Belonging - Day 1
Mark 5:24 Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. 25 A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. 26 She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse.
Maybe this is a strange way to start a series about belonging. But I believe the opposite is true. Right from the beginning, we are talking about the idea of not belonging anywhere. This woman, who was clearly suffering from this malady, would have been something of a pariah. She would have had no community to belong to, and because her issue was one of blood, she would not have had status in the community. Honestly, it always surprises me that she had money to pay to care for her issue.
What is also interesting is the idea that she had “suffered” under so many different doctors. Medicine at that point was not a great deal more sophisticated than some form of home remedy that would not have had any scientific verification. And, of course, we were centuries, even millennia, away from germ theory, which is a real thing. Regardless of what anyone says or feels, germs were and are a problem, but ritual washing, while helpful, was mostly connected to religious services.
So we find this woman suffering from this malady, and this would have put her outside the scope of her regular standing in society, which would not have been great to begin with. And all the while, things were getting worse for her. Beyond the physical manifestations of her disease, she didn’t belong anywhere anymore. She was lost to her family and her society. She would not have been allowed into the town or village (Leviticus 15:19-33). It would have been a pretty brutal existence for her.
This is the context in which Jesus is about to interact with her. The fact that she was even in the crowd means that she was bucking social convention and was desperate for the opportunity to be healed by the one she had heard so much about. She was not in a place to ask for such grace, yet she seemed to believe that grace just might be given if what she had heard was true about this Jesus.
She was taking a chance to belong to someone, even if that someone was a person she had never met, had no business asking anything of, and would probably be rejected. But she was just bold enough to position herself in the crowd so that she might at least touch the hem of his robe.
Maybe this is a strange way to start a series about belonging. But I believe the opposite is true. Right from the beginning, we are talking about the idea of not belonging anywhere. This woman, who was clearly suffering from this malady, would have been something of a pariah. She would have had no community to belong to, and because her issue was one of blood, she would not have had status in the community. Honestly, it always surprises me that she had money to pay to care for her issue.
What is also interesting is the idea that she had “suffered” under so many different doctors. Medicine at that point was not a great deal more sophisticated than some form of home remedy that would not have had any scientific verification. And, of course, we were centuries, even millennia, away from germ theory, which is a real thing. Regardless of what anyone says or feels, germs were and are a problem, but ritual washing, while helpful, was mostly connected to religious services.
So we find this woman suffering from this malady, and this would have put her outside the scope of her regular standing in society, which would not have been great to begin with. And all the while, things were getting worse for her. Beyond the physical manifestations of her disease, she didn’t belong anywhere anymore. She was lost to her family and her society. She would not have been allowed into the town or village (Leviticus 15:19-33). It would have been a pretty brutal existence for her.
This is the context in which Jesus is about to interact with her. The fact that she was even in the crowd means that she was bucking social convention and was desperate for the opportunity to be healed by the one she had heard so much about. She was not in a place to ask for such grace, yet she seemed to believe that grace just might be given if what she had heard was true about this Jesus.
She was taking a chance to belong to someone, even if that someone was a person she had never met, had no business asking anything of, and would probably be rejected. But she was just bold enough to position herself in the crowd so that she might at least touch the hem of his robe.
- Have you ever felt ostracized from your community?
- How did that make you feel?
- What did you do to change what was happening at the time?
No Comments