It all begins on Thursday. For a few billion people around the world, it's a month-long feast of beauty, a festival of fun, courage, unity, creativity, and, well, soccer, because it's the World Cup, and it's just four days away. Now, please forgive me while I slouch into a cave of dark memories and shattered dreams, but it is very hard for an Englishman to talk about the World Cup without becoming depressed. As we all know, when nations stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They still have to do something with that faith. They have to put it somewhere, and for the English, the traditional place for that worship is the shrine of soccer. It really does provide the sense of belonging, hope, and identity that we get from being Christians. The problem with football, though, is that if you bow your knees before that altar, it will let you down. And as the English don't believe in God, there's nothing they can turn to that will mend their broken hearts, because one thing the English have learned by now is that there will be broken hearts, and those hearts beat in their chests. England have only won the World Cup once, which is disappointing for the country that invented the game and taught everyone else to play it. You'd think that the rest of the world would show some gratitude and let us win it from time to time. But no, just once have they had the decency to let us lift the trophy, and that was in 1966, 21,863 days ago. Yes, we're counting. And over the next six weeks, if you hear an Englishman saying, "Don't worry, this is the year we win it again," don't believe them. The truth is, they don't actually believe that. Defeat is now seared into the national psyche, and it hurts. 21,863 days. It had been a long time for her too, four thousand three hundred and eighty days, twelve years. But this exile wasn't as trivial as losing football games.
No, this really was a broken heart, a lacerated self-image. Twelve years of isolation and rejection. Four thousand three hundred and eighty days. That's how long it had been since she had had physical contact with another person. Twelve years without human touch. One hundred and five thousand hours without even a COVID-era elbow bump. And to make it worse, there was no infectious disease that caused her isolation. There was no short-term public health crisis that led to her social quarantine. Everyone else was fine. Friends could hold hands in the street. Business partners could shake on a deal. Family members could hug. It was just her. So desperate was she to be well, to be welcomed back fully into society, that she had spent all her money on doctors, but still her curse lived on, strangling her full humanity. Her name is known only to God. But thanks to Matthew in today's gospel lesson, we know plenty about her. We know that her illness was not just a matter of physical pain. It also carried this devastating mental, spiritual, and social agony. That's because her physical illness made her ceremonially unclean. Hebrew law, written in the Book of Leviticus, declares that when a woman has a discharge of blood, she shall be impure for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening. And everything on which she lies shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. And whoever touches her bed shall be unclean until the evening, and whoever touches anything on which she sits shall be unclean until the evening.
So let's get this straight. For 12 years, this daughter of Abraham had not even been able to sit down in a public place because someone might then touch the chair that she had sat on and be made unclean. She wasn't alone, of course. There were others who were declared unclean, for example, people who suffered from leprosy. But unlike those patients who were banished to a city reserved just for them, this daughter of Abraham continued to live in normal society Imagine walking around the town, going to the market at times when you don't bump into someone and accidentally defile them. Imagine people giving you condemning looks and moving aside in the street so they don't brush you as they pass. Now, maybe this woman was married. Maybe she had kids. Imagine that. Not being able to embrace the spouse you love, yet still living in the same home. Not hugging your child. And having your own chair which only you can sit on, not because you have an infectious disease, but because you're religiously unclean. What will this do to a person's belief that God loves them, that they are special in God's eyes and have a unique place in his heart? To be permanently unclean in the eyes of God and the judgment of society, and being totally powerless to do anything about it. You could repent all you like, make whatever sacrifices you could afford, but it wasn't lack of penitence that made you unclean. It wasn't weak faith or insincere devotion to God that made you untouchable, but an illness you could do nothing about.
Now we know why she spent all her money on a cure. Now we can see why that day when she hears that Jesus is coming to town, she says, "To heck with what people think and all those religious leaders who demand I steer clear of human touch. I'm going to find him. If I could just touch the hem of his cloak, then I will be healed." Superstition? Jesus calls it faith, and it heals her Twelve is an important number in the Bible. It serves as a symbol of completeness, wholeness. So there are twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve apostles. In the Book of Revelation, the city of Heaven contains twelve gates made of pearl. The walls are a hundred and forty-four cubits high. That's twelve times twelve. And the city itself is twelve thousand furlongs square. And within Heaven, there are one hundred and forty-four thousand people. That's twelve times twelve thousand. So Heaven is complete. Everything is good and whole. Now, work with me here. You see, this outcast who touches the cloak of Jesus has been bleeding for twelve years. Coincidence or what? I'm going with the or what. In the eyes of society, she was unclean, incomplete, alienated from God. But through touching Jesus, her true completeness is manifest gloriously to the world. You see, this lady was always whole in God's eyes. She was already acceptable to God.
There are no untouchables to Christ. But now, through the simplicity of touch, the whole of society can see what only Jesus could see until that moment. He knows that being ill does not make you impure in God's eyes. By healing her, Jesus takes the truth that God accepts people for who they are, drags it out of the obscure place where it's been hiding behind dead religion, hauls it into the marketplace, and says, "Here you go. This daughter of Abraham is also a daughter of Yahweh, and to prove it, I will heal her illness." So the physical healing is just a sign of a deeper, more wonderful work of God Before she touches his cloak, Jesus is on the way to another daughter of Abraham, this time a younger one, and Mark tells us in his version that she is, wait for it, 12 years old Her, her dad, just like the woman who touched Jesus' cloak, is not afraid of what people think. He is so desperate that even though he is a respected leader of the synagogue, he goes in search of this popular wonder worker. He throws away his reputation and his dignity and hurls himself on the ground to beg for a miracle. His daughter is dead, but this man won't accept it, can't accept it. Even now, he thinks that Jesus can raise her back to life. I've seen this girl. She's portrayed in the Walters Museum in Baltimore, hatched in the imagination of the artist Gabriel Max. She's hard to look at.
She is as white as the nightgown she's wearing. Her face and hair are wet with the fever that took her life. Her eyes bulge as she stares at Jesus. She scared me the first time I saw her. She is hideously dead. Google her or visit her in Baltimore. She will change you. At least, the Jesus who stands at her bedside, barely visible in the shadows, will change you. He will take your hand and speak to you in your language, "Get up." In this painting, Jesus is not the star. The hero, the person our eyes are drawn to, is this child. It is in her that the work of God is seen. How like Christ to stand in the shadows and give the glory to another? Dare we take God's hand even though we feel unclean and rise from our beds? I've seen that child somewhere else too, in the mirror. Maybe you've seen that child there also. You wish the master would come and take your hand and tell you to rise. But the mourners with their pipes speak another word. "Don't bother the master. It's too late. Not even God can rescue you. You're too sick, too damaged, without hope for change and health. Don't bother the master. It's too late. You'll always be unstable. You'll never have a fulfilling career. You'll always fail exams. You are a relational disaster area, and you always will be. Don't bother the master. It's too late.
You'll never be the person you want to be, never succeed like others, talk like the others, be as witty or as smart or as attractive as the others. Don't bother the master. It's too late. Why would the master come to your house and raise you? Why would he contaminate himself, make himself unclean by touching you? Don't bother the master. It's too late." But into her world and into mine and into yours, the taboo-shattering Christ strides with compassion and intent. "You are whole," he says. "You are clean. I accept you, my child." If you have heard the words, "It's too late", or if you have ever said them to yourself, then today can be a day of joy and new starts. God has a plan for you. It's not too late. This is the day that the Lord has made. Now is the day of God. Like the woman in the crowd, reach out and touch him. Like the girl on her deathbed, receive his healing touch and live again. Amen.