The Touch that Transforms
by Rev. Paul Howden
November 18, 2007
Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity
Matthew 9:18-26

Thanksgiving is a great holiday. Gratitude is a crucial part of happiness; for joy will elude you without it. So count your blessings this Thursday. Go around the table and have each person mention a few things for which they are thankful. Offer a prayer to the Lord, and eat a good meal. On this Sunday before Thanksgiving that is about all I want to say about the subject. We will meet this Wednesday, on Thanksgiving eve for a fuller discussion of gratitude. Our focus this morning will be our Gospel passage from Matthew 9.

Matthew 9:18-26 interweaves two stories: one about a twelve-year-old girl who dies, and the other about a woman who has been suffering for twelve years. Jesus performs miracles for both of them. Matthew, Mark, and Luke recount the two miracles we will study today. Of the three narratives, Matthew’s is the shortest, so we will borrow details from Mark and Luke to fill in what Matthew leaves out. Let’s read Matthew 9:18-19.

While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.  And Jesus arose, and followed him, and so did his disciples.

The ruler who came to Jesus was a man named Jairus. Mark and Luke tell us this. The daughter of Jairus was twelve years old, and she was on her deathbed. Wracked with fear he set out on the road to find Jesus and ask Him to come to his house and heal his daughter. Jesus and His disciples were at the Sea of Galilee. Since much of the Jewish hierarchy opposed Jesus, it must have been difficult for Jairus to go to Jesus like that. He would be rebuked and criticized. He went anyway. By the time he arrived, his daughter had died. Jairus approached Jesus, fell prostrate, and worshipped the Lord, then asked for help for his daughter. He had faith that Jesus could heal. We see a wonderful combination of actions: Jairus comes to Jesus, worships Him, prays to Him, and believes in Him. The result?

Jesus halts His preaching so He can follow Jairus to his house and heal this sick and dying girl. The Lord was willing to go out of His way to help those in need. On the way to the ruler’s house something happened. This we see in the next verses. Reading Matthew 9:20-22.

And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment:  For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.  But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.

The medical term for permanent bleeding like this is called Menorrhagia. Losing that much blood poses problems. Side effects could include anemia, lightheadedness, and worse. Besides the physical debilitation, there were ceremonial and social ramifications: nobody wanted to touch her. Anyone she touched became ceremonially unclean; therefore she was prohibited from moving about in crowds. Her life of ostracism must have been lonely. An existence without physical contact would be hard. Our skin craves physical touch, and to be denied such contact is an affliction. Moreover, her bleeding problem probably kept her from marriage if it started at puberty, and almost surely would have led to her divorce if it began after she was married, since intercourse was prohibited under such circumstances. And in that time, childlessness normally led to divorce.

Her quandary reminds us one of those kids who suffer from the bubble baby disease. Some children are born with an immunodeficiency so severe they must be kept in germ-free sterile containers that look like a bubble. One such bubble baby in Britain is receiving attention lately. His name is Logan Wilkieson. When they take him out of the bubble they must be extremely careful. His health is so precarious that anyone who comes into contact with him has to scrub himself thoroughly beforehand. His parents can’t even kiss him. When he reaches up to touch his mother’s face, she has to move away. Logan recently had an operation that the doctors hope will cure him. The woman in our Bible passage was relegated to a social bubble status: poor, lonely, no husband, no children, unable to get a job, forbidden to touch anybody, or be touched, in a word hopeless. It was a dilemma that had gone on for twelve years. If her Menorrhagia had started at puberty she would be about 25 to 27 years old. That is the age when a woman’s clock begins ticking, and she wonders if she’ll ever get married and have children.

This lady saw Jesus coming, and knew that He had a God-like ability to perform miracles. So she threw caution to the wind. She dove into the crowd jostling and bumping in an attempt to meet Jesus. That touching part would have got her into trouble. She was getting close to the Lord. Then she saw His back. This was her chance. The Bible says she reached out and grabbed the hem of His garment. In Mark’s version Jesus felt power go out of Him and He turned around in the crowd and said, “Who touched My clothes?” (Mark 5:30). The crowd stopped and fell silent. Jesus’ gaze came to rest on the woman. He looked at her in compassion, and said: “Be of good cheer, daughter, your faith has made you well.”

“Be of good cheer…” Those words calmed her fears. She was afraid someone would blame her for all the persons she had touched and defiled, and her blessing would turn into a curse. But Jesus relieved her anxiety. “Be of good cheer, daughter…” Because Jesus had created faith in her, He was a Father in the faith; she was His daughter. He would help her. From a different angle, God Almighty was now her Father, and Jesus would be her elder brother in the Household of faith. She would no longer be lonely and ostracized in her bubble. She would have a spiritual family. Marriage and children would now become a possibility. This young lady reminds us of how lonely life can be outside the worship and fellowship of the Church. Be thankful for the life of Christ in the Church.

Jesus declares, “…your faith has made you well.” Her bleeding stopped. She was healed. Faith is the key here. She touched the hem of His garment primarily with her faith. By God’s grace, her faith healed her. Some have taken this passage and used it to justify relics. You’ve heard of the veneration of relics and their miracle power. For example, a bone of St. Stephen is supposedly unearthed and set up in some shrine. It is claimed that if you make a pilgrimage there, and touch the bone, or pray to it, you can be healed. The doctrine of the healing power of relics is sometimes drawn from this passage. But let’s remember that it wasn’t the garment hem itself that healed the woman; Jesus clarified that it was the woman’s faith in Him that made her well. How is your faith today? Is it weak? Pray to the Lord. “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” Follow the example of this lady.

Now let’s move on to the other half of the text. When we left off with Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, his daughter had just lost her life. Children often died young in those days. In some parts of the Roman Empire, half of the children passed away by the time they were teen-agers. Even today children die young. A teacher at North Pocono High School recently lost his seven-year-old son to a staff infection. The grief must be unbearable for him and his wife. How do you comfort a parent who has lost a child? The poetess Jane Kenyon attended the funeral of a baby and wrote a poem about it. It is called The Sandy Hole:

The infant’s coffin no bigger than a flightbag….
The young father steps backward from the sandy hole,
Eyes wide and dry, his hand over his mouth.
No one dares to come near him, even to touch his sleeve.
            [From Otherwise. P. 81.]

The funeral had already begun for the daughter of Jairus. Jesus heard the flute players who accompanied the dirge of the singers. In the rural parts of Paraguay there is a custom of loud wailing at funerals. Women dress in black and bellow out hideous discords. Such death-music can be terrifying. In Bible times, women mourners were hired to display grief as ostentatiously as possible. Because there was no embalming or refrigeration to keep a cadaver from decomposition, mourners gathered quickly after a death. Reading Matthew 9:23-26.

And when Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels and the people making a noise, He said unto them, Give place: for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn.  But when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid arose.  And the fame hereof went abroad into all that land.

Jesus quieted the multitude: “the girl is not dead, but sleeping.” He probably intended this to keep word about her resurrection from spreading. But sleep was a common euphemism for death. She was dead, and according to Old Testament law, anyone touching a dead body was rendered unclean for seven days. “The girl is sleeping.” People laughed in ridicule. Jesus went into the room where she lay. Taking her hand He said: “Talitha, cumi.” Talitha cumi is an Aramaic phrase that means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” (Mark 5:41). “Talitha, cumi.” The girl opened her eyes and rose up. She possibly stood and began talking, hugging her mother and father. The laughter of ridicule turned into peals of joy. 

J. C. Ryle had this to say about the raising of the twelve-year-old: “How wonderful that sight must have been! Whoever has seen a dead person will remember the stillness, the silence, the coldness, when breath has left the body. Who can forget the awful feeling that a mighty change has taken place? Death sets a yawning gulf between us and the departed. But in this Gospel story, our Lord goes to the room where the dead girl lies, and calls back the spirit. The pulse of the girl returns; the eyes regain sight; breath once more fills the lungs. The ruler’s daughter comes alive, and Jesus hands her over to her father and mother. This was omnipotence indeed! Nobody could have done this except our Creator, He who first created man, and the One who wields all power in heaven and earth.

You can never overemphasize the omnipotent deity of Jesus Christ. The more clearly you see Christ’s power, the more likely you will be to experience His peace. Your situation may be terrible; your heart may be weak; the world may be difficult to journey through; your faith may seem too small to carry you home; but take courage, think of Jesus, and you will not be cast down. Greater is He that is in you, then all they that are against you. Our Savior can raise the dead; our Savior is almighty.” [Close quote. Expository Thoughts on Matthew. Words put into modern language. P. 89-90.]

Moreover, these miracles say something about the expansion of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God in the New Testament advances more aggressively into the culture than it did during the Old Testament era. The incarnation of Jesus Christ, His death, resurrection, and ascension; the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; that complex, that cluster of redemptive events made the difference. Just as it is improper to put new wine in old wineskins, because it will burst them, so Jesus breaks down the walls of uncleanness that kept out the clean and holy. Look with me at Haggai 2:10-14.

In the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, in the second year of Darius, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No.  Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.  Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the LORD; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.

Haggai puts forward a question that summarizes the teaching of the Old Testament concerning cleanness and uncleanness: “If one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment and with the edge he touches any kind of food will it become holy?” “No” is the answer. In other words holiness could not be transferred. Then Haggai asks, “If one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these (wine, bread, food), will it be unclean?” The answer is “yes.” These items will become unclean. In short, defilement could be transferred. The unclean could defile the clean, but the clean could not sanctify the unclean. Grace was, you might say, “Static.” [See Power in the Blood by David Chilton, p. 158.] Holy things were vulnerable and had to be protected. Pollution was more powerful than cleanliness; evil’s reach was longer and stronger than the force of good. Righteousness had to be essentially defensive, not offensive; the danger of corruption was everywhere. Consequently, the practice in the Old Testament Church was to stay away from the world. Jesus changed that. The miracles in our Gospel passage seem to reverse the Old Testament principle. First, the unclean woman touched the hem of the garment of Jesus. In the Old Testament no holiness or healing would have transferred to her. She would have transferred contamination to others. But that touch of faith saved her and made her clean. Second, in the Old Testament scheme of things if Jesus had touched a dead girl He would have received ceremonial defilement. But Jesus touches the twelve-year-old, and heals her. Consequently, the New Covenant age brought in by Christ is different. It is superior. The world is evil and under the curse, but we go into it to preserve it like salt, we are the leaven that make it good and holy. With Christ on our side, the demons are disarmed, and rendered powerless. The church is on the offensive, and the gates of Hell come crashing down. 

This means that our outreach and evangelism will be bold and outward looking. We will be optimistic about eventual victory for God’s kingdom. We will go into the world with the Gospel and transform it. Therefore, effects of our redemption must spill over to effect art, cuisine, economics, biology, business, and every aspect of creation. The Church is healthy and growing when she takes these truths seriously. The world has changed since Christ. It has been transformed, and yet it is still in the process of transformation. It is the responsibility of our generation at Grace Church to keep that transformation moving forward in terms of evangelism, missionary work, and outreach to the needy. Prior to Jesus’ finished work, Israel was confined to a small piece of real estate. Jesus’ mission gave a world-wide dimension to the gospel. The kingdom of God will triumph! He came to save you and me. Be confident in His saving power. When you die He will give you eternal life. He came to save the world. In view of these blessed realities, come now to the communion rail, and as you partake of the Lord’s Supper offer Him your sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Let us pray.