Forty years ago, in the mid-1980s, an unusual disease began spreading throughout the United States and elsewhere in the world. Its characteristic symptoms included flu-like illness, skin lesions, anemia, and a gradual weakening until eventual death. Because of the communities where it was most often found in early years, the disease was described as a “gay plague”, and it became the source of even greater stigma. It took years, and tens of thousands of deaths that nearly wiped out a whole generation of gay men, before President Ronald Reagan would even call it by name, “HIV and AIDS”. It took longer still for governmental research to commence on treatments, and while things are greatly improved now, we still have no cure or vaccine for HIV.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic in the West illustrates a distinction between two interwoven but distinct terms, “disease” and “illness”. As one writer summarizes, “Disease refers to the malfunction or failure of part of the physical body, whereas illness refers to a person’s state of being; it is more a social breakdown in which someone loses their place and value within their group.”[1] In other words, HIV/AIDS was the disease, but the greater crippling illness was the stigma, shunning, and social isolation that accompanied it. Breaking down societal judgments has been an ongoing project to counter illness, even as research to combat the disease has progressed. Countering stigma happens when trusted people share association with the disease, like the basketball player Magic Johnson sharing his diagnosis, or Lady Diana, the Princess of Wales, shaking the hand of an HIV/AIDS patient in 1987. Such courage and risk help to heal the isolation and exclusion of illness, even when a cure for the disease is hard to find.

In today’s Gospel story (Mark 5:24-34), the woman who approaches Jesus gets her cure, but Jesus goes further to make sure that her isolating social exclusion is healed as well. In this story a woman approaches Jesus who has been suffering for twelve years from uncontrollable bleeding. According to religious law, that meant that she had been ritually impure for twelve years, and she was forced to remain on the fringes of Jewish society. It was bad enough just being a single woman in Jesus’ time; to have this illness meant that she was an outcast. She would have had to spend all her days in isolation, separated from others, lest her “uncleanness” contaminate others. The woman was penniless besides, having spent everything she had, chasing doctors for twelve years and getting nowhere. (At least one or two people here can sympathize with that.) So what courage and desperate audacity drove her to reach out a hand in the crowd of anonymity? She risked deeply offending Jesus and everyone with him by clinging to his garment; for this also would have made Jesus “unclean” in the eyes of the doctrine at that time. Yet her words of faith are remarkable: “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.”

When healing flows from Jesus and cures the woman’s disease, Jesus asks the crowd who touched him, and she comes before him in “fear and trembling.” She’s expecting the worst rebuke for crossing the boundary that excludes her, but instead, Jesus offers her recognition, mercy, and restoration. I like the way pastors Kari Lipke and Joanne Engquist put it: “Jesus isn’t content that she remain anonymous to him. He calls her out, not to chastise, but in order to hear her story, to validate her healing, and to name her ‘daughter.’” The consequence of this boundary-crossing interaction was healing, wholeness, and grace. I love how the Message Bible paraphrases what Jesus says here: “Daughter, you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed! Be healed of your plague.” In the words of another, Jesus “declares shalom for her, that not only is she healed of her disease, but her illness is no longer either, she can become a full part of the community and the suffering of her ostracism is over.”[2]

Earlier this week I mentioned this text to Gwen Williams, one of our members who usually worships and volunteers with church online, due to a variety of overlapping health concerns. Gwen said, “Oh! That is my favorite Bible scripture passage!” When I asked why, Gwen said it’s because Jesus stops what he’s doing, sees this woman for who she is, and treats her as human. She’s not shunned in the ways that would have been her experience elsewhere. Gwen described seeing herself in this text, and receiving validation from it for encouragement in the struggle for physical and mental health. I sometimes want to apologize to Gwen and others with chronic illness that we don’t have a physical Jesus here to touch for miraculous cures, but it turns out that’s not the only thing that’s needed. Taking the time to stop and connect, to validate emotions and affirm belonging—these are what we seek to do today, still in the name of Christ. In the words of commentator Michael Lindvall, “beyond even physical healing, acceptance, intimacy, and touch, can make us whole and give us peace. We are, in fact, shaped and made human in relationship to other persons. Our relationships—in the church, in friendships, and in marriage—are not just something extra added on to life for distraction and entertainment, as if we would be complete human beings in individual isolation. Relationship, ‘touch’ if you will, makes us human and whole.”[3]

Last summer, we began a practice of community prayers which we continue still. In open sharing, in our own voices, we speak aloud heartfelt prayers of celebration, sorrow, grief, and requests for healing. Some of us choose to write our prayers, with our own hands and words, that are then read aloud on our behalf. I confess that as a worship leader it’s a little unnerving for me, and maybe for you too. We’re never sure what the community is going to share, if it’ll fit into the set amount of time that’s allotted to prayer, and if we’ll be able to faithfully respond as needs are named aloud. This is not a tidy, scripted, or predictable part of worship, but reliably each week we touch the Holy in ragged, vulnerable, authentic, community-carried prayer. We trust one another with our genuine selves, are encouraged and healed—even if not always in a “Jesus touched me” sort of way. We embody that verse of the Servant Song hymn: “I will hold the Christ light for you / In the night time of your fear / I will hold my hand out to you / Speak the peace you long to hear.”

And through such prayer, the church is moved to act. This part is never scripted either, but the personal shared in prayer becomes an opportunity for others in the community to respond. “Thinking of You” cards show up in the mail, folks ask for updates on how someone is doing, perhaps a meal or gift certificate arrives to get through a hard time, or a few dollars are anonymously passed to help another who is scraping by. These interpersonal acts happen when vulnerable prayer opens us into relationship. And the longer we live with the shortcomings of mental health care, adequate housing, senior supports, or other systemic needs, the more likely that loving our neighbors becomes advocating for a better world for all. Our commitment to health care reform and other forms of healing justice in Minnesota starts with our prayers, our relationships, our experience, and our trust in the ways of Christ the Healer. It’s what we mean when we pray “your kindom come on earth as in heaven”, as the church and broader society are renewed as an interwoven, salvific community of healing relationships.

I found out this week about a group called the Blood Sisters. It turns out that in the mid-1980s when there was so much stigma around both LGBTQ folks and those who had HIV/AIDS, that a group of lesbians formed the Blood Sisters in San Diego. Gay men who had AIDS and were experiencing the effects of anemia needed transfusions, but were too often inadequately treated out of fear for wasting or “polluting” the national blood supply. In response, the Blood Sisters began regular donations of blood so there would be no shortage. This continued for almost a decade, dozens of women gathering monthly to give their blood so that friends, neighbors, and strangers in the community would have what they needed. They addressed the physical illness and need, but with their solidary also helped heal the broader social disease of isolating stigma.

Like the Blood Sisters, like our prayers, and like Jesus himself, may we be led in vulnerable, healing relationships, so that, restored to wholeness ourselves, we might live out our calling as the body of Christ. Here too—in our own lives—may we discover more such resurrection stories and proclaim again that Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed—alleluia!

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[1] Spill the Beans, issue 17, pg. 80. © 2015 Spill the Beans Resource Team spillbeans.org.uk.

[2] Spill the Beans, 80.

[3] Michael L. Lindvall, “Mark 5:21-43: Pastoral Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3, eds. David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009).

Cover image: Wesley, Frank, 1923-2002. Woman with the Flow of Blood, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59159 [retrieved April 29, 2024]. Original source: Estate of Frank Wesley, http://www.frankwesleyart.com/main_page.htm.