The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
July 2, 2006

Daughter of God
Mark 4: 21-43

Mine was a story destined not to be told. I was the one to die unknown, unremembered, unremarked. Then I got it into my head that all I had to do was reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ garment. Nothing more, nothing less.

I had heard of Jesus. Everyone had by then. He was the healer from Nazareth that had set tongues wagging from the Decapolis to the Negev. I traveled more than most, and heard of Jesus everywhere I went.

I had begun seeking healing with sacrifices offered at the Temple. But as soon as the priests found out what my problem was, I was declared unclean. I was no longer fit to be in God’s presence. I was no longer welcome in the Court of the Women at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Feeling cast out by my God, I turned to everything anyone ever heard of doing. I sought out healers and magicians. I recited incantations in languages I couldn’t understand, to God’s of whom I had never heard. But mostly I sought out the care of physicians, any physician, all physicians. I ate every conceivable combination of herbs. I applied creams and ointments. I did anything they asked and paid everything I had.

As for me, the hemorrhage continued as did my spiraling descent away from others. They don’t tell you how sickness cuts you off from others. Oh get some quick fever that either kills you or leaves you spent but recovering and the family will rally around, but get some slow wasting disease and watch how others gently pull back all contact. No one wants to speak and certainly now one wants to touch you unless the illness should rub off on them. I don’t think it was conscious, but it was predictable. As soon as anyone found out I had been bleeding for five years, seven years, ten years—whatever it was by that point—he or she would pull back, withdraw.

I didn’t realize that being cut off from others was worse than the hemorrhage. But it didn’t matter anyway, because my health problems and I were one. I let my sickness define me and then so did everyone else.

Of course, I did hear of Jesus—everyone did in those days. There was talk of Jesus’ teaching with great authority. There was talk of how he could be the Messiah. Many hoped he would overthrow the Romans so that Jews could once more rule Israel on their own. But for people like me—the real sufferers—there was only one tidbit about Jesus that mattered. Wherever Jesus went, he healed people. Jesus touched the blind, the deaf, the lame and they could see, hear and walk.

I knew I had to get to him, but even that proved a disaster. First, it was hard to pin down where he was. Jesus was always crossing back and forth around the Sea of Galilee and then he traveled down to Jerusalem for the festivals too. It seemed that he was everywhere at once and never where I was. Then I did find him one day and even get close enough to speak, but I lost heart. I couldn’t dare to speak to him. If the stories were true, then I couldn’t risk speaking with him. After all God his Father’s own priests tossed me out of the Temple as unclean. I couldn’t bare for Jesus to reject me too. Where would I turn then?

But I did hear him speak that day, with such power. I also watched eagerly as he reached out and touched others, healing them, making them whole. Jesus was God come to live among us as a human. If Jesus wanted, he could heal me so effortlessly. I knew he could do it.

A week passed. Once more on the seashore, I gathered with a large crowd of others, all bent on hearing Jesus, many others wanted healing as well. I slowly worked my way through the crowd. I no longer needed to speak with Jesus. You see, I had worked the details out in advance. If Jesus had the healing power in him, I reasoned that I just I had to bump against him in the crowd to be healed. But touching him would be too much. Then I figured that if bumping against him would work, and that wouldn’t even require a touch of his hands, perhaps just touching his clothes would be enough. And so it went until my plan was distilled to the simple idea of touching the barest hem of his clothes.

An important religious leader named Jairus came to implore Jesus to heal his daughter. I worked around the crowd to get close to Jesus. As he started toward Jairus’ house, I knelt down and reached out for the barest edge of his robe and I grabbed hold as if touching the very throne of God. I knew Jesus’ robe well by this point from watching it in the crowd and I knew that life and healing from the one God could flow through it.

Then the moment came. I reached and almost fell short, but then I stretched up and briefly grabbed hold. As I touched the homespun cloth, I could feel it even more powerfully than I had imagined, the power of God flowed through me touching me and making my body whole. The bleeding stopped. I knew my body was healed.

Then everything went wrong. Jesus stopped. He stopped everyone. The whole crowd. Jesus cried out wanting to know who touched him. His disciples couldn’t believe the question. With such a great crowd crushing around a lot of people had been bumping into Jesus. Jesus kept looking. I could feel his eyes searching the crowd for me. I was terrified. Jesus was going to take it all back. I wasn’t worthy of the healing I had stolen from his cloak. Once more, I was to be humiliated. But I was desperate and so I threw myself at Jesus’ feet and I babbled out my whole story, my twelve years of suffering. Trembling with fear, I told Jesus the whole truth down to the hem of his garment.

Jesus lifted me up, he looked into my eyes and he said the most beautiful words which made my healing complete. Jesus looked into my eyes with his eyes of love and he said, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

I savored every word. “Daughter.” My God called me daughter. How could that be. “Your faith has healed you.” Jesus knew what great faith I had come to have that even the very hem of his robe could heal. “Go in peace” he said. Peace, Shalom. It means health and well being, but mostly it means wholeness or completeness. I knew then that if Jesus had not stopped to speak with me, only my body would have been healed, but Jesus was so much more interested in healing my mind and soul, complete healing. And then he set me free from my suffering. Set free. How marvelous. I hadn’t even known that I was imprisoned until he set me free. I had let me sickness define me. Instead of being a woman who was sick, I had become my illness. Then Jesus set me free to be a daughter of God.

I didn’t continue to follow Jesus that day, at least not physically. I cut away from the crowd, confident that Jairus’ daughter would be healed. Instead, I began the journey to Jerusalem. I wanted more than anything to offer the sacrifices for thanksgiving for healing and to be allowed once more into God’s Temple. I wanted to live in to being a daughter of God.

For I came to realize that being cut off from God, my family and others around me was far worse than the hemorrhaging alone. I wanted, needed, the bleeding to stop, but what I needed more—and Jesus knew it—was to be accepted once again. To have God look into my eyes and call me “daughter.”

I don’t know where you have been, what you have done, how you have marred the image of God within you. But I do know that God wants to reach out to you, look you in the eyes and call you “daughter” or “son.” For you are God’s beloved child too.

You don’t have to even touch the hem of his garment. You only have to reach out your heart in prayer and offer God your pain and suffering. God will take that hurt and give you shalom, the health, healing and wholeness he gave me that day.

Amen.