Touching the Hem of the Garment

THE NEW TESTAMENT stories of the woman with the hemorrhage (Matthew 9:20-22), the man by the healing pool (John 5:1-15), and the paralytic whose friends carry him to Jesus (Mark 2:1-12) seem right for our needs today--especially for our need of healing and our need to be healers. We want to share some reflections on these passages and invite you into some experiences concerning the healing of each other in our personal lives as well as in the life of our communities, our neighborhoods, and our nation.

We are convinced that the healing power that we see in Jesus Christ and that was promised to his kingdom people is a power that moves beyond the reach of our personal, individual lives. Rather, we see the healing of our personal lives and the healing of our diseased communities coming from one source, from one power.

But let us begin with the personal, because this is where the stories take us: to the woman in the crowd, to the man by the healing waters, and to the friends breaking through the roof on behalf of their paralyzed companion. These are some of the most powerful examples of the healing ministry of Jesus. And they bring into our presence again some people like you and me, people who were in great need, people who came to Jesus in great faith.

I want to start with the marvelous unnamed woman who appears in each of the synoptic gospels. What a story she carries! Suffering from internal bleeding for a dozen years, she exhausted her resources seeking help from doctors who felt totally incapable of helping her. Indeed, we are told that her condition had actually worsened. But her spirit was not broken. She had refused to give up the vision of her healing.

And then the word of Jesus reached her. For some reason she may not have been able to explain, she was certain deep within her heart, that this teacher, this healer from Galilee was important to her. She very much needed to meet this person.

Perhaps her friends and family tried to argue, "You've been to the best doctors, and they can't seem to do anything. Why do you think this itinerant rabbi is going to be any different?" But I can picture and sense her trusting deep inside, trusting her instincts, daring to follow her intuition, standing firm and saying to them, "I just know. That's all I can say; I just know."

I imagine that there were probably some family or friends who had already seen the large, excited crowd around Jesus and may have been able to say, "Listen. What happens if you get caught up in that crowd and you begin to hemorrhage again? Is it worth it?" And she probably replied, "I'll just have to take that risk. Don't you understand? I want to be healed. And I'll just have to take my chances." I wonder too if some persons--people who loved her very much--still tried to stop her from going out, asked her to play it safe, asked her to be satisfied that she was still alive, that at least she was surviving in spite of her disease.

But even though we really know nothing about these conversations, something about what we see of her in the New Testament tells us that this woman was not satisfied just to be alive, just to survive. We can almost hear her say quietly and firmly, as she goes out in search of Jesus, "I want to be healed. I want to be whole. God has more in mind for me than just to survive." Then, when we see her moving toward that life-changing encounter, we realize that her single-minded focus on her goal was a manifestation of her faith, her great faith. "If I can just touch the hem of his garment," she said. So, pressing forward, maneuvering around, working her way through the crowd, she made it. And it was marvelous.

Her faith had reached out, literally. And God's power responded. Literally. For just as she knew what she needed at a deep, intuitional level, she was met at that level. God met her there. Power was drawn to her, without Jesus even knowing who she was. And what did Jesus say? "Power has gone out of me." That's all he knew, and all she knew was that she was immediately healed.

After that, their face-to-face meeting was almost anti-climactic. The great transaction of love and faith between them had already taken place. He told her she had been healed, made well, and that her great faith was central. She knew that. He told her to go in peace.

But I wonder where she met him again. At the cross? In the upper room, after the resurrection? I sense somehow that there was more for this woman than that immediate encounter with the power of God. She was part of God's healing kingdom, God's healing movement, and healing is always only meant to be a beginning.

SOMEHOW THIS MAN AT the healing pool seems very different. Perhaps the man was older than the woman with the hemorrhage. Unlike her, he was not able to move easily by himself. And unlike her, he didn't go out in search of Jesus. As a matter of fact, he did not even know the man who came to him, who sought him out at the pool, and asked him this apparently strange question: "Do you want to be healed?"

Now what kind of question is this for a man who has been sick for 38 years? Isn't the answer obvious? The man has been coming regularly, patiently, to this place of the healing waters. What a question to ask!

Our own lives tell us that this is a very good question. For as we know so well, sickness sometimes solves a lot of problems for us. It brings a lot of attention to us. Sometimes, in my own experience, it takes away a lot of responsibility. Now under these circumstances it is perfectly right and necessary to ask, "Do you want to be healed?"

Jesus was also asking, "Are you ready? Are you ready to be responsible for your own life and to share that responsibility with others? Are you ready? Are you ready to take up your bed? Are you ready to walk right out into the controversy surrounding me?" Jesus was asking, "Are you willing to take those chances? Are you really ready to take your chances with the authorities?"

I think that's a relevant question for us today in this nation. Are you ready to hear with others, "What has happened to you?" In other words, are you ready to be healed, to move toward wholeness in your life?

In our story, the man never answers the question directly. He never says, "Yes, I want to be a member of this kingdom." But apparently Jesus saw enough to challenge this man by saying, "Rise up. Take your pallet and walk."

After 38 years and probably hundreds of disappointments, after such a long time of failure, the man was ready, even though healing didn't come the way he had expected. So he got up, picked up his bed, and went on his way so fast that he didn't even stop to ask who had healed him. He had to come back later to find out.

Finally, in the story of the paralytic, we meet someone who is so sick that he can neither seek out Jesus himself nor even wait in the right place for Jesus to pass by. But, thank God, his sickness, his disease, his impossible limitations are not the last word. As always, the last word, the real bottom line, is love--along with compassion, deep commitment, and tremendous creative determination.

How else can we describe those four friends of his? It is they who literally bore him, who literally brought him to Jesus. It is these four friends who were determined that the crowded house, the tightly blocked doorway, and the crowd would not stop them.

Had any of them already been healed by this rabbi? Was that part of the power of their faith? We don't know the answer to that question. What we do know is that these friends, whatever their past experience, were now making themselves channels of healing. They were breaking into this house--tearing off a section of the roof and presenting their paralyzed friend to Jesus.

What a sight that must have been! Knowing what we do about Jesus, we can assume he might have given a little chuckle, a little laugh, when he saw that. When he saw this man descending down on his pallet, from the roof top, he said, "What friends! What faith! What beautiful bearers of the power of healing!"

Already the healing had begun just by the acts of those friends. Already their faith, their courage, their loving, desperate creativity, their intuition, and their single-mindedness had opened the way to their friend's healing.

So that's what sisters and brothers in the faith are all about. That's what we're for. When we are paralyzed, when we can't make it, when we can't break through, our friends take us and they hold us. They carry us--literally and figuratively--to the source of healing. And they do everything in their power to see that we break through. What precious love there is in brothers and sisters!

ALL OF THESE STORIES are all right, as long as we can hold them here within our own small, frightened, hurting, personal lives. But what happens when these stories come face-to-face with our world today? What healing is available beyond our own particular place?

Something tells us that there is no healing for us as persons if there is not also healing for the hurting places out there. Something tells us that there is only one power, one loving God of the universe, one healing force. And if it reaches to us, why not to every person? Why not to every situation? Why not to every condition? What may be needed for that healing force to reach out to those places?

Maybe we simply need to realize that our own society is like the woman--bleeding, internally bleeding. Our society often looks good on the outside, is often proclaimed as "number one," the greatest, on the outside, but it is bleeding internally.

So much of our true life is pouring out. So many of our best minds are working on instruments of death and destruction. So many of our best young people are out there on drugs, out there in the prisons, out there in absolutely purposeless and meaningless lives. Pouring out like the lifeblood of the society, like a hemorrhage.

Maybe we need to realize that nations can hemorrhage as well as individuals. And nations are therefore in deep need of people like this woman who is determined that she is going to find a way. There's going to be healing; there's got to be healing. Maybe what is needed is more and more women like that, women who are absolutely persevering, who know that there is a source of healing and that the kind of bleeding all around us that leads to jails and to wars does not have to take place.

Maybe we need more people like her who will focus themselves on nothing else than finding the source of healing for the bleeding of our society. Maybe there need to be gatherings of people like this, day after day after day, building their faith, testing their faith, asking whether they really believe that Jesus still has the power to heal in this world. Or is that just talk? Is it private talk, little Christian talk, but not great, universal talk?

Maybe we need to find out where Jesus is moving in our time--where the garments are--where the touching can take place. Before she met Jesus, the hemorrhaging woman had a vision of her healing. She knew she could be healed. Do we know our nation can be healed? Do we know our inner-city neighborhood can be healed? Do we really know that?

Do we have a vision of what our healed nation and neighborhood would look like? How can it come to be if we have no vision? Without vision, our nation perishes. And if our nation perishes, so do we, in spite of all the healing we may talk about. Who will envision the healing, in order to help it come about?

REMEMBER THE MAN sitting there, looking at the pool, looking at the place that everybody knew was supposed to be the source of healing. All of the sudden somebody taps him on the shoulder and says, "Hey, what's happening! What are you doing here?" He is totally unprepared and answers, "Healing is supposed to happen here. What are you doing coming from over there?"

How many of us are ready to be flexible--to move, to dance, to be prepared for healing wherever it comes from, and to participate in it? Are we ready to get up and walk even though healing comes from a direction that is absolutely unconventional? We've got so much to be, so much we're supposed to do, and I am convinced that so much is waiting on us.

The incident with the paralytic man is one of my favorite stories. These four guys were running around Galilee, with their friend on a stretcher, following Jesus. Why? Because they loved their friend, they loved him deeply, and because they believed that there was something better for him.

Who are the paralytics among us? People are doing all kinds of things in our name and we feel absolutely paralyzed to do anything about it. We can be full of cynicism and despair. Our nation is also paralyzed, and our leadership is paralyzed--saying and doing everything except what needs to be said and done for the healing of the nation.

Is it possible that some of us are meant to pick up our leaders? Even if their name is Reagan or Shultz, are we meant to pick them up and recognize that they are our paralyzed brothers and sisters? Maybe we simply have not seen ourselves adequately as the stretcher-bearers, as the ones who are the channels of healing.

Look at all the paralyzed communities around us, some of which we live in--communities paralyzed by fear, by drugs, by a love of possessions that prevents taking any risks for anything. Look at our nation, paralyzed and stuck in crippling ways.

And here we come, saying we believe in the healing power of God. So people say, "Here's a stretcher, and there's the house; what are you going to do about it now?" The question is, are we ready to break in? Or to break out? What are we going to need to break loose? What are we going to have to change? What structures are going to have to be really transformed for us to do the job that has to be done?

The scriptures remind us that no structures made by humans are forever. Therefore, it may be that some roofs will need to be torn out, some doors knocked down, some windows broken through, in order for us to bring our paralyzed sisters and brothers, our paralyzed communities, our paralyzed nation in touch with the healing power.

When we ask, "My God, where will I find the strength, the courage, the faith to do that?" remember the story of the paralyzed man. Very often the healers find us, if they are coming with the loving Jesus. And try to picture the hemorrhaging woman, to feel her determination to be healed. Call forth her courage. Reach into your own life for that great patience. Find within yourself the sense that led her to trust her intuition about Jesus.

Take time to ask yourself the central question: Do I really want to be healed? And remember how much we need each other for healing. Especially when we are paralyzed and unable to break through. Remember how responsible we are for our sisters' and brothers' healing.

Also remember when we ask that question that it's not all our struggle. We are also preparing other generations of non-despairers, generations of stretcher-bearers, generations of people who will dash right through the crowd to touch the hem of the garment. The next generation is the extension of our hope, our faith, our power.

Finally, when we ask "Where will I find the strength, the grace, the faith, the power?" don't forget: That's what the table of the Lord is all about. It's about coming and participating in the life of Jesus Christ, participating in that power. That's what the table is for. It's certainly not enough to quench our thirst, not enough to fill our stomachs. But it is enough to renew us day after day--to bring faith, to bring power, to bring grace, to bring hope, with one another.

That is what amazing grace is really all about. It is amazing that we are here. It is amazing that the table is available to us. And it's amazing that the Lord of the table asks us to go from the table, not just to where we are sitting, but out to the hurting places, and to see visions, to look for angels, to walk without despair, to imagine what is still to be. Because God is not finished with us yet.

Come to the table. Then go from the table, holding the children, knowing that we are held. This is the great message of those magnificent stories of faith. The healing that is for us here is for all, everywhere. Let it spread, let it pour out, let it overwhelm us, so that we can no longer hold it to ourselves. Because God has great things in mind for us.

Vincent Harding was professor of religion and social transformation at Illiff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, when this article appeared. Rosemarie Freeney Harding, who had been a freedom movement activist, worked as a spiritual counselor when this article appeared. This sermon was preached at Sojourners Community Church in Washington, D.C.