Outcast woman - 2

Jesus was passing her way with Jairus whose much loved daughter was dying.

Now came this woman, pious but an outcast because a haemorrhagic woman was unclean. She had been shunned for 12 years. Her husband would not touch her. He may even have taken another wife. She could not go to the ritual bath with her friends who should not touch her. No hugs. Loneliness as well as illness and pain. A tragic, desperate figure but with persisting faith and hope despite it all. She must have prayed constantly for healing, to get her life back, for readmission to God's community outside which there was no life, merely existence of a sort.

She must have thought herself sinful and punished. Then she recognised the source of her healing in Jesus. The crowd around Jesus and Jairus did not know about her or they would have driven her off. Anonymity gave her this opportunity and she grabbed it.

It worked.

When Jesus said He had felt power go out of Him, she was scared of being discovered and punished but she confessed immediately, in Jairus's hearing - and he an official of the Synagogue, maybe even one of those who declared the woman shunned, probably without even meeting her. How brave she was to touch anyone, let alone the famous rabbi walking with Jairus while he was hurrying, distraught, to his daughter's deathbed.

What was the effect on those who knew her and knew what had happened? How did they think of her now, and of the one who had healed her? Jesus did so much more for her than just stop the bleeding. He restored her to her family and friends and to the people of God. She (and they?) would have recognised in this that her sins were forgiven, too, because that was the way of things.

And Jairus? He experienced two huge miracles in the space of a few hours. His life would never be the same.

Be bold! Importune Him! Especially if you are unclean, an outcast, a sinner. Or a high official.