Mark 5: 21-43: Living Water

Last Tuesday, while lecturing on capabilities and social exclusion, I said I always found it curious that when Jesus healed people, he almost always touched them. I found it curious because he was God after all and he could heal without touching.

The case of the centurion's servant shows this clearly. The servant was nowhere near Jesus. My students also pointed out to me that the other person Jesus "healed" from a distance was Lazarus.

In today's Gospel there are two healings and both involve touching. The woman with hemorrhage touched Jesus' cloak and she was healed. And Jesus took Jairus' daughter by the hand and she was raised from the dead.

I think it was the story of the woman with hemorrhage that opened up a new way of looking at the Gospels for me. By bleeding constantly for twelve years, she remained unclean and could not worship God in his temple. By touching Jesus, she made Jesus ritually unclean and that is why she was afraid that Jesus might get mad at her.

Then I realized from there that by touching people, Jesus was saying that if you are not allowed to touch God, then God will touch you (or allow himself to be touched) and restore you to full standing in the community. For me, that was the moment when I saw the entire Gospel as a Gospel of inclusion.

If we think of baptism as a way of cleansing ourselves for worship, a full body detoxification, as it were, then maybe this is one sense in which Jesus claims to be living water. Touching (and believing in) him heals us physically, socially, spiritually, cleanses us and restores our standing in many ways.