3.09. The Woman who Touched the Hem op Christ's Garment

CHAPTER IX The Woman who Touched the Hem op Christ’s Garment THE stolen miracle stamps the character of the woman who snatched it in clear, sharp outline. She who most desired to be hidden has become one of the best known personages of Scripture. The very act that was prompted by her shrinking modesty has set her in the forefront of the gospel story, before the eyes of all the ages. And yet it has done so in a fashion which even this timorous woman could not deprecate. It is not a painful exposure such as she dreaded that we have here, but a delightful revelation, first of faith on her part, then of gentle kindness on the side of her Lord, great spiritual facts which swamp all minor considerations. One who is the happy centre of a triumph of faith and a work of grace cannot but be supremely interesting in these respects. With these higher interests in view let us take up the story of the woman whose cure was so unique in its method and circumstances. The incident that introduces her comes in as an interlude in the story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter. It was while Jesus was on His way to the ruler of the synagogue’s house, in Capernaum, that the suffering woman crept up behind Him in the crowd and furtively drew from Him her cure. This is worth noting, because it may supply one factor in the explanation of her unusual mode of seeking help. Jesus was on an errand literally of life and death, and the house to which He was going was that of a leading citizen. To attempt to detain Him at such a time would be most inopportune. A shy and shrinking woman would not dare to do such a thing. And yet finding herself near Him in the crowd this woman had her opportunity, if only she could avail herself of it adroitly so as not to make a fuss and hinder the course of the Healer on His way to save the child. The child and the woman thus brought together by accident into the same narrative also come into comparison through a curious coincidence. Jairus’s daughter was twelve years old; this woman had been suffering from her complaint for twelve years. Thus the sufferer had been afflicted during the whole lifetime of the child. How different had been their conditions! Probably Jairus’s little daughter had been healthy and happy till seized by the fatal illness that had roused her parents’ alarm. Which then is most to be pitied, the young, bright life suddenly snapped off in the opening bud? or the sad, weary life with its many years of suffering still extended? All the concern of the multitude was with the great man’s daughter. But we cannot assert that to Jesus the calamity at the ruler’s house, with the pomp and publicity given to the mourning for it, was a matter of more compassionate interest than the chronic distress of this obscure woman. At all events we may rest assured that the obscure are as near to the heart of Jesus as people whose station commands the commiseration of a whole city when they are in trouble. Nay, may we not suppose that He has a special sympathy for His hidden disciples just because His is the only sympathy they receive? The sufferer had much to plead in excuse for making some effort to obtain help from the great Healer, even though the occasion did appear to be most inappropriate; for her need was desperate. This was just a last resource.

During those many weary years of her sufferings she had tried all possible expedients for relief, and they had proved totally ineffectual. She had spent all she had, all her livelihood, in physicians’ fees; and yet, though this had reduced her to penury, she was none the better. St. Mark even says she had “ suffered much of many physicians,” with the result that instead of improving she “rather grew worse;” and we can well believe it when we consider the absurd remedies for her complaint that were recommended by Jewish authorities. St. Luke discreetly omits a statement so discreditable to his profession; but even he is compelled to allow that the patient had derived no benefit from the long and costly course of medical treatment she had undergone. The wonder is that after such an experience of continuous disappointment she did not abandon all hope. At best one would only look for some last council of despair. And yet it is under these most unpromising circumstances that a rare faith manifests itself. A lower motive, however, must sometimes be allowed in cases such as this. As a drowning man is said to clutch at a straw, an incurable patient is tempted to turn at last to any proposed remedy, however unlikely it may be, and however little authenticated. The vendors of quack medicines trade on this tendency. Those numerous advertisements that appear in almost every newspaper and magazine, and even disfigure the country prospects by the side of the railways, are not without a certain pathetic significance.

They could not flourish as they do if they were not supported by an enormous constituency; they bear witness to the existence among us of a vast number of people who, despairing of recognised scientific methods of cure, are ready to fall a prey to the latest pretender to the healer’s art. From this point of view it might be argued that the victim of the physician’s failure in the narrative before us was not better than one of those unhappy people, abundant enough in our own day, who are always ready to try some Mark 5:26. new remedy, its very novelty being its one recommendation. But no; she had one saving merit — true faith in Christ.

However vague the ideas in the mind of the woman whose case is now before us may have been — and probably they were not a little confused — she had enough faith to come to Jesus for healing. Clear thinking is not necessary to salvation, nor is it essential for any lesser help that may be had from Christ. But this woman has been accused of worse than imperfect intelligence; she has been blamed for superstition in believing that there was magical eiScacy in the mere garment of Christ. If that were all, if there were nothing more in her mind, it must be added that Jesus confirmed her superstition, in permitting the cure and commending her faith. But there is another way of looking at her conduct. She believed that the very least contact with Jesus would suffice for her cure. It was not that the garment in itself was supposed by her to contain a mysterious virtue of healing, like the bones and other relics of saints which are treated as charms by ignorant people in some countries. Her desire was to come near to Christ in the crowd. She was assured that the very least contact would suffice; but it must be contact, more or less immediate. If, therefore, the communication could only be through the fringe of His cloak, since it would still be a certain contact, to her faith that would serve the desired

It would be grossly unjust to a great and honourable profession to use this incident in order to throw contempt on the medical men of our own day because of the wretched failure of their predecessors in bygone ages. There is really no ground of comparison. The modern doctor has little but his name in common with the so-calletl “physician “ of antiquity. As a science, medicine is quite new. Nothing is more striking than the contrast between the contemptuous way in which, till recently, the “leech” was treated in literature and the acknowledged position of the cultured man of science who represents the healing art to-day. Even Dickens seemed to think all doctors were quacks. A man who wrote now on this subject in the style of our great humorist would only be displaying his own ignorance and bad taste. It may be said that as God t;ave gifts of healing to the first century in the form of miracles, so He has given gifts of healing to the nineteenth century by means of scientific knowledge and th’y application of it to disease. This is always the one essential of faith — contact with Jesus Christ.

Still it may be said she was superstitious in laying so much stress on the mere act of physical contact. Are we so sure of that? Jesus usually touched to heal, though under exceptional circumstances He only spoke a word, and in some rare cases even cured at a distance. Can we affirm that the actual physical contact with His body, and perhaps through this with His personality, may not have been a Divinely ordered method of healing? The whole subject is so profoundly mysterious that any dogmatic assertions about it are out of place. Certainly the evangelists write as though they held that the healing virtue did flow out through contact.

We are more within the region of normal experience when we endeavour to account for the fact that this suffering woman was satisfied with the minimum of contact. We may set it down in part to her humility. Why should she claim more, if this was enough? Or, as has been already suggested, she may have been careful not to hinder the hurried journey of the Healer to the bedside of the ruler’s dying child. Any more formal appeal for help would have occasioned some delay. Possibly in the throng, which, as we learn from St. Peter’s remark, was pressing about Jesus on every side,^ she could not get nearer; though by stooping she could just succeed in reaching the tassel at one of the corners of His cloak as He swept past. The whole narrative, however, suggests a further reason.

She desired to remain hidden. She would steal the miracle unobserved. Perhaps, as has been often suggested, knowing that contact with a person in her condition rendered any one ceremonially unclean, she would not venture to ask for the healing touch openly and thus subject the Healer to inconvenience. Besides, it is quite likely that the distressing nature of her complaint would make a Luk 8:45. modest woman shrink from observation and dread a public reference to it. Any or all of these reasons may furnish an explanation of her conduct. And then came the great wonder. She felt in a moment that her distressing complaint was healed. The misery of twelve years’ duration had come to an end. It was a sudden cure; it was also a perfect cure; and the joy of it was that she knew this immediately. Theologians have disputed whether a like consciousness accompanies Christ’s cure of the soul. Is deliverance from the disease of sin equally a matter of glad assurance springing from interior experience? One would think that if the disease were felt as acutely as a physical ailment is felt this would be the case. And accordingly it is with men like Augustine and Luther and Bunyan who have first experienced the keenest sense of sin that the glad rebound to life and liberty in Christ is most consciously perceived. The strange part of the story begins at the next stage. When Jesus felt the hand of this poor trembling woman on His cloak He asked who it was that had touched Him.

St. Peter, always ready to speak to the occasion, and sometimes not unwilling to correct his Master, expresses his astonishment at hearing such a question. Who had touched Jesus 1 Any number of people had touched Him; the crowd was pressing round Him. There can be no doubt of what two at least of the evangelists understood to be the experience of Christ at this moment. St. Mark makes the assertion in his own words, how Jesus had perceived that power had gone out of Him St. Luke gives the statement in the words of Jesus replying to His too officious disciple — “Some one did touch Me: for I perceived that power had gone forth from Me” — this part of the incident is not referred to in Mattheio. The plain meaning of these expressions is that the power had flowed out involuntarily. We may think this very improbable.

If so we must admit that the evangelists had misapprehended the facts. But it cannot be reasonably denied that the statement they both give — the one in his own words, the other as coming from Jesus — implies as much. It is commonly asserted that Jesus, on feeling the touch of the poor, suffering woman, and knowing in His Divine consciousness that this was an appeal for help, at once responded, healing her of His own will and by a conscious exertion of energy. This brings the miracle into line with other and more normal cases of healing in our Lord’s ministry; and it removes the notion of something like magic — a cure by means of occult powers apart from spiritual means. There is some probability that this is the right explanation of what occurred. It is most reasonable to conclude that the exercise of will which we see in the miracles of Christ generally and the conscious appeal to the Spirit of God as the power by which the great deeds were done would be essential to the working of every miracle; so that we must entirely separate these wonders from everything approaching the nature of magic. On the other hand, it is only fair to give some weight to the view taken of this occurrence by the two evangelists. Are we quite sure that they were mistaken? Again we must caution ourselves against any dogmatism in regard to the mysterious realm of the miraculous, a realm that is so remote from our everyday experience. Dare we say as a certainty that there may not have been a directly healing virtue in the pei-son of Jesus, which might under rare circumstances have flowed out apart from His own deliberate intention? It seems superstitious to imagine the existence of anything of the kind; but superstition is often only a name for belief in what transcends our normal experience. Perhaps it would be wisest for us to allow at least the possibility of some such explanation of this perfectly unique occurrence. The way in which Jesus acted on perceiving the woman’s touch and the consequent cure gives rise to further questions. He asked who had touched Him, and looked round about to discover the person. This simple statement, like that which precedes, has been the occasion of considerable verbal quibbling. The language of the evangelists, especially that of St. Mark, plainly suggests that Jesus did not know who had thus crept up behind Him and stolen a miracle. In the second gospel we read that Jesus “ turned Him about in the crowd and said, Who touched My garments? “ ^; and, again, a little later, “ And He looked round about to see her that had done this thing.”- It has been said that this was only done to make the woman reveal herself and confess her cure before the people, Jesus all the while knowing who and where she was. That is not the plain suggestion of the text. Why should we resort to an ingenious device to make out an explanation? The chief reason for doing so has been an unwillingness to admit that there could be any small detail of events of which Jesus was not aware even during the time of His earthly life with its human limitations. This is contrary to what we see in other instances; on other occasions He asked for information. The reasonable supposition is that when He did so it was because He wanted it — that, for example, if He asked where Lazarus was laid it was because He was seeking information as to the place of the tomb; or if He inquired of the father of a lunatic boy, “ How long time is it since this hath come unto him? “ it was to learn what He did not know about the child. The denial of any reality in such questions which we meet with iu the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria and those modern writers who adopt his views tends to the denial of any reality in the human nature of Christ; it converts the honest gospel records into fallacious documents dealing with appearances that disguise the true facts. In the present instance there are elements that render the unreal treatment of Christ’s question and of His inquiring attitude exceptionally difficult to accept. In any view of the case it looks very hard for the poor -woman to be forced into publicity. Her trouble was of so peculiarly painful a character that she would naturally shrink from notice; and everybody with right feeling would respect the instinctive reserve of a woman in this condition. Now if Jesus spoke quite simply and naturally when He asked who had touched Him there would have been no unkindness in His making the inquiry, because He would not have known the peculiar reason for the sufferer’s manner of seeking her cure. But if He had known who she was and all about her from the first, and only looked round and spoke as He did to compel her to declare herself, it is difficult to discover here the presence of that tender considerateness which always characterised His actions. Thus in the attempt to preserve the omniscience of Christ the theologian who tampers with the natural meaning of the narrative casts a shadow on His goodness. And it is a curious fact, often observable in the school of Cyril and with others who deny any limitation to our Lord’s powers and faculties as a man on earth, that these people are much more anxious about His physical powers and intellectual faculties than they are about His moral character. In contending for the absolute and perfect manifestation of the former they continually raise the most serious difficulties with regard to the latter. And yet it is the character of our Lord for which we should be most jealous.

Anything that seems for one moment to cast the slightest reflection on that must be resented by His devout followers as a libel and an outrage. Why then labour so earnestly to prove His omniscience in regard to the merest trifles of earthly life when in so many cases this tends to make His conduct appear in an ambiguous light? All difficulty vanishes immediately we are prepared to admit quite frankly the plain sense of the narrative as that appears in the gospels. Jesus had not the slightest intention of wounding the modesty of a shrinking, timorous woman. In the most natural way, being conscious of the appeal for help, and perceiving that the healing grace had been given, He wished to see and know the person who had obtained this benefit from Him. That was all. When she heard the question the woman could not keep her secret. It occurred to her that she might have been doing something terribly wrong in obtaining her great blessing from the Healer in this strange way she had invented for herself. The very success of her experiment must have impressed her with the magnitude of her daring.

Therefore at the inquiry of Jesus she at once responds, trembling with fear, and casts herself at her Saviour’s feet.

There, with her face buried in the dust, she tells Him the whole story. It would be enough if she only spoke of her cure. But a new feeling has come into her heart. Till now she had been only thinking of herself, the wretched condition she was in, the doleful failure of all attempts at a remedy, the desperation of her need as she made this one new venture of faith. And when she felt herself cured she still remained self-contained, now in ecstasy at the happy change that had come over her. In this mood of immense relief and extreme delight she was ready to creep away and enjoy the great boon by herself without uttering a word of acknowledgment to the Healer from whom she had derived 60 great a benefit. We must not entirely blame her if this was her mental condition. Long continued, hopeless suffering tends to make the victim of it self-contained, if not somewhat selfish. It is perfectly true that the school of pain is a discipline of sympathy, that one of the greatest advantages of suffering is that it teaches the sufferer to sympathise with others in a like condition. But this works for the most part as an after result, coming in when there is time for reflection in the calm days that follow deliverance. A great trouble while it lasts necessarily quickens the personal consciousness. It is diificult not to think much about oneself while enduring pain, because nothing is so celf-centred as pain. And then a sudden relief is for the moment equally self-centred, involving a new, intense, personal consciousness.

Nevertheless, while this is natural, it is not desirable.

Happily the woman who has just received so delightful a proof of the healing grace of Christ is quick to see the mistake of keeping the fact a secret. Immediately her thoughts turn to the source of her newly recovered health she rises superior to all personal considerations, her own condition before the staring crowd forgotten in the overwhelming presence of her Saviour.

Many people have found it difficult to make a public confession of Christ, and have even excused themselves on the plea of modesty and natural reticence. It is possible to make a mistake as to what is required in this duty of confession. We are not required to publish our inmost thoughts to the world, to “hang our hearts on our sleeves for daws to peck at.” There is a right and proper modesty in religion. There are sacred confidences between the soul and its Saviour that are meant for no third person. We may rub the bloom off the tender growth of early piety in rudely forcing it into pubhc observation. That there is a danger of something of the kind happening under novel forms of rehgious worship now being cultivated among young people is a matter of serious concern to thoughtful observei’S. Now it is to be noticed that the poor woman whom Jesus had called out from the crowd made her confession direct to our Lord Himself. She did not stand up and make a speech to the crowd. Possibly her trembling words were uttered in faint and whispering tones. It is only to Jesus Christ that we are to be expected to make the full confession of the life’s secrets. But there is another branch of the duty of Christian confession. The act of the healed woman was visible to all, and the little scene when she came up and cast herself at the feet of Jesus must have attracted general observation. That was only right; she would have been wrong in trying to escape it. Though we are not called on to make a public exposure of our inner experience, we are required to make a public confession of the fact that Christ has graciously heard our appeal and come to our relief. That is to say, though not under any obligation to confess our emotional experiences, we are called upon to confess Christ. Now there is nothing that so much hinders this simple confession as self-consciousness. So long as a person turns his thoughts in upon himself, or only looks away to note what other people are thinking of him, he may be a prey to nervous tremors, his tongue refusing to utter a word, his whole nature revolting against the idea of speaking of his own relations to Christ. But just in proportion as the thought of his Saviour’s goodness is uppermost in his mind the self-conscious shyness will be forgotten, and the duty of a direct acknowledgment of his Saviour will become a glad necessity. In response to the trembling woman’s confession Jesus gave her a reassuring word, addressing her by a title we do not meet with on His lips at any other time. He called her “Daughter.” There was great tact and delicacy of feeling in the choice of this word under the peculiar circumstances of the case. It would go a long way to soothe the distressed modesty of the poor woman. She must have been almost as old as Jesus, very likely she was older. Yet for the moment He assumed a fatherly attitude towai’ds her — the best of all attitudes with which to comfort her.

If He discovered that He had unwittingly hurt her feelings in seeking her out. He made ample amends by this most considerate way of treating her as soon as she had made herself known to Him. A finer instance of that perfect sympathy which sees a situation at a glance, and enters into it perfectly, cannot be imagined. The simplicity of the expedient would mark it as an act of genius, and we might venture to speak of the inspired genius of sympathy, if it were not that the moral character of the incident lifted it to a higher plane.

Lastly, Jesus commends the faith of the woman whom He addresses so graciously. He recognises that she has true faith. She must not forget that it was her faith and not the touch by itself that had led to the cure. With this recognition He dismisses her in the conventional language of an oriental farewell, but with more than its conventional meaning. May all be well with her indeed and her cure complete!

Tradition has been busy adding to the fame of this woman who so much desired to remain in obscurity. We meet with her as Bernice in apocryphal works such as Acts of Pilate and the Gospel of Nicodenitis, where she appears as a witness for Christ at His trial. She is the St. Veronica of church legend. Eusebius cites a local tradition from Banias (Csesarea Philippi) which claimed her as a native of that city. He says her house was shown in his own day. Near the gates, on a stone pedestal, was the bronze image of a woman kneeling, with her hands stretched out before her like one entreating, while opposite to this was a second statue in bronze, representing a man standing erect, clad in a mantle, and stretching out his hand to the woman. At his feet was a certain strange plant rising as high as the hem of the brazen garment, which represented an antidote for all diseases. This statue, Eusebius tells us, was locally taken to be intended for Christ.^ Sozomen adds that the Emperor Julian removed the statue of Christ, substituting one of himself, which was afterwards destroyed by lightning. But it is now acknowledged that although the statues may have existed as described, there is no authority for the legendary Christian associations connected with them.

Gibbon adopted a suggestion that the male figure stood either for the Emperor Vespasian, or for the philosopher Apollonius, who had gone about with a great fame of healing by miracle, while the female figure might represent some city or province, or perhaps the Queen Bernice.

Later legends describe St. Veronica as a princess of Edessa. Relying on them, the Roman Catholic writer Baronius treats her as a rich woman of high birth. All these later accretions are absolutely without historical value. We are left with our picture of the woman who touched the hem of Christ’s garment as it is drawn by the evangelists — her distress, her happy expedient, her cure by the healing power of Christ. Surely that is enough to teach us its own lessons without the meretricious adornments of legend to add the fictitious and vulgar importance of rank.