‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Mark 5:28

What do we make of such a story? What do we make of the tale of this poor woman whose savings had been drained by doctors who knew they could do nothing and who would have been told that she was ‘unclean’ by the religious leaders because of her gynaecological condition?

Neither the physicians nor the priests had anything to offer to her except counsels of despair and physical and emotional exclusion.

The woman knew that no-one offered her hope, she knew that her prospects for the future were bleak. It is hard to imagine how it must feel to be someone who is not just beyond medical intervention, but is also outside the life of a community that laid great stress upon ritual cleanliness.  The woman was ill and, spiritually if not physically, the woman was alone.

In her situation, what would we have done? Would we have preferred to remain invisible, to accept the word of the doctors and the priests? Or would she have said that this was the only life that she had and that Jesus was the only person who offered her a chance?

There is a poem called Days by the English poet Philip Larkin which asks the question that the woman had to face:

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

The priest and the doctor are those called upon for answers, but neither offers a solution.

What is the woman to do with her days, for those were the only days she would have? How is the woman to have a hope of happiness if there is no-one who can offer her hope?

The woman would have asked herself all of the questions that Philip Larkin asks and many more besides.  Each morning she would have woken to a new day and each morning she would have had to suffer the apin and the indignity of the previous days.  Time and time over she would have asked about her life and why there seemed no answers.

Then the woman hears about Jesus.  What has she heard? We are not told, but what she has heard has persuaded her that here is someone with the power to change her life, here is someone who offers her a chance to live well in the days of her life that remain, a chance to have health and happiness, a chance to be once more part of a community.

The stories she has heard about Jesus are so powerful that she realises that, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well’. What power there must have been in what she has heard that she is convinced that simply to touch the clothes of Jesus would be enough.  Many people would have made such contact with him, few would have believed that such contact could have the power to change their lives.

Saint Mark writes, ‘felt in her body that she was healed of her disease’. This is not a change brought by psychological or emotional processes, this is a profound physical change. The touching of Jesus’ clothes is a moment of such physical power that Jesus himself feels the impact.  Jesus realises that there has been a life-changing moment and he turns and he asks, ‘Who touched my clothes?’

At this moment, the woman has to make a decision.  Would she retreat into the crowd and return to her former life, or would she step forward and acknowledge that her life had been restored? Now her physical health would return, now she would return to the life of her community, now her days would be happy moments in which to live.

The woman has no doubt about the power of Jesus, she has no doubt about the identity of Jesus and she comes to him in ‘fear and trembling’. The woman tells Jesus her story, perhaps that is much more for her benefit than for his, in the telling of the story she is accepting the reality of the change that has come into her life.

Jesus’ responds to the woman in three phrases, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well’, he says.  Faith has been an essential element of what has taken place. ‘Go in peace’, he says, and ‘peace’ for Jesus means a profound sense of wellbeing in one’s life. ‘Be healed’, he says, and it is a healing of all that has marred her life and a healing of every division that has arisen.

Reading the story of the woman, can we answer Philip Larkin’s question about our own days?  If we are not living life to the full now, then when will we do so? If we cannot be happy in these days, then when will we be happy? If we could not find the answer to those questions in Jesus, then it would be nowhere to be found.