Amy C Walters

Jesus Heals a Woman and Jairus’s Daughter | Luke 8:43-48

The bleeding woman lived in isolation and shame for 12 years. So even when she approached Jesus for healing, she tried to go unnoticed. Instead, Jesus called her out. Why? To show her that her greatest need was for Jesus himself.

Today, I want to look more closely at the Bleeding Woman and her interaction with Jesus–this interruption that Jesus didn’t treat as an interruption. 

This woman has probably had a very difficult life, enduring 12 years of bleeding. It’s also very isolating because she’s not allowed to touch anyone or anyone touch her. She has spent everything she has to try to find a cure to no avail. Jesus is her only hope, her only chance to get out of this situation.

Imagine her at her house, alone, hearing that Jesus has returned to Galilee. What thoughts might be going through her mind? What might she be wrestling through as she weighs the risks and rewards of going to see Jesus? She probably knows there are going to be crowds there. Maybe she even heads out and sees the crowd and debates, “Do I turn back now? I don’t want to deal with these people. Can I really go through with this?” 

And yet, Jesus is her only option left. So she presses through the crowd. She has to get close enough to touch his cloak. (What incredible faith she has to believe that even just touching his cloak is enough!) She comes up behind him and touches the edge of his robe. And immediately, she is healed. Her bleeding stops. 

What might she have felt at that moment? Relief. Joy. Probably hope for the first time in a very, very long time. 

But then Jesus calls her out. “Who touched me?” This is the thing that she has feared the most. She has wanted to be hidden, to come and do this in secret, unnoticed so that she doesn’t have to face the public shame of her situation. She wants to slip away quietly.

But Jesus calls for her, and she sees that she can’t get away unnoticed. She comes trembling and falls before Jesus, terrified of what his response will be. And “in the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched Jesus and that she was instantly healed.” 

Jesus’ response is so beautiful. He says, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

This is not the response that she was expecting. She’s probably expecting anger, frustration, indignation. 

Instead, Jesus, first of all, calls her daughter. This woman has been isolated for so long. And Jesus calls her this relational term, daughter. There’s warmth, closeness, and acceptance in it. Daughter is not used for total strangers. It’s not for someone who’s an annoyance to you or an interruption to you. It’s a caring, loving, inviting term. 

Jesus also says, “Your faith has healed you.” He’s showing everyone in the crowd the importance of faith. He is honoring her for her faith. 

Jesus tells her to go in peace. He’s not angry at her. He’s not upset at what she has done.

Now, we might wonder why then does Jesus call her out? Wouldn’t she have felt better to not have everyone’s attention on her? 

One reason might be to publicly restore her, to publicly remove her shame. Jesus is now making it known to everyone that she is accepted and honored.

But the main reason is that Jesus, in calling her daughter, shows her that the interaction between them is not just about physical healing. She also needs restoration from the shame she has been living in. She needs a relationship with God himself. The healing is not the main thing. The relationship with God is the main thing. 

Because now, this woman’s story gets redeemed completely. The thing that was the most shameful to her, this bleeding, has now been redeemed to be her glory. Jesus takes it from something that was the worst thing to happen to her and now turns it around into the thing that she will be known for as that woman that Jesus healed. The woman that Jesus restored. The woman that Jesus honored. How incredible that Jesus can take that kind of hurt and pain and suffering and redeem it to bring good out of it?! 

So Jesus, in his interaction with this woman, is removing her shame, is redeeming her situation, and is showing that a relationship with him is the greatest reward. 

At the end of this story, when we have the daughter of Jairus brought back from the dead, Jairus and his wife are astonished at Jesus’ power to heal their daughter, and yet Jesus orders them not to tell anybody. This is a strange thing to say, especially since they’re going to want to tell everybody. All the mourners are outside and soon they’ll see the girl walking around not dead. Why would Jesus tell them not to say anything? 

I think there are a few reasons for this. We know that a large crowd is following Jesus. What are they likely looking for? They probably want to see a miracle. They might even think that this is the reason Jesus has come–to heal all their diseases. Jesus does some healing, but it’s not his primary purpose. He has come to invite them into a relationship with God himself. 

Jesus is working to correct people’s ideas about why he has come. He doesn’t want crowds that are eager for a show. He wants people to understand that, yes, he is the Messiah, but he is not what they expect of a Messiah.

In the next chapter, Luke 9:20, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ, and Jesus tells him not to tell anyone. He goes on to say that the Christ must suffer, and that those who follow him will suffer as well. Jesus is saying, I’m not just here for the healing. I’m here to be a Messiah who suffers in order to restore people to myself. 

We pull all those threads together to get our key truth for today: it’s about the relationship.

The crowds might be there wanting a show but Jesus wants their hearts. 

Similarly, we can lose focus on why we are following Jesus. Maybe we start thinking about prayer and Bible reading as ways that we get things from God. We might think, “My day will go better if I have my devotions.” Or, “God will give me what I want if I do good things to earn it.” But this story is a reminder that the true gift and goal is God himself. 

He’s after our hearts. He is not just here to heal us, but to remove our shame and the shame of our sin and to have a relationship with us.