words with clarity and confidence. And he handed the Bible to the baby’s parents. And from a few feet away, I watched him grow right before our eyes. It happens every time we make it clear: you, child of God, belong here. This is your family.
Sadly, it does not always go this way among us. Families are messy, and broken, and human. There is friction in families. Some of you know what I mean. Some of you can feel it in the pit of your stomach. You know what it is to be sent away. To be rejected or disowned. Or perhaps you’ve been the one to do it. Maybe you allowed your child, your sibling, or someone near to you to become a category or a label. Maybe you regret it. Maybe you wish you could go home. Or welcome them home.
Years ago, I was preparing to lead a memorial service for a member of the congregation I was serving then, one of the saints of our church, a woman who had lived to the fullness of her years. As we were planning the service, the family shared that there was a sister that no one had spoken to for many years. She had spoken harsh, even hateful, words and then walked away, disappeared. They weren’t sure she would come to the service that day. And to be honest, they weren’t sure if they wanted her to come.
Just before the service, we were all gathered in my office when an usher knocked and opened the door slightly, and she was standing there. I had never seen her before, but I knew instantly who she was because of the silence in the room.
She looked from person to person. Then, still silent, her brother, the eldest, walked across the room. And I will never for the rest of my life forget this moment. He put his arms over her shoulders and kissed her on the top of her head. Then, still silent, he motioned for the rest of the family to gather around her. Two minutes later, the family walked out of my office hand in hand to go bury their mother.
Listen. Some of you have a child you have not spoken to in a long time. Some of you are that child. Some of you waited many years for the one word that never came. Hear it today from the One who knows you.
Yes, one encounter can change everything. A single moment of recognition can rewrite your whole story. Twelve long years, and then: Daughter. A family. A home. And, finally, finally, peace. Go in peace. Amen.