I. The hemorrhaging woman.

En route to Jairus’ house, Jesus is touched by a woman with a hemorrhage of blood (Matt 9:18–26; Mk 5:21–34; Lk 8:40–48). The story is one that many of us know very well. She has been yoked to her illness for twelve years, all of her wealth and attention has been spent on doctors, and she has only gotten worse and not better (Mk 5:26).

Seeing Jesus in the crowd she draws near to him in faith and lays hold of the hem of his garment and receives the long-wanted healing. Typology immediately presents itself:

• Though unclean because of her bleeding, she is the true Levitical Hebrew who longs to “draw near” to Yahweh (Lev 15:19–27; Ja 4:8).
• Jesus is the new high priest whose garments are winged with glory, and the Sun of Righteousness who has risen with healing in his wings (Num 15:38–39; Deut 22:12; Mal 4:2); she who is touched by the wings of his garments is blessed (Ezek 16:8).
• Jesus is the new and greater Boaz, and the desolate woman like the desolate Ruth before her longs to have the corners of the garment cast over her (Ruth 3:9).
• Jesus is the One who dwells above the wings of the Cherubim to whom the despairing run and cling in hope of clemency; she finds refuge under the shadow of his wings and on the horns of his exalted brilliance (Ex 25:20; 37:9; Is 37:16; e.g., 1 Ki 2:28–29; Ps 61:4).
• She is a picture of lady Zion who, having been left desolate, finds life in the Bridegroom, the one who “longs to gather [her] under his wings as a hen gathers her chicks” (Matt 23:37–39).

Jesus stops and asks the crowd, “Who touched me?” (Lk 8:45).

There is a kind of subdued silence attended by the shuffling and murmuring of a confused throng. The reason for their confusion is given by Peter who speaks on their behalf “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you” (Mk 5:31).

One must not think here of Jesus and his followers following Jairus through a very full shopping mall where, though “crowded” in some loose sense, people can still be looked-out for, moved-around, and politely avoided. No. This is the kind of crowd where personal space disappears, individuation is to some degree obscured, and touching looses the significance that comes from choice. No one chooses to touch in a space like this; one has to touch. Being here means touching and being touched. Everyone is packed together like the contents of a loaf of Spam™.

In such spaces the social equivalent of the grammatical “space” between words is gone from our syntax of movements; there is no longer “you [space] and [space] me.” We now dwell in a world of “youme.” Movement rides through us like the kinetic forces of a Newton’s Cradle. The jostling at one extremity of the crowd to which we are now aggregated moves through the whole of the body and exits at the far end.

This is not like waiting in line at the crowded cafeteria at Ala Moana Shopping Center; it is like ridding a bus in Kathmandu during peak-traffic where fifty bodies are packed into a bus designed to hold twenty-five.

Peter is therefore not crazy in his answer. He is, at least here, not wrong. Jesus is the one who has asked the crazy question. We must be clear: Jesus has not asked a crazy question because it is weird or difficult, or hard to answer, but because it is so obvious. Everyone has touched Jesus.

The passage seems in this place to be border on the realm of a Monty Python script. You can imagine John Cleese turning to a bedsheet-clad crowd and directing them, “Please, raise your hand if you touched Jesus just now,” and being dismayed as an entire crowd unanimously raises their hand.

But Jesus can ask this question because there is more than one way of touching Jesus. Put more simply, one can be touching Jesus and yet not be One Who Touched Jesus. He is searching the crowd for the one who touched him in this strange and secondary way of touching—a touching marked by fidelity in Christ as the Son of David.

The woman knows that she is the one Jesus is looking for. She draws near a second time and confesses all. There is no secret now. Not only Jesus but many in the crowd now know her story, her audacity, and her healing. She has been healed through the Touch. There is a blessing given and a commendation.

Again, for many of us, this is a familiar story. The concluding sequences of the scene we can trace briefly: News comes of the death of Jairus’ daughter. Jesus, our ever-undaunted one, is not deterred from his quest. The crowd moves on, and Jesus and his disciples make their way towards Jairus’ house and the marvels they will see there.

II. Eucharist

Let us move to consider the Eucharist, the Meal our Lord has given us, in light of the above scriptural event. In other words, how does this story about the Body of Jesus inform our understanding of the Body of the Lord in Holy Communion? How might the way the woman who drew near and touched Jesus shape our drawing near to the Table from whence comes the words, “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matt 26:26; 1 Cor 11:24–25)?

There is division among us as to what we are to make of that injunction. There seems to be a struggle, at least in certain circles, to reconcile the True Presence of Christ in the Bread and the Wine and the value of the reception of those gifts on the part of the communicant. To put it as a kind of crude dilemma, how can we both (1) affirm the True Presence of Christ in the Meal and (2) tell people that they must receive Him in faith and that their reception regulates the benefits of the Meal?

We can do this, I believe, following the same logic as the woman with the hemorrhage. Neither the faith of the woman nor the nonchalance of the throng changed the reality of Christ’s presence in their midst. He was really there, incarnate and touchable, moving in their midst. Neither one’s faith nor one’s doubt put God in “check.”

Everyone touched the Body of Jesus. A single crowdling’s unfaith did not de-body Jesus. So also, the woman’s faith did not instantiate Him who had not been there prior to the touch. Christ was really there, present as a body among the mass of bodies, touching and being touched. His presence was, for lack of a better term, real.

At the same time, however, not everyone received the benefit of the touch. Stop for a moment and consider the gravity: one can touch Jesus, really and truly, and miss out on Touching Him. One can squeeze-up against the Word of God as He passes through the press of a crowd, and yet for all that squeezing depart hemorrhaging still. O! how many a Wesleyan altar call could be preached from the terrible thought; how many a love-struck hymn by a Bernard of Clairvaux or a John of the Cross could be born from a long lectio on the truth.

Beloved friends, what we have on the Table during the Lord’s Service is the Lord Himself. He promised, He is faithful (Heb 10:23). As Irenaeus explained it succinctly, with the same logic that human flesh became the Word of God in the Incarnation so also when the bread and the wine “having received Word of God, become the Eucharist—which is the Body and Blood of Christ” (Against Heresies, v.ii.3). Without violating the creatures of bread and wine, Christ comes to us in the Meal. The mystery of that Table is the mystery of the Incarnation: Jesus is fully man and fully God. The Eucharist is fully bread-and-wine and fully the Word of God, the Son. As with the Incarnation so here; both natures are intact.

And yet, that true Presence does not do away with our receipt of it, with our faith which is itself a gift from God (Eph 2:8). You can touch Jesus and miss out on Touching Jesus. A true and lively faith is essential to our experience of the Love of God. “Everyone ought to examine themselves” says the apostle (1 Cor 11:28), not because if we don’t the Lord won’t come, but because He will according to His Word. Make sure that when He comes as he said he would that you receive him with the great faith of the once-hemorrhaging woman.

Strong are the warnings for those who eat and drink in an unworthy manner (1 Cor 11:27, 29–30). The strength of these warnings does not come from the threat of non-event: “If you come to the Table in an unworthy manner, then it ruins the goetic rite, and our capricious deity will not condescend, and nothing will happen.” No. The warnings are born of the reality of the advent: you drink judgement upon yourself (1 Cor 11:29). This is no vain scholomancy which one’s lack of faith will inhibit; it is real Beatitude which our lack of fidelity can hinder the enjoyment of or militate against outright.

III. Sermon

When the woman touched the hem of Jesus she touched Him Who Is the Word of God, the One who “was with God in the beginning” (Jn 1:1). The Preaching of the Word and the Breaking of the Bread share a common life: they both lay hold of the Word of God, divide it, and distribute it to the people of God. Jesus is made known to his disciples in the Scriptures and in the breaking of bread (cf. Lk 24:13–35). Both the sermon and the fraction are about the Word of God, Jesus, being given to a people who do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deut 8:3).

We can ask then a similar and secondary question: “What does this story about a woman touching the Word of God teach us about the Word of God in the Sermon?”

The Second Helvetic Confession makes a fairly strong claim that “The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” And Timothy Ward’s recent essay on preaching revelation argues persuasively that, while theologians such as John Frame and Peter Adam argue for more conservative approaches to Heinrich Bullinger’s teaching (both here in the Helvetic and also in the Decades), for Bullinger and also for the vast current of Reformation-era theologians, “preaching is the continuation of the living voice of God…now fully normed by Scripture” (59). God meets us in the preaching of the Word of God regardless of the righteousness or skill of the preacher when done faithfully and in accordance with the Bible.

Christ, the Word of God, is present in the faithful sermon. And his presence follows the logic of the Touch. Where the faithful Word is preached, Christ is there, really and truly. One’s apathy or listlessness does not change the reality. But one can be touching Jesus and never Touch Jesus. One can hear the Word of God preached and remain cold and unanimated by its tongued flame.

Christians should aim in our reception of the Word of God in the sermon not to be not merely hearers of the Word but doers (Ja 1:22–25); not only those who hear but those who Hear; not only those who touch but those who Touch. Like the woman in the story, those who hear in this secondary way, with faith in the Son of David, who lay hold of the hem of the One who is alive and active in the sermon, are those “have crossed over from death to life” (Jn 5:24).

Christ promised that He would be present with us where two or three are gathered in His Name (Matt 18:20). He is faithful to this promise. He is there in the Sermon and there in the Meal. These are his Words and his Body and Blood (Lk 24:44–45; Mk 14:22–25). The Jesus who passed through the crowds in the street on the way to Jairus’ house is the Jesus who is with us in the crowds of our Sunday services. Let us be like the woman who alone among those who touched Jesus, lay hold of him with faith and encounter Him as He is revealed in the Breaking of Bread and in the Scriptures and be made whole.

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Mark Brians is rector of All Saints Anglican Honolulu.