St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wesley Chapel, FL
Preacher: The Rev. Adrienne R. Hymes, Vicar
Proper 5 Year A: Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
June 11, 2023
Prior to our gospel passage today, word had surely spread about Jesus’ healing power. There had been a series of healings—his cleansing of a leper, healing of the centurian’s servant, Peter’s mother, the paralytic man, and many others. Throughout these encounters, a theme develops: Jesus recognized a person’s faith by how they reached out to him, either for themselves or on behalf of another.
Our gospel passage in the ninth chapter of Matthew, continues this theme of Jesus recognizing the faith within people. When Jesus recognized a tax collector, named Matthew, at his booth, he commanded Matthew to follow him, and he did. Following Jesus was a visible affirmation of Matthew’s faith. The fact that the Jewish Jesus called this social and moral outcast to follow him was remarkable. The Jewish tax collectors were despised as shady characters who worked for the Roman government, and gauged taxpayers for more than the legal requirement.
On the other end of the moral spectrum were the Pharisees, an ancient Jewish sect that believed that they were far superior in their piety than other faithful Jewish people by their strict observance of the traditional Mosaic Law and oral laws. So, when Jesus was seen eating with Matthew and other tax collectors and sinners, the Pharisees were offended. The Pharisees asked Jesus’ disciples, not Jesus, why Jesus would “dirty” himself by mingling and eating with the socially unclean.
While Jesus was still speaking to the Pharisees, there was an holy interruption; the leader of the synagogue begged Jesus to come to his house to touch the body of his dead daughter, believing that she would live again if only Jesus could lay his hand on her. The gospel writer presented this nameless religious leader not as a powerful man, but as a desperate father, sick with grief. This father believed that the sickness of death could be remedied with Jesus’ life-giving touch on his daughter. To have her alive again, meant that he, too, would be freed from suffering.
Just before Jesus left, he told the offended Pharisees, that “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (v.12). So, Jesus left the Pharisees, those who may have presumed themselves to be well, and to have no need of a physician, got up and followed the synagogue leader to his house where he was needed.
Before Jesus reached his destination, he encountered another faithful soul helplessly bound by sickness in need of healing. We know nothing about this nameless woman beyond her suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years; her sickness had become her inescapable identity. What is not explicitly stated in the gospel is that the blood of this woman rendered her, and everything and everyone she touched, including Jesus, ritually unclean. Someone with her condition would have been isolated from society until her bleeding stopped, and hers showed no signs of stopping. She would then be required to perform the proper purification rituals, which meant more time separated from society.[1]
The woman’s faith gave her the courage to risk moving through the crowd to reach out for Jesus. The woman said to herself, “I know that I can be made well, I just need to touch Jesus’ cloak.” The woman never spoke her intention to Jesus, and yet Jesus verbally affirmed her faith, assured her physical restoration, and reminded her of her belovedness, and respected her dignity by addressing her as “daughter.” After declaring to the woman that her faith had made her well, the text says nothing about Jesus requiring her to perform the purification rituals, nor did he cleanse himself of impurity, caused by this encounter.
The woman was made well, and the journey to the synagogue leader’s house resumed. As a Jewish religious leader, the man was well aware, as was Jesus, of the ritual laws regarding blood and corpse contamination, particularly for priests.[2] And yet, the religious leader allowed an already ritually unclean Jesus to enter his home with the corpse of his daughter. Once there, and after declaring that the girl was not dead, but sleeping, Jesus put everyone outside. In the intimate space shared only by Jesus and the girl, Jesus took her hand, and she got up. The father’s love for his child, and his faith, directed him to entrust the restoration of her life to the only physician who could make her well.
The healing stories of the hemorrhaging woman and the synagogue leader’s daughter remind us that, regardless of one’s position in society, the human condition of suffering, in its many forms, is inescapable. People can seek relief from human suffering, in all kinds of places and in all kinds of faces, but they will never find it without knowing, and believing, in the one who is the source of all healing—the one through whom all life came into being.
The bleeding woman, and the despairing father, both reached out to the source of all healing. What’s more, they desired Jesus’ healing in their heart and participated in their healing through their actions. Sadly, many individuals unwittingly participate in their own ongoing suffering by holding onto grudges and by nurturing a heart of unforgiveness and a spirit of grievance. For many, it becomes their identity. Folks around them start to wonder if the person truly desires to “stop the bleeding” in order to be liberated from the spiritual wounds of guilt, grievance and grief in order to be made well. Only God knows.
What we know—that the Pharisees, who presumed everyone else to be sinners and not on their level of piety—did not know, is that we are all sin-sick in need of healing by our great physician.
Presuming that one is not in need of Jesus’ healing, creates ripe conditions for sin to fester and grow in those who are made vulnerable by denial.
What we know, also, is that when we reach out for Jesus in faith, expecting that our prayers will be answered, we are renewed and restored. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, humankind has already been made well, but not all have accepted his liberating, life-giving gift.
The sin-sick souls, for whom Jesus died in order that they might be made well, exist today, for we are all sinners, in need of Jesus’ soul healing.
Friends, these stories of Jesus encountering a person and recognizing their faith by how they reached out to him, either for themselves or on behalf of another, are our stories. Wherever you find yourself on your walk with Christ, and whatever physical or spiritual healing you may need in your life, reach out for Jesus, so that he might recognize your faith in him. Know that your faith, in times of peace and in times of sorrow, has made you well.
Together, may we all, by faith, follow and serve Christ, the one who makes the wounded whole; Christ, the one who heals the sin-sick soul.[3]
Amen.
[1] Leviticus 15:19-33
[2] Leviticus 21:1-3
[3] “There Is A Balm in Gilead,” Hymn 676. The Hymnal 1982.
