She Meant to Get Away With It

The plan was to touch the coat and leave.

That is the whole of it, and Mark says so plainly, because Mark 5:28 gives us her actual thought.

For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole.Mark 5:28, King James Version

Not if I may speak to Him. Not if I may be seen by Him. His clothes. The hem, the edge, the part of Him that is not His attention. She has worked out the minimum contact required, and she is going to take it, and she is going to be gone before anybody works out who moved.

And she has excellent reasons. Mark 5:25-26 gives four of them in one sentence: twelve years of a discharge of blood, many physicians, everything she had spent, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.

Twelve years. And under the law of that community, her condition made her ceremonially unclean, which meant that anything she sat on and anybody she touched became unclean too. So she is not only ill. She has spent twelve years being a person other people had to be careful around, and she is now in a crowd, pressing through bodies, doing something she is not supposed to be doing.

Of course the plan was to touch the coat and leave.

He stops the whole procession

Here is what happens, and the timing is the thing.

And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?Mark 5:29-30, King James Version

She is already healed. That is finished in verse twenty nine, and she knows it, and her body knows it. The plan worked.

And then He stops.

Now, the disciples say the obvious thing, and they are not being stupid. Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? It is a crowd. Everybody is touching Him. The question is absurd on its face.

But He is not looking for the mechanism. The healing is done and He is not trying to find out how it leaked. He is looking for a person.

You are not going to be helped anonymously. Mark 5:32 says He looked round about to see her, after the healing was complete, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that turning from being a search for a culprit.

I want to say what is at stake for her in that moment, because it is not a small ask.

To come forward, in that crowd, she has to say out loud what has been wrong with her for twelve years. In public. In front of men. It is the single most private and most shaming thing about her life, and He has just stopped a whole procession and is waiting.

And Mark tells us exactly what it cost.

But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth.Mark 5:33, King James Version

Fearing and trembling. Mark does not clean that up. She was frightened. And she came anyway, and she told him all the truth, which means the whole twelve years and not an edited version.

You have been offered the meeting and not only the mercy, and the meeting is the part that costs. Mark 5:33 records the fear and the telling in one sentence, and the same Spirit who kept both is the reason nobody has to arrive at this composed.

Now the sentence He says to her, and it is the reason He stopped.

And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.Mark 5:34, King James Version

Daughter.

That is the only time in the Gospels He calls a woman that. Not madam, not woman, not the polite address He uses elsewhere. Daughter, spoken in public, over somebody who had spent twelve years as a person to keep clear of.

If she had got away with it, she would have gone home well. She would not have gone home named.

You were being given a name and not only a repair, and the naming is what the stopping was for. Mark 5:34 puts Daughter first, before anything about her faith or her health, and it is His Spirit who makes that a public restoration rather than a kind word.

There is one more thing and it is the tenderest. Thy faith hath made thee whole. He credits her. The woman who came up behind Him without permission, doing a thing she believed she had to hide, is told in front of everybody that her faith did it.

She thought she had stolen something. He tells the crowd she had faith.

You have been credited with faith in the exact act you were ashamed of. The written word puts thy faith in His mouth about a woman who came from behind, and the same Spirit who preserved that sentence is the reason the sneaking is not the part that gets named.