Full Title: The Touch that Changed Everything: Faith, Healing, and Becoming the Blessing
Scriptures: Mark 5:25–34, Matthew 9:20–22, Luke 8:43–48
Theme:
For twelve years, she was nameless, isolated, and defined only by her suffering. The world called her “unclean,” but one quiet act of courage changed everything. Pressing through the crowd, she touched the hem of Jesus’ robe — and in a heartbeat, the outcast became daughter. This sermon explores the bleeding woman’s journey from desperation to restoration, and how faith transforms not just bodies but identities. Through her story, we’re invited to see our own unspoken wounds, to reach toward Christ’s healing presence, and to become a blessing in the lives of others.

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This story is often entitled “The Bleeding Woman” or “The Hemorrhaging Woman.” Already, the very title is uncomfortable. It’s one of those passages that makes me want to watch people’s reactions.

I’ve had a couple of opportunities to study how this story is received. As a lay servant, I once took a course in a class that was predominantly male. When we bumped up against this passage, the discomfort in the room was palpable. Finally, when pressed, an older gentleman said, “My wife and I live by one agreement: I won’t clip my toenails in the living room, and she won’t talk about this stuff.”

The women in our Monday Night Bible Study were quite different when confronted with the story. I’ll let you imagine most of the comments—but I can summarize by saying the consensus was that no one would have dared to take that woman’s chocolate away during those twelve years.

We don’t usually talk about this sort of thing publicly, which makes it extraordinary that this account appears in three of the gospels.

Twelve years. Imagine that for a moment. Put bookends around the last twelve years of your life. Perhaps you’ve been in the same job for twelve years. Perhaps your eldest child is twelve. Twelve years ago, the world was just emerging into the new millennium. We worried about the Y2K bug—and now, we barely remember it.

In the gospel’s telling, this woman’s entire twelve-year expanse was consumed by suffering. She had been bleeding for a long time. The illness had taken everything. Everything.

Physically, she would have been weak, frail, anemic. Emotionally, frustrated, perhaps bitter, and worn down past hope. She had gone from doctor to doctor, clinging to the possibility of relief, only to find none. We all know someone with ailments that defy diagnosis—that wear away both body and spirit. Over time, hope gives way to exhaustion and disillusionment.

Mark tells us she had spent all she had, and instead of getting better, she grew worse.

A normal life would have been impossible, especially in the era in which this story is set. The laws of Leviticus are explicit:

“If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days… she will be called unclean. Every bed on which she lies and everything on which she sits will become unclean. Anyone who touches these items—or the woman herself—will likewise be unclean.” (Lev. 15:25–27)

Her condition left her robbed of strength and hope… broke and broken… ostracized… stripped of meaningful social contact… stripped of joy… stripped of worth… stripped of identity. In fact, she is nameless in the text—known only by what afflicts her.

Stepping outside the gospel for a moment, I can’t help but notice all the ways we, too, are bleeding.

We have physical conditions where one step forward yields two steps back. We have broken relationships that drain our hearts. We are bled by addiction, temptation, and sin. Our energy is sapped by the uncertainty of work, instability in finances, and dreams whose flicker feels nearly gone. Anxiety and insecurity lurk behind our eyes. We carry heartbreaks, grudges, forgone hopes, and flaws we try to camouflage—but they bleed nonetheless.

Like this woman, we have sought solutions—quick fixes, clever remedies, the latest self-help books—but they leave us wanting.

Eventually, in the eyes of others or even in our own, we become our wounds:
We are the one who drinks. We are the one with cancer. We are the one who had the affair. We are the one on food stamps. The dropout, the single mother, the one who went to jail. The pierced and tattooed one. The “momma’s boy,” the racist, the homosexual.

We are labeled, shut out, invisible, pushed aside. Perhaps this woman’s experience is not unlike our own after all.

The text says: “When she heard about Jesus…”
Did you catch that? Someone was talking about Jesus. Maybe it was two friends on their way to market. Maybe neighbors are chatting after synagogue. The odds are they weren’t speaking to her—remember, she was considered unclean—but their words nonetheless reached her ears and settled in her heart.

This is why sharing your faith matters. You never know which seeds will take root. I believe God casts us like seed across the soil of this world so that others may hear the Gospel and be changed.

When she heard about Jesus, she believed the whispers, and determination took hold. In her heart, she thought: If only I could touch even the edge of his garment… I will be made whole.

Her decision was an act of faith. But what exactly does that mean—faith?

Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues, who worked among the Mohawks in the 1600s, once said:

“Faith is the light that comes from God’s grace and dawns in the soul, fortifying and illuminating the mind, granting undoubting assurance of hope.”

This woman knew what so many in the crowd did not: her desperate, humbling affliction had readied her heart to be filled with divine grace.

By this point in the gospel narrative, Jesus’ reputation was known. Crowds gathered wherever he went—disciples close, curious fans beyond, skeptics circling, elders watching, perhaps guards keeping order. And somewhere in the dust, this outcast woman moved toward him.

She risked much:
Risked the stares and protests of those who believed the law forbade her presence.
Risked rejection, humiliation, and the last fragile thread of hope she had.
Risked grief upon grief if healing did not come.

But she pressed through all of it. I can picture her crawling—hot, sweaty, covered in grit, darting between legs, pressing through noise and chaos, eyes fixed on her goal. And then… the hem of his robe brushed her fingers.

Haven’t we all been there? We all ache for healing and the reassurance that all will be made well. Whether our ache rises from physical, relational, mental, emotional, or spiritual pain, we long for a renewal that touches the whole of our lives.

All of life’s desires, wounds, and cries can gather in that reach. To reach out is to admit our vulnerability—to acknowledge that restoring all things by sheer will is beyond us. Yet in that acknowledgment lies great possibility: the quiet, powerful stirring of the deepest healing waters.

I don’t know what her exit strategy was.
Did she hope to touch his robe and slip away unnoticed?
Was she frozen in wonder at the instant of her healing?
When Jesus stopped and proclaimed, “Somebody touched me,” did fear clutch her heart?

When he noticed that touch, everything stopped—the crowd, the heat of the sun, even the urgent mission to Jairus’s house. The woman came trembling and dropped at his feet.

Did she brace herself for condemnation? According to the law, she had no right to be there. Jesus could have been angry; he could have called out her violation, declared himself made unclean by her touch.

But he didn’t.
He didn’t name her unclean. He didn’t dwell on judgment. He recognized only the draw on his power—the faith that compelled her into his presence.

He listened. He let her tell her whole truth.
Then he said: “Daughter, your faith has healed you.”

This, I learned in preparing for today, is the only place in the gospels where Jesus calls anyone “daughter.” In that moment, he pulled her into his family.

From “a certain woman,” to “somebody,” to “daughter.” From nameless and faceless to claimed, blessed, restored. Jesus brought her home.

Jesus says to her: “Go in peace and be freed of your suffering.” In the Greek, the blessing can be read as, “Be healed of your disease,” but its intent is broader: “Take care of yourself and remain healthy.”

It may be that Jesus was not pronouncing a mystical healing formula but was urging her toward continued wholeness. And with that, the pause was over, and they moved on toward Jairus’s home.

To call this merely a story of faith and move on would miss something vital. At a recent Christian conference, participants were asked: “With whom do you most identify in this story?”

Of six hundred attendees:
Hundreds identified with the bleeding woman.
Around a hundred identified with Jairus, seeking help for another.
A significant number felt they were part of the crowd.
Only six identified with Jesus.

Perhaps some feared seeming arrogant. Still, isn’t this what we are called to? To act like Jesus? To see as Jesus? To love as Jesus?

Jesus did not fear her.
He did not label her.
He did not condone her isolation, nor did he ignore her story.
He embraced her and made her whole.

Can’t we do that?
Can’t we stop labeling and pushing away?
Can’t we see the ones hiding in the crowd… the ones crawling through life… the downtrodden who seem untouchable?

We can invite them into the family.
We can dissolve the barriers separating us with compassion.
We can bless them with our love.

This is a lesson in faith, yes—but also in becoming the blessing.

We have the opportunity to be made whole ourselves—to let our hearts be touched and then extend that touch to others. With one hand, we can reach for our Lord and find the joy that fills our souls. With the other, we can loosen the chains of someone else. And in doing both, we encounter a faith and a love that change us forever.

Amen and Amen.