November 24, 2024
Mark 5: 21-43
Let’s do some Bible trivia. How many books are in the Bible? 66 – 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. I’m sure you all know the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures comes from our Jewish forebears, while the New Testament developed along with the Christian church. Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to how many words long the Bible is? It’s about 1.1 million, and of those million or so words about 14,000 are spoken by women, which works out to around 1.2% of the words in the Bible being spoken by women.
In her book Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter, Episcopal priest and journalist Lindsay Hardin Freeman worked with a research team to document every word spoken in the Bible by women. Together they specifically identified 93 women who speak somewhere in scripture. Of the 93, 78 of these women speak individually – 51 in the Old Testament, 20 in the New Testament, and 7 in the Apocrypha. The remaining 15 speakers do so in small groups, and some of the best-known women in the bible speak surprisingly few words, such as Mary in Luke and John’s gospels at 191, Sarah at 141, and Ruth at 212.
But perhaps the most disheartening, though unsurprising figure from Rev. Freeman’s work is that of the 93 speaking women in the Bible only 49 of them are identified by name. 44 women speak without being identified. These women were important enough to quote but not valuable enough for their personhood to be respected. 44 nameless, faceless sisters. As Rev. Freeman says, “We could be angry and dismiss the whole thing, or we could pay more attention to what the verbal minority says.”[1]
Which is exactly what this morning’s passage from Mark 5 calls us to do. Routinely called, “the woman with an issue of blood” or in more modern translations, “the woman with the hemorrhage” this woman is one of the 44. She’s nameless and faceless. And although her story is told in Matthew, Luke, and Mark the totality of her speaking is 22 words.
In today’s Mark passage, we don’t hear the woman speak, though she does explain herself to Jesus. Even with this lack of dialogue, however, Mark finds her story important enough to include a choice for which I continue to be grateful. I don’t remember my pastor preaching this passage when I was growing up, though I’m sure he did at some point. I do remember vividly rediscovering this story in seminary and feeling an immediate connection with this woman because of my own struggle with fertility issues. That connection has remained since my seminary days as my admiration for this woman’s hutzpah and physical determination has grown.
Keep in mind that her culture isn’t just dominated by men, her identity as a Jewish woman means that purity laws affected every part of her life and they’re particularly stringent for this woman because “her bleeding places her in a state of perpetual impurity” that not only keeps her from participating in religious activities, it also effected those around her as they can’t touch her, lay in a bed she’s slept in, or sin on a chair she’s vacated.[2] In addition to this physical exclusion, we can glean from the text that this woman once had significant financial means before this medical issue as we’re told she has “spent all she had.” And it’s telling that she’s in this very public place without an escort because, though we don’t know for sure, it’s probable that this woman had to no male family living because it was highly uncommon for women to be out alone.
Some of the “treatments” this woman likely endured at the hands of her male doctors, with whom Mark tells us she “endured much” include, “’drinking a goblet of wine containing a powder compounded from rubber, alum, and garden crocuses, a dose of Persian onions cooked in wine administered with the summons “Arise out of your flow of blood!” and [a] sudden shock, or carrying the ash of an ostrich’s egg in a certain cloth.’”[3] And as doctors at this time would have been male, it’s a wonder she is able to trust men at all, especially one purported to be capable of healing.
Perhaps this woman was desperate enough to try anything. Perhaps she had just enough strength for one more try. Perhaps there was something different about this man everyone was talking about. No matter the reason she joins the crush of people surrounding Jesus. She knows it’s her duty to avoid transmitting her uncleanliness to others[4] by coming into contact with them. This knowledge has made her a functional hermit for the last 12 years. She also knows that she cannot ask Jesus to touch her,[5] no matter how desperately she needs relief from her chronic suffering. But the people are crowded so close, bumping and jostling to get at Jesus that toes are getting stepped on, elbows are accidentally jabbing into stomachs, and one poor woman’s hair is pulled hard when it gets caught in a wayward marketing basket.
And seeing this our sister, this nameless, faceless woman with, as commentator Beverly Zink-Sawyer says, “…the audacity to transgress a whole host of social protocols” slips into the crowd and heedless of the rules governing all the part of her existence up until now, “she touches Jesus’ robe without permission [and claims] her own healing.”[6]
Reaching out in a way no one would reach out to her, this woman whose words we will never hear claims what she needs. She is reckless and impulsive, desperate and completely fed up. She is nameless, faceless, and faithful. And in the time it takes for her to place her fingers on Jesus’ hem, she is healed.
In the moments that follow, the woman and Jesus realize that something within both of them has shifted. Jesus turns and says, “Who touched me?” And here, when she should sneak away, should count herself lucky not to have been caught, this woman with the steel backbone falls at Jesus' feet even as she trembles. But understand, her fear and trembling are not for herself but are a “response to the divine power that she…experience[s] at work in her body.”[7] There is no attempt at misrepresentation, no white lies, the woman tells Jesus “the whole truth” as bravely and faithfully as she reaches out to claim her own healing.
And Jesus, recognizing not only the risk the woman has taken but more importantly her courageous faith, calls her “daughter,” claiming her in a way no one has been willing to do in over a decade. She is now part of his family and Jesus is not only the vehicle for her healing, he offers the woman an affirmation that it is her faith that has healed her. Make no mistake, Jesus is the savior of this story, but the woman is the hero, and Peterson nails the spirit of this passage when he translates verse 34 in The Message as, “Daughter, you took as risk of faith, and you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.”
Several years ago, a headline came out of Saudi Arabia when the ban on women driving was lifted. As the women took to the road, some drove cars purchased for the occasion while others shouted with delight or cried for joy. Though at this point licensed women are confined to small pockets of major cities and there have been several carefully crafted PR moments, there is undeniable joy surrounding this change. “Samar Almogren, a talk show host and writer said, ‘I always knew this day would come. But it came fast. Suddenly I feel free like a bird.’”[8] Another woman said, “’ It’s a wonderful day, and it will change things. Saudi will never be the same again.”
Of course, there are those who argue that this was a political move by individuals including Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the wealthiest men in the kingdom, and men in particular who aren’t ready to move beyond their traditional views of women. One male Uber employee interviewed by The Guardian said, “I don’t support women driving because I believe they are not the best drivers…[and] I’m not going to allow [my sisters to drive] and they did not ask. They have a driver who can take care of everything.”[9]
My point in telling you this story is to give you a modern example of nameless, faceless women reaching out to take what they need and what makes them whole. Though a driver’s license doesn’t suddenly make women and men equal in Saudi Arabia, and men like the one I just mentioned will continue to make the process difficult, the good news for Saudi Arabia is that though only about 30 women can currently drive, thousands more have applied for their licenses.[10] The tide is turning and women, Saudi Arabia’s only real minority group is being able to explore and claim their personhood in new ways.
This is the same personhood the woman who reaches out to Jesus claims in the touching of his robe. Her power in this story is her faith. It motivates her to do the socially unacceptable, the unthinkable, the risky. She reaches out and takes her healing, claiming it as her own, and in so doing Jesus recognizes her great faith in him and claims her as his own. The good news this morning is that everyone who reaches out to Jesus shares the same claim. We are all sons and daughters of God, branded, marked, and claimed completely even in our darkest, most desperate moments.
But be warned, entering into your God-given claiming is to “edge into deeper relationship”[11] with the divine, the creator of the universe, the love that will not let you go. Such a relationship will change you. It will make you see the world differently. It will affect your mind, your heart, and your relationships with people. It will drive you to live beyond societal boundaries, to reach out in faith, and to see people of different races, sexual orientations, economic backgrounds, non-English speakers, varied gender expressions, children, the elderly, and anyone who was previously nameless and faceless as a faithful, wanted, claimed member of the family of God.
[1] Lindsay Hardin Freeman, “Bible Women: All Their Words And Why They Matter,” 2014, Forward Movement.
[2] Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Riggs, Editors, Women’s Bible Commentary: Expanded Edition, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 1998. Pg 355.
[3] William Lane quoted by R. Alan Culpepper, Smith and Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, Smith and Helwys, Macon, volume 20, 2007. Pg. 174.
[4] Culpepper, ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Beverly Zink-Sawyer “Proper 8, Mark 5: 21-43 Homiletical Perspective,” from Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year B, Volume 3. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2009. Pg 193.
[7] Culpepper, 175.
[8] Martin Chulov and Nadia al-Faour, “’I feel free like a bird’: Saudi women celebrate as driving ban lifted,” from The Guardian, Sunday June 24, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/24/saudi-arabia-women-celebrate-as-driving-ban-lifted.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Michael L. Lindvall “Proper 8, Mark 5: 21-43 Pastoral Perspective,” from Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year B, Volume 3. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2009. Pg 190
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