Encounters with Jesus. Ben Witherington III

      Desperate. That’s the only word for it. None of those physicians had been any help at all. Well, there is a question whether they really know what they are doing when it comes to women’s troubles anyway. Better to trust a healer. As I was saying, I was desperate. When you have a continuous flow of blood, you have a continuous problem of being ritually unclean, not to mention feeling weak. Besides that, there is the problem that some will think that this must have been caused by someone’s sin, presumably my own. And of course this whole malady alienates me from the very people I would normally hope to be close to—family, friends, neighbors, synagogue attenders. It’s hard to remain faithful, when you have to keep doing ritual purification rites every day, sometimes several times a day. You get a reputation of being unclean all the time, and people see you at the mikveh.

      The word got around that the Galilean healer, Yeshua, was coming to town. You know how these rumors start, but in this case, it was true. Now we Galileans know something about prophetic healers. We have all heard the stories about Elijah and Elisha, as told by our parents, since early childhood. We had no trouble believing G-d might have raised up another such healer in our midst. But of course the real question was—Would he heal me in particular? After what seems like an eternity of putting up with this hemorrhaging, doubts creep into your mind and you start thinking that it could never get any better. You become frantic, and willing to try anything—anointing, immersion in a particularly clear body of water, prayer, touching of a holy cloth that belongs to a holy man. Most anything reasonable you become willing to try, even at the risk of public humiliation. I had decided that I did not care if I was rebuked for trying to touch Yeshua, I was going to make an effort, no matter what the obstacles.

      I had not counted on the huge crowds. First of all there were his disciples, both male, and shockingly some females as well. I had never heard of a prophet or priest or teacher or scribe who had female followers. That must have caused tongues to wag. Some teachers even said it was morally wrong to teach women some of the finer points of Torah. I heard one say that women were too scatter-brained to take it in—the usual calumny against women, even pious women.

      It was a hot mid-summer morning when Yeshua arrived, and the streets were lined with people, almost like it is during pilgrimage season when we go up to the festivals in Jerusalem. I am short compared to some men and women, and I was having trouble seeing, but throwing caution to the wind, and not worrying about what people might say that I brushed up against, I maneuvered myself into a spot where I could reach out and touch the tallith—in fact the very tassels on the hem of his prayer shawl. I must digress at this point, because, as you may know, years later, one of the disciples came and asked me about my story of healing. Here is what he wrote about it, and he tells the story better than I could . . .

      “A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Yeshua, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

      “At once Yeshua realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’

      “‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?’”’

      “But Yeshua kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’” [Mark 5]

      Years later, when Mark came to ask me about this story, I tried to remember all I could, but it had been many years, and I am a very old woman now, not able to move about like I used to do. The thing that most stuck with me from that encounter was not only Yeshua calling me a daughter, even though I was older than he was, but his stressing that it was not some ritual or holy cloth that had healed me, but rather my reaching out in faith to touch him. I suppose before I had had a rather superstitious belief that the garments of the holy ones themselves could heal, but Yeshua wanted me to know it was through faith and a personal interaction with Him, that it happened. I never forgot that. Yeshua did not want me to have a magic tainted faith, but rather a personal one.

      I can tell you though I was very afraid when he summoned me. I had hoped to touch him, and quietly melt back into the crowd without drawing any more attention to myself, than I had previously, due to my condition. I was tired of the scorn, and the superior attitudes, and the harsh judgments directed at me. Very tired of it. But Yeshua called me out of the crowd. He wanted me to know exactly how the healing had come.

      Years later when someone read to me Mark’s account, I realized something else. Many people pressed against Yeshua on that day, and nothing special happened to them. But they were not reaching out to Him in hopes of healing, not reaching out to Him in faith of any sort. They were just caught up in the moment and enjoying the celebration and the experience. Mark told me that Yeshua could actually feel, sense, the healing power, the energy going out of Him to someone, but he did not know who got the benefit. He had to ask. It was such a human moment for me, but I think also for Him. I was afraid, so afraid, I was going to be scolded again, told to get away from other people again.

      But Yeshua was not like that. I reached out to Him, and something happened. It was not his touching me, but rather the reverse, and the power came forth from him almost involuntarily, but he sensed that it had happened and inquired about it. I must confess, I don’t really understand this. Was it Yeshua himself, or was it power from G-d’s Spirit flowing through Yeshua? In the end, it does not matter, since it was from G-d. And it totally changed my life.

      I was too old for marriage, but I was able to present myself to the local priest and be officially