And Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the crowds surround you and are pressing in on you!” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me.” Luke 8:45
This story in Luke 8, at first glance, seems to be randomly inserted into the narrative. Only a few verses earlier, a Jewish man named Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, is begging Jesus to come to his home and heal his daughter, who is on death’s door. The careful reader would be concerned with whether or not Jairus’ daughter will be healed.
But then Luke makes a detour. “As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone.”
One wonders why the gospel writer, Luke, takes a pause in his story about Jairus’ dying daughter to talk about a bleeding woman. We are never given her name, only a few details of her life; namely, that she was sick and destitute.
I’m inclined to believe that the theme of this woman’s life was desperation. For over a decade, she would have hoped and believed that one doctor or another could heal her. But none did. So when she reached out to Jesus in a last-ditch effort to be saved, she must’ve been truly desperate.
And Jesus, the Healer, knew right away. “Who touched me?” Though he was the Son of God, and knew who it was that touched Him, He asked so that others would see the glory of God. Just like when He brought Lazarus back to life, the Son always prays that the Father would be glorified. “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” he tells Martha and Mary.
So, in a move that was fully desperate, this woman reached out to Jesus and touched “the fringe of his garment,” and “immediately her discharge of blood ceased.”
It was her act of desperate faith that led her to be healed. It was Jairus’ act of desperate faith to ask Jesus to raise his daughter from the dead. Why would they do such a thing? Because people do crazy things when they are desperate.
If we are to view God rightly, we must see the absolute desperation of our position apart from Christ. In this story, we are the ones who are blind and bleeding because of our sin. Just as Jairus’ daughter was physically dead, so our souls are spiritually dead without Christ. We cannot heal ourselves, and our only hope is that Jesus, in His Saving Grace, will raise us from the dead and heal our sin sickness. As the Psalmist says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity and who heals all your diseases.”
I must have that same desperation of the woman who reached out and said to herself, “If only I can touch his cloak I will be healed.”
And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling, and falling down before him declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.” Luke 8:47-48