Jesus Heals

I preached this Sunday, and for the first time in my life, used a manuscript. The passage was Mark 5:24b-34, where Jesus heals a woman with hemorrhages. As part of my sermon, I did a reinterpretation of the passage, using a typical high school as my setting that I thought I'd share with you.

At this point in Jesus’ career, in the local Sea of Galilee high school, he was on the top, the winning quarterback of the football team, bound for a Division 1 university, the talk of the town, with a rapidly growing posse of friends, suckups, and wannabees, all trying to mooch off his glory and advance a couple levels up the social ladder on the wings of a smile or a word.

We can all guess where the woman with hemorrhages would be on the social scale. She was another one of those people who we can all guiltily recall if we think back to our teenage years, an unfortunate blip on the high school radar. I wonder what it must have been like for that woman, the loser, the class joke, the Napoleon Dynamite of her school, hustling quickly, silently from class to class, arms full of books, head down, dressed in old second hand clothes from the local Salvation Aarmy, two sizes too big, smelling like she hadn’t taken a shower in week, hair in long, clumpy, frizzy waves down her back, a person perfectly suited to be tormented or ignored. I wonder what must it have been like for her, trying so desperately to fit in, taking up a job so she could buy clothes at the Gap, sitting at the same table week after week with the “cool” girls, who alternately ignored and abused her, trying out for the field hockey team and the drama team, only to be cut from both. She would be at the end of her rope, no one to talk to, even her teachers giving her a wide berth.

I wonder what it must have been like for her to watch Jesus go down that high school hallway, surrounded by crowds of friends that she would never have, hearing the gossip about them as they pass by, “He won the state championship on Saturday, I hear he’s going to USC to be their starting quarterback, did you hear he got a 1580 on his SAT’s?” And perhaps, in that one moment, she thinks, “If I could just touch him, if he could just speak to me, just look, no, just even glance at me, then maybe I could be healed. Maybe I could find friends to spend time with, to share secrets with, to laugh with, maybe I wouldn’t be teased and tormented every time I went down the hallway, maybe, just maybe, all of this could stop; I could be human again, part of the community again, just a person, again.”

And so she dives into the crowd, squirming past person after person, as the triumphal procession marches down the hallway to Jesus’ next class, gathering steam, people, energy, and excitement. Students stop opening their lockers and join in the crowd, just to see what’s up. Teachers, chatting to other teachers outside the doors to their rooms, stop and stare. Everyone looks at the local town hero, going in triumph, crushed by the mass of people, the mass of popularity, heading to his next class.

And finally, she comes behind him, and he’s just in reach. She stretches out her hand and her finger lightly brushes the back of his shirt. Time stops. Suddenly, in painful clarity, she notices that Jesus has stopped walking, the crowd has paused as well, and he’s looking around, saying to one of his friends, “Who just touched me?”

His friends laugh, punch him on the shoulder, “Good one Jesus! You’re in the middle of a parade! Every popular guy, hot girl, and famous jock in this hallway is around you right now!”

But Jesus remains unconvinced, his eyes scan the crowd. Suddenly, she realizes that the faces in the throng are fixated upon her. She hears voices saying, “What is she doing here? She doesn’t belong here. She’s such a loser, and oh my gosh, she’s almost touching me! Get away! Get her out! Send her back to wherever she belongs!” In despair, she falls to her knees, oblivious to the pain as she hits the hard tiled floor.

“I did it, Jesus,” she says. “I touched you. I’m nobody in this school. I thought maybe, just one glance, just one touch, and I could be human again. I could have friends again!”

The crowd jeers and tenses itself for the explosive sarcastic comment, the push, the disdainful roll of the eyes that will send this woman back to where she belongs.

But it never comes.

Instead, Jesus bends down, kneeling with this girl, who is quaking in terror, and kisses her lightly on the cheek. “Go and live in peace, my dear and beloved friend,” he says, “And be human again.” With that, he stands, and moves off down the corridor, leaving her kneeling in his wake.