Mark 5 is a collection of three different healings Jesus performs as he moves about through the Decapolis and back through Galilee. Before this point and up through Mark 5, as Jesus moves about He leaves behind him a trail of transformed scenes and changed situations — fishermen no longer at their nets, sick people restored to health, critics confounded, a storm stilled, hunger assuaged, a dead girl raised to life. Jesus’ presence is an active and instantly transforming presence: He is never the mere observer of the scene or the one who waits upon events but always the transformer of the scene and the initiator of events.
The
story of the woman who was suffering from ‘a discharge of blood’ for twelve
years before meeting Jesus is slightly different in that regard because this is
the only recorded healing that Jesus SEEMS to not even notice until power
leaves him. As Jesus immediately looks about he does not find her until she
comes in fear and trembling and kneels down in front of him. She explains the
whole truth according to our text and Jesus responds by tell her, “Daughter,
your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
I
am intrigued by Jesus’ response, no other time that I can recollect does Jesus
tell someone to be healed AFTER they have already been healed. It is always
before. No other time does another person initiate the healing out of faith, it
is always by Jesus’ word and actions. This woman jumped out in faith and was
healed because she believed Jesus’ very clothes would heal her, she knew he was
more than just a prophet or a teacher. He had the very power of God. Jesus
though feels the need to tell her to “be healed of your disease” even after she
has already been healed.
The
word for healed in that sentence is a word that continues to pop up throughout
this scene, the Greek word “σῴζω” (sozo) . In the Bible it is most often translated as
‘to save’. It is a derivative from the noun “σωτήρ” (so-tehr) meaning ‘Savior’. However
with deeper study I have found another meaning that the translators have picked
up on well for this context. σῴζω, also carries with it this
idea of being made well and of being healed. The verb in its purest form means
to literally make someone whole, to heal and make one.
This implication of someone needing to be made whole...
is that they were missing
something from the very beginning.
The
woman needed something more than just a healing. She had been suffering, the
word πάσχω (pah-sko), helps us see that she wasn’t just suffering something in passing,
but was truly experiencing the full toll of suffering. She felt it, she had an
emotional response to it, and has been worn out from her suffering because of
how long its duration. She needed to be made whole again. She had lost all her
money from spending it on physicians who as the text tells us did not make her
any better but rather worse. The contrast between this woman and Jairus, whom
Jesus was following to go and heal his daughter, could not be higher, which shows
us a little more insight into just how badly this woman was suffering. The
bleeding woman was a female in a male dominated society, physically ill,
destitute, and is not even named in the text signifying her status as a
nobody in the community. This woman was broken from the failures of the world
around her. Because of her illness she was also deemed unclean and would have
been treated as a second class citizen for the last twelve years, she could not
participate in many of the Jewish worship ceremonies, would have been treated
as like an outcast among her very own family, unable to have any children in
that time period, and unable to fulfill any sexual desires by her husband if
she was even married. (Leviticus 15:25-33) This illness stole her identity from
her. Her experience with Jesus though, reversed all of this.
Jesus
completely made her whole again by just the touch of his cloak, but more than
this, when he found out what had happened he praised her for her faith with the
entire crowd watching and he told her to, “go in peace, and be
healed of your disease.” Jesus reestablished her with this statement. She was
not just physically healed, but societally and emotionally restored. σῴζω to its
fullest meaning. In light of this story we are left with a question on our own
hands, do we want to be made well? Fully well... σῴζω well... and are we willing to
reach out to the σωτήρ?
His name is Jesus.
