As a freshman at a small Christian University, we were all enrolled in a ‘personal development’ group. In it, seven of us freshman would meet with one senior and we’d wander campus to find the best view of the Ocean or Tijuana (San Diego lyfe) and try to establish some sort of conversation, trust and ya know, personal development. It was forced and awkward and usually dissolved into a discussion of weekend plans or how good the surf was going to be later but as we packed up one afternoon, our leader asked us to bring our favorite Bible verse the next week to attempt keeping us on a meaningful topic the entire hour.
It struck me then that I didn’t have one. There were stories and verses that I liked, that I had highlighted and underlined in my Bible or had memorized though songs and contests as a kid. In high school I followed along whatever study my church was doing and loved deeper revelations that a Greek or Hebrew root word could reveal. But in picking a personal favorite or life verse I was stumped. So I did what any 18 year old would do – I procrastinated until the night before and then googled ‘best verses in the bible’. Yup. Millions of hits with historical or theological significance popped up but instead of working to decipher those, I sighed and opened my Bible.
And then God did what He often does when I am not expecting it, which is to answer a question I didn’t know I had.
“He said to her,
Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” Mark 5:34
Honestly, I’m not sure how I ended up reading the gospel of Mark (ahem, Jesus). But there in that one verse I found an entire global, eternal story of humanity and a personal message of identity, comfort, promise and direction.
To set the scene a little bit – Jesus is walking with his disciples and a crowd of hundreds or thousands of people who have heard about the miracles he is performing and the strange messages he is teaching. One man had asked Jesus to follow him to his home to save his dying daughter, “Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live” he says in v23. So Jesus and a curious crowd start to move with him.
In the midst of his walk, the story narrows in on one woman in the crowd in v25 “And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years”. This unnamed woman has lived a dozen years experiencing physical pain AND, without children or a husband, she suffers a life with no status. She’s probably anemic and by Mosaic law, considered ‘Unclean’ and therefore not allowed to touch anyone. That’s 12 years without human touch.
Mark writes that she’s scoured the world for a solution, “She had suffered a great deal under the care of doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse” v26. The world couldn’t fix it. It didn’t respect her and it probably didn’t understand her. Instead, it took all she had in exchange for false, empty promises of healing. It took advantage of her pain and sold her temporary hope and increased suffering. In her desperation she breaks with law and custom and good manners to reach out to grab a miracle.
“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.” v27-29.
The God of the universe stops. He pauses his high-profile journey to save a girl in front of her family and a thousand witnesses, and he calls out to this unnamed woman who had been instantly healed with a touch. He waits for her response.
I’ve learned that God doesn’t want only to heal. He didn’t come into human history as a theory or with the equation for a pain free or perfect life – He came to be with us; He wants our relationship.He easily could’ve kept on walking and the woman would still credit him and told others about but that would’ve missed the point. I recently heard a pastor say that every single story in the Bible is Relational because that is God’s heart (which is why we shouldn’t try to use it as a science textbook but that’s a different topic).
Jesus wanted her to speak up, come to him, tell him her story.
His response to her has since inscribed itself on my heart:
“Daughter, your faith has healed you.
Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”
He gives her a name; he calls her Daughter. Its her only name in the story and I would dare to venture that it’s the only identity God cares about for any of us. Understanding my identity as a daughter of the King has implicated every decision, action, and thought in my life. It made me twist the good ol’ 90s question “What Would Jesus Do?” into “What would an adopted heir to the eternal, heavenly throne do?” Because that’s who God tells me I am.
He gives credit for the miracle to her faith in him. Instead of ‘I have healed you’ he proclaims “your faith has healed you”. She reached out to touch merely his clothing with the belief that his garment could and would heal her. I spent too much time pushing up next to Jesus, physically pressing into him, bumping along with the curious crowd to witness what He’s doing for others yet lacking faith to reach out purposely for myself. At varying stages I’ve lacked faith in his ability to heal, faith in His willingness to heal, faith in His interest in healing me. As a Daughter, sometimes the act of an ‘adopted heir to an eternal heavenly throne’ is to reach out a hand or climb into His lap and receive the healing He longs to give.
It’s worth mentioning that the man prompting this walk told Jesus that
once He put hands on his daughter, she would be healed.
It is AFTER this proclamation that Jesus goes with Him to see it through.
Faith precipitates healing.
He gives instructions; Go. Now that she is healed, it’s time to do something about it. He doesn’t command that she shut herself away in a nunnery to worship or to physically follow Him around town or even to tell others what occurred – her changed life will be testimony enough.
Everyone is Going through life, but are we wandering aimlessly, or being carried passively by a distractible crowd or are we Going as if Sent out with purpose? After leaving San Diego, when anxiety made it difficult to get out of bed, I was still Going in life, just without direction and at a strangled, painful, limping pace. As a Daughter who then experienced healing faith, He picked me up and set my feet on a path and sent me to Go into the World, into 2017 and into eternity with Him forever.
He gives comfort in the promise ‘Go in peace’. It’s a declaration that the search is over. Once bleeding, isolated, broke, hurting and desperate, she can now live her life from a place of victory. She does not need another doctor and now that her physical body is healed she isn’t onto phase II – Peace. It has been given to her as a foundation from which she can live the rest of her life. In Jesus’s perfect healing, I am no longer on a hunt for healing or a quest for meaning. I have been seen, validated, loved and freed and now as I Go I have His peace.
He gives her the way to Freedom. Instead of ‘you are free’, he says “Be Freed”; move deeper into this future-tense freedom in Me. ‘Be Freed’ He says. Like a well-tended garden thrives within the boundaries of nurturing care, protection from scavengers and removal of lecherous weeds. The command to ‘Be Freed’ is a command to continually submit to this caring protection that results in flowers, vegetables and an abundance of life. The woman was facing an entirely new life which easily could have scared her back into old routines. How tempting to go back to the doctors she knew so well, back to begging for scraps and withdrawing from others as a temporary comfort rather than discovering this whole new way to Be.
Freedom in Christ is the antithesis of the freedom of the World which leads to a chaotic, entrapping anxiety of anarchy. As I am tempted with traps, poisons, parasites, cages and chains of every kind, continuously deciding to Be Freed is an everyday and lifelong process to claim this gift.
He gives her relief from her own personal brand of Suffering. Stepping out of my suffering meant stepping away from coping mechanisms, a self-centered story and a false sense of safety that accompanies isolation. Going in Peace means checking past suffering at the door, Being Freed means refusing to carry it around. Her 12-year chronic health condition, the co-occurring social stigma, the identity, the exhausting hand-to-mouth living, the habitual nature of poverty and suffering is a shackle to drop and flee from!
She gives her testimony,
He gives his response,
this unnamed woman makes enough of an
impact to land in two different Male-authored Gospels.
She is me and we are humanity and “My love, you’re worth it all.”
— Matthew 6:30, Luke 12:7, Psalm 139:13-14
So I brought this verse to my ‘development’ group and I summed up the last 1000 words into a 90 second summary – not fully understanding the power this verse would have in my life, only recognizing that it would need to marinate in my heart and brain for a while. Then the next person in the circle shared and the next until the assignment was finished and we could continue skating on the surface of interpersonal conversation. The healing, peace, and freedom both personal and universal is printed in the Gospel 100 million times each year. His miracle is available in black and white letters, He is currently on the move in the world healing as many people as possible.
We just have to be willing to reach out and grab it.
Xo Hannah
