In 2010, I wrote a couple of Mother's Day messages on Luke 8:43-48. It's the story of the woman with the unceasing blood flow who touches Jesus in a crowd and is healed. In these two messages, which I post here and in the next post, I looked at those healed. This Sunday (January 22, 2017), I will again look at Luke 8. This time, the focus is on what we learn about God. Here is the first of those messages.
The
Unclean Woman in the 21st Century (Luke 8:43-48)
Sunday,
May 9, 2010, Mother’s
Day
Imagine
this. You are a 14-year-old girl. You’ve never been to school. You were married to a man at age 13, and
became pregnant 6 months later. Now you
are in labor. Labor has already lasted
three days. At midday, on the fourth day
of labor, you pass a still-born child.
Relieved, you think the madness and torture is over. But on the fifth day, you discover to your
horror that you have no control over your bodily functions. No matter how much you wash, no matter why
you try, you have no control. You cannot
get rid of the odor.
Your husband is disgusted. He cannot stand you. Your presence is unendurable. You were supposed to become the mother of his
firstborn son. Instead, this has
happened. It must be some punishment for
something you have done. So, he throws
you out of the house.
Your parents take you in, but they
can’t stand the sight or smell of you any more than he could. They make you stay in a shack at the edge of
the family compound. Your condition does
not improve. With no control over your
body, you always reek. You are put out
again, this time to fend for yourself.
You are 14. You
illiterate and have no skills. You just
want to die.[i]
Here’s what the girl
in that unbelievably desperate situation doesn’t know. There are approximately 3 to 4 million women
who deal with the condition she has and the condition has a name - obstetric
fistula. “A fistula is simply
a hole between an internal organ and the outside world that should not
exist. There are two primary causes of fistula in women in developing
countries: childbirth, causing obstetric fistula and sexual violence,
causing traumatic fistula.”[ii] This impoverished girl thinks her life is
over and quite possibly it is her fault.
The problem is unique to her and so she bears the agony of being
punished for some unknown sin. In truth,
for only a few hundred dollars, a surgical operation could repair the injury
and restore her life.
Instead,
she has been kicked to the curb, and herself believes that the curb, the
gutter, the waste heap is where she belongs.
Lewis Wall is the professor of obstetrics/gynecology in the School of
Medicine and professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences at
Washington University in St. Louis. He’s
also on the board of directors of the World Wide Fistual Fund,
http://www.worldwidefistulafund.org/fistulafund/index.jsp. That website gives loads of information about
fistula, about what women go through, and it gives ways concerned
Christ-followers can pray and help.
Another
website with even more information is the site of the Fistula Foundation http://www.fistulafoundation.org/index.html. There, Asosa, an 18-year-old young woman from
Southern Ethiopia shares her story.
I studied in school
until 7th grade. I helped my mother at home with housework, but I didn't have
to carry too many heavy things.
I got married when I
was 15. I met my husband for the first time on my wedding day. My parents chose
him for me. I felt sad that I had to quit my education, but otherwise I liked
my husband. He was a good man.
I got pregnant one
year later. My pregnancy was fine. My labor started at three in the afternoon
and my husband and my mother were with me. A traditional doctor told me to go
to the hospital. I got a free letter from my kebele. I went to Asosa Hospital
and they operated to take out the baby, but it was dead.
After the baby died, I
went back to my village and two months later my husband married another woman.
My friends were there to help me in the village. I lived with my mother. When I
came to Fistula Hospital, I was very happy. I knew this was the place where I
would get cured. It has been 15 days since my operation and now I am dry.
I have made friends
here. We have fun together and we talk about our health and our operations. We
ask each other, what will you do when you are cured?
When I am cured, I
want to go back home and continue my education. I want to study and I want to
become a doctor like the doctors here and help girls like me who have this
problem.
When I go back to my
village, I will tell other women to go immediately to a hospital so that they
won't have a problem with their labor. Most people don't know that a hospital
can help them, but if they knew, they'd go.[iii]
The
pains of those who deal with fistula are real, but isolated. It’s easy for someone in the United States to
not know and not care. Obviously men
don’t need to be concerned about it. And
women who live in industrialized nations and have access to modern medicine
don’t have to worry either. Obstetric
fistula is a third world problem and there are so many third world
problems.
How can we care for
them all?
Jesus cares for them,
and we – His church – are his body. We
make up the body of Christ. What burdens
His heart is to burden ours.
I had never heard of
fistula until I read the wonderful book Hospital
By the River. It’s the story of two
Australian Christians, doctors Reginald and Catherine Hamlin. They answered the call of God to go to the
mission field, specifically Ethiopia.
There, they treated numerous problems, but their specialty was care for
women who had suffered fistula. These
women, and sometimes their parents (rarely their husbands), spent all the money
they had to travel from remote villages to the capital, Addis Ababa, so they
could be seen and treated by the Hamlins.
When they were cured through
the routine surgery, it was like a miracle had taken place. These women Catherine Hamlin describes
thought their lives were done, and then they had life again. Over and over, women praised the Lord, and
saw life with new eyes. Many stayed and
worked as nurses and administrative assistants in the hospital. Their lives in the villages they left behind
were over anyway. Husbands rejected
them, parents saw them as burdens, a shame on the family. They didn’t contribute anything and so were often
relegated to the status of unproductive animals. Not all husbands and parents were so
calloused and cruel, but many were. No
one gave these women much hope.
That complete rejection
is what caught my eye as I thought about the Gospel, and as I thought about
preaching on Mother’s Day.
Luke 8:43-48 says,
As he went, the crowds
pressed in on him. 43Now there was a woman who had been suffering
from hemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on
physicians, no one could cure her. 44She came up behind him and
touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. 45Then
Jesus asked, “Who touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the
crowds surround you and press in on you.” 46But Jesus said, “Someone
touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.” 47When
the woman saw that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling
down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had
touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. 48He said to
her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
The
connecting point for the woman came when Jesus called her “daughter.” It says in verse 44, “immediately, here
hemorrhage stopped.” At that point, she was anonymous. The crowd was so dense they did not notice
her steal into the midst of them and touch Jesus. Her bleeding condition rendered her
ritualistically unclean. By law she was
cut off from society. She couldn’t be in
normal relationships because if anyone touched her, they too would become
unclean. She couldn’t go to temple or
synagogue. She was a “reject” in every
way describable.
Yet, her gamble worked. Violating law and convention, she made her
way unnoticed through the crowd and touched Jesus. Upon grasping his clothes, she was
healed. She could then wash up and
present herself to the priest. She’d be
a part of society once again.
But Jesus didn’t leave it at a simple
healing. No healing is complete in his
eyes until the broken spirit is healed.
She needed more than just her ailment corrected. She needed to know that though everyone
around her treated her like she was a piece of nasty garbage, God loved her. In shame and despair, God saw her, was with
her, and was for her.
That
point is driven home the moment Jesus calls her “daughter.” The most legalistically minded among the
Pharisees would have called her a lawbreaker.
Jesus called her daughter and commended her faith. He also bid her “peace.”
Peace
in the Jewish sense is so much more than a simple absence of conflict. It is wholeness, shalom. The idea of shalom is that all right between
a person and her neighbors and a person and her God. Jesus called this troubled soul “daughter,”
and he bid her “peace.”
This
is what Jesus does for all people; you, me, everyone. The Biblical lesson about an afflicted person
and Jesus meeting her in her pain, at her lowest, most desperate point speaks
into our lives because Jesus does the same for us. When we seek him, force our way through
obstacles to touch him, and have faith in him, he responds with love and
grace. And our lives change forever.
The
woman didn’t suddenly have an easy life because she was healed. Dr. Wall says of modern fistula sufferers who
do not have access to treatment, “They are seen as hopeless, drifting to the
margins of society where they live lives of misery, isolation, worsening
poverty and malnutrition, unloved, unwanted, and alone.”[iv] If a Christian ministry, reaching out in the
name of Jesus identifies these women and helps them get treatment, they don’t
pop right onto their feet and live meaningful, self-sufficient lives the day
after the surgery. The healed woman
didn’t have an easy street the moment she heard the Master call her
“daughter.”
She
did though have peace of mind because she knew without a doubt that God was on
her side. She did have a reason to live
a purposeful life – she had been blessed by Jesus. She would, from that point going forward,
need a new community of people of faith to embrace and welcome her. She most likely joined the ranks of Jesus’
women disciples (see “daughters of Jerusalem,” Luke 23:27-28). Those who followed him would be a group on
the fringes of society, but though they along with the male disciples were
marginalized, it was they the Holy Spirit filled at Pentecost.
Similarly,
the women healed of fistula will often need the church to help them find
employment, and maybe a place to live.
Many will need the church to become their family, a source of friendship
and emotional and social support. It’s
true of any group or individual today rescued from the brink of destruction by
Jesus working through his body, the church.
We
help the alcoholic put the bottle down.
We must then help him get on his feet and discover God’s purpose in his
life. We help the person struggling with
depression find joy and a loving community.
We then need to help that one move into a productive, sustainable joy
that lasts throughout life. We help each
other through times of crisis and provide community and family as brothers and
sisters in Christ. We are there for one
another in good times and in bad. And,
the church is always open, ready to enthusiastically welcome whomever we would
deem to be the lowly, the outcast, the bleeding woman. Just as the hurting soul can find hope in
hearing Jesus call him “son” or her “daughter, he or she can find that hope in
God’s people, the church.
The
connecting point for us is we are as broken as anyone. The Wall Street banker and the starving child
in a poor country have this in common: both are lost without Jesus. But, both are saved when they recognize their
own condition (of being lost apart from God), and turn to Jesus in repentance
and in faith. He welcomes and saves
both. AMEN
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