The Unnamed, "True Grit" Woman
This week I am choosing to look at a notable woman in scripture. She is a woman who displays grit, determination, perseverance, and about thirteen other positive attributes for those of us who relentlessly chase after Jesus. Her story is relayed by three of the four gospel accounts. She is presented in a most positive light, yet, we do not even know her name.
The Woman’s Plight
The woman’s narrative is a story of interruption, because it unfolds within another story wherein Jesus is on his way to heal the dying daughter of Jairus, a synagogue ruler.1 In interrupting Jesus’ mission, the unnamed woman has violated multiple Mosaic Laws and rules of civil propriety, as we will see below. We will look at the woman’s experience through the eyes of Mark.
And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.
– Mark 5:25-26, ESV
I struggle to imagine what this woman’s mental state must have been. I have little aches and pains, and some larger ones as well, but nothing that even comes close to what this woman endured for twelve years. That’s a decade plus! But it wasn’t just her bleeding condition that plagued her. No, her situation was far worse than that.
The Woman’s Prohibitions
This woman was completely isolated. It was not leprosy, but it was almost as bad. Because of her bleeding condition: 2
- She is ceremonially unclean.
- Every bed on which she lies is unclean.
- Anything upon which she sits is unclean.
- Anyone who touches the bed or the seat where she was is unclean.
- Anyone who is sexually intimate with her is unclean.
- Anyone who touches her is unclean just as anyone she touches is unclean.
- The clothing she wears is unclean.
- The clothing of anyone she touches or who touches her is unclean.
But that’s all pretty cold and impersonal. Let’s look at the reality in which she lived.
She cannot go to the synagogue to worship…for twelve years running. She can neither touch, nor be touched by the people she loved most; a husband if she has one, children, parents, friends. She cannot enter the marketplace for fear of touching or being touched. She is a complete outcast.
The Woman’s Discouragements
Everything she has tried as a remedy has made the situation worse. Not only that, but healthcare is expensive, and she has spent not a lot, no, “everything she had” on physicians.3 She is described as “suffering under the care of” many such physicians.
Given all that this woman endured, I don’t know how one could paint a more despondent, hopeless picture. How many of us would have just resigned ourselves to the reality of our existence and stopped trying? But…
The Woman’s Hope
She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
– Mark 5:27-29, ESV
From the absolute deepest despair, the woman heard something that gave her a profound hope. Jesus. If I can touch just the hem of his garment, I’ll be healed. We are not told how she arrived at this conclusion, but she had heard enough to decide that this man was different than every other man who had offered and attempted to help her.
The Woman’s Grit
The woman was moved enough by that glowing ember of hope that she did something exceedingly risky. She chose to violate her expulsion from society to go to the very place she was not allowed to go. She thrust herself into and through the throng of humanity that was pressing on Jesus,4 her desperation driving her to push through the crowd and, in doing so, defiling every person she contacted in that maneuver.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was getting to Jesus, or at least getting close enough to touch his clothing.
The Woman’s Healing
And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it.
– Mark 5:29-32, ESV
Not only had the woman defiled everyone she bumped into and rubbed against in her quest to reach Jesus, now she has defiled the very one from whom she sought to be healed. She knew that she had violated the Mosaic Law and societal standards, as well as violating the man whose garment she had just touched. This explains her reaction. But the reality is, rather than the woman making Jesus unclean, Jesus made the woman clean.
The Woman’s Confession
But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth.
– Mark 5:33, ESV
Knowing what she had done, she was terrified, but the same boldness and resolve that drove her there also enabled her to come to Jesus again, and to confess what she had done. She was out of options. Decorum has no impact on the man or woman who is desperate to get to Jesus.
The Woman’s Faith
In all three accounts of this event, Jesus calls the woman, “daughter.”5
And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
– Mark 5:33, ESV
It was her faith that made her well. No one will dispute that. But take note that she had to act on that faith. She had the faith when she sat in isolation. It was her faith that drove her to violate every restraint, to press her way through the crowd so she could do what her faith told her to do. She touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. Acting on her faith brought her what twelve years of medical activity could not bring.
The Woman’s Restoration
Having touched the garment, the woman was healed and, having been healed, she drew back and tried to hide in the crowd. But the pronouncement from Jesus, “your faith has made you well,” brought about a complete reversal of the woman’s original condition; the shame, the isolation, the uncleanness. Calling her daughter and pronouncing her well, or clean, Jesus has moved her from outcast to welcome member of society. He pronounced this in the hearing of all who were there.
The healing was complete. It happened. The conversation that followed seems unnecessary. Jesus could have continued walking and only he and the woman would have known that anything had happened. But Jesus stopped and, in doing so, he restored not only her body, but her dignity as well.
When we come to Jesus, bringing all our filth and all our decadence, and Jesus pronounces us clean…we are clean. We are restored completely. Pure. White as snow.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
– Mark 5:33, ESV
1. Mark 5:21–24
2. Leviticus 15:19-27
3. Mark 5:26
4. Mark 5:24, 31
5. Matthew 9:22, Mark 5:34, Luke 8:48
