Step out of the Crowd (part II)

I'd love to share a story with you, that I heard not so long ago...

There was woman named Maria living in Queens who had a health condition called menorrhagia. This just meant that she had bled continuously for over a decade…and there was nothing that doctors could do. She should know, she had spent every penny that she had trying to finance her medical treatments. All were unsuccessful. Now she had nothing.

Somewhere along the way, amidst the treatments, she thought due to with a dirty needle, she had obtained HIV-AIDS. Her reputation preceded her now. She didn’t have the money to hide her condition. It was not a luxury afforded to her. She described it, saying that in her worst days, there was blood caked and crusted on her clothes and skin.

No one wanted to help her. She slept in a cardboard box on 52nd street. Even among the other homeless, she felt a certain taboo. Everyone maintained a healthy distance. It had been years since she had felt a kind human touch. No one even wanted to allow her a bed at night, because were she to bleed on any sheet, towel, or article of furniture, the other tenants would risk being infected. And she would most certainly bleed.

It wasn’t that people were necessarily unkind, but they had to protect their own health and cleanliness. Certainly some were unkind. She had the remaining bruises to prove it. People stared; there were always whispers about her on the street. How she had gotten that way. What she must have done. Fear was always present in their eyes, even among the most well-intentioned, when they saw the blood caked on her body. All she wanted was to be invisible. She had given up hope of health.

Then one day, everything changed. A great doctor named was coming to town… even she had read about him. He was being urgently shuttled-in, on the mayor’s personal request; apparently the mayor’s daughter was unexpectedly dying of a mysterious disease, and it was urgent that this doctor reach her in time. His train arrived in Penn Station at 5pm, at the height of rush hour traffic.

The Gospel of Mark, chapter 5, continues this story, which I have begun to re-tell...

When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed. Immediately, her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once, Jesus realized that power had gone out from him.

He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?”

“You see the people crowding against you,” His disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?” But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.

The woman would be content to be near him, to experience some of his power, anonymously. But Jesus is not satisfied with a casual encounter in a crowd. He wanted to know her in the same way that he wants to know you. He longs for relationship with you. So, here's take home #1 from the passage:

Jesus sees us even when no one else does

The woman in this story is just one of the crowd. It’s like the end of a winning Red Sox game … everyone is pushing to get out, traffic is crazy. Bodies slamming against one another. If you fall, you’ll get trampled.

And she makes it up behind Jesus. Touches his robe. And he stops and asks “who touched me??” What the heck?? Come on Jesus? You’re in a crowd! Everyone is touching you! But Jesus stops, because he cares intimately about the person, the individual, who has sought him out.