Divine Exchange

She came up behind Him in the crowd and touched His cloak… and immediately her hemorrhage ceased. She felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Aware that power had gone forth from Him, Jesus immediately turned around in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched me?’ What an amazing exchange of power, fluid as life. This woman has been bleeding for twelve years, the life being drained out of her physically, in her hemorrhage; and financially, in the flow of resources to useless healers, all in vain, all for nothing; and socially, spiritually, exiled from community and religious practice that gives access to God.

Her life is bleeding away on every level – nothing can stop the hemorrhage that makes her ritually unclean and defilement to others: “you have caused my companions to shun me; you have made me a thing of horror to them.” She is an embodiment of Psalm 88, utter desolation: “My life is at the brink of the grave; I have become like one who has no strength, lost among the dead.” Perhaps she pours out her heart to God in lament, begging for healing and restoration to life and health and community. Yet she has no ritual access to God, for she is unclean; so perhaps her prayers, like the Psalmist’s, feel far from where God lives, far from the seat of power and glory to which only the clean and the holy have access. Even when Jesus comes through her town she can’t approach Him – not like Jairus does, directly, face to face, begging for help. She is a scourge and a horror; He would recoil if she did approach… and she can’t draw His attention from afar since He’s surrounded by such crowds. She has no recourse but the invisibility of the outcast and her own desperation.

Like a lunatic, suicidal, she pushes through the crowds, hiding herself as best she can lest anyone notice who she is – for if they caught her, God knows how many people she’s touched and defiled in the process, and then they’re touching one another – the whole crowd has been made filthy – they’d lynch her, an abomination! Perhaps stone her on the spot. And it goes without saying she can’t let Jesus of all people see her, let alone feel her touch contaminating Him – she dares to touch only the fringe of His outermost garment, the closest she can reach, the closest she can risk proximity to Him…. But then what an amazing exchange immediately takes place. Immediacy is one of the hallmarks of Mark’s Gospel, of course – things are always happening immediately, all over the place. So here, too: “immediately” she sensed the hemorrhage stopping… and “immediately” Jesus became aware of power flowing from Him. As her hand brushed or touched or perhaps seized His cloak for one desperate second, immediately they both felt the surge of divine power moving between them. And in that holy immediacy, everything changed. Time stopped. The hemorrhage stopped. And Jesus stopped, and turned, and, to her horror, began to look around, asking who had touched Him.

O my Lord, what a nightmare, worse than she’d ever imagined. People laugh at Him, of course, “What do You mean, who touched You? Who hasn’t touched You, in this crowd?” Boy, they’ll laugh when they find out who else has touched them, won’t they? But in the flow of power into her body, stopping the hemorrhage, perhaps Jesus’ healing has poured into her spirit too, for the woman draws up her courage and falls at His feet and tells Him the whole truth. And does He recoil in disgust and revulsion that she has contaminated Him so brazenly? Does He pick up the first stone to begin the ritual purging of this scourge in their midst? No. It’s astonishing! He says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

He senses the power flowing out of Him… she feels His power flowing into her, and the draining of her lifeblood cease. His power flows into her that she might no longer be drained. He allows Himself to be drained of power – He feels power flowing from Him – in order to fill and heal one who has no power, no hope, no standing. “For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that by His poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Paul’s words are not just rhetoric: we see them actually happening in today’s Gospel! Jesus becomes poor, He lets His power be drained from Him for the sake of one who is poor; and on the cross He opens His life-blood to all the world, letting His power pour out to fill and heal all those hemorrhaging in body, heart, or spirit – indeed, our whole hemorrhaging world – that by His blood poured out, all the places of blood-letting might at last, at last, be stanched.

This is the Happy Exchange Martin Luther loved: Jesus’ taking on our poverty, receiving our uncleanness as He did this woman’s, bearing in His own body our need and our sin, and in exchange pouring out all His holiest, most precious divine gifts to us: His power flowing forth, His heart poured out, His love and mercy, His body and blood, His breath and Spirit and friendship, His life. It is a happy exchange indeed – in fact outright astonishing. He becomes poor to make us rich; and we the impoverished, the weak, the unclean, the unworthy, the desperate – we receive all that is His and are beloved, washed, fed, cherished, and showered with riches. Even our most wretched sinfulness can’t separate us from Him, for He “carries our sins in [His] own body on the tree,” as we pray on Good Friday with almost unbearable poignancy. He bears our sins in His own body; we are united with Him and held in Him in a love that doesn’t defile Him but transforms us completely, making exiles and outcasts into “Daughter,” “Son.” And even more: He becomes Bridegroom to us, taking us into His very own home – His heart, His Body, where He abides – and clothing us anew and giving us a new name, a new identity, a whole new being.

We too know something of hemorrhage, in the desperate broken places of the world or in people we love or even in our own lives. We know the experience of depletion, of nearly imperceptible draining of life-blood over time: in exhaustion, in petty conflict in our churches or relationships, the slow sapping of resources or energy or hope. Perhaps we can sense how even prayer and our hearts’ deep life in God can hemorrhage over time, leaving us depleted and far from the places of rich and joyful access to God we long for.

Yet for us, as for this nameless woman, the miracle is that access to God is not far off – it’s as near as Jesus’ own presence. We too experience that holy immediacy – touching not the fringe of His garment but His own body coming close to us, receiving His blood: into us, too, into our poverty and longing and need, Jesus’ divine power flows just as powerfully as into this woman’s. Here at the altar the Happy Exchange takes place; yesterday and today at this conference, week after week after week in our parishes, this holy happy union of flesh and blood and heart and soul is consummated: Jesus’ divine presence poured into our human need, His love filling us and healing us and making every hemorrhage to cease – and changing reality completely, even raising the dead.

Come, weak or needy as you are; come, depleted or even dead inside: let Jesus touch you. Come, daughter, son; Come, beloved: receive the love poured out for you!

By Lisa E. Dahill, Ph.D.
Scripture reference: Mark 5: 21-43; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15.