Luke 8:40-9

An interrupted miracle

Jesus is on the way to do a miracle for Jairus’ daughter when He is interrupted by another miracle!

The woman with 12 years of bleeding is ceremonially unclean under the law. Touching her would make you unclean. With the new covenant, not only is she not ceremonially unclean, but touching the Lord will heal her. Touch is important for impartation in the kingdom. There is a transfer of the power of the Spirit through touch. Laying hands on people to pray for healing is so important. Some of the stories of  raising from the dead involved lying on top of the dead person for chest to chest impartation of life – I read some amusing stories this week of Robbie Dawkins trying to press in to raising the dead with his son and getting caught!

In this passage, even with the crowd pressing in and nearly crushing Him, v. 42, Jesus knew that the woman reaching out behind was not just brushing by, but touching him in faith to receive from Him. She did it surreptitiously as she shouldn’t be out and about.

Jesus wants to know who has touched Him – He is about to make her clean as well as healed. As one writer puts it “It was only Jesus who kept her from pulling off the perfect crime—stealing a healing, unnoticed in the midst of a large crowd.” Perhaps she wanted to sneak off alone back to normal life. But her life will never be the same again. She approached him with a sense of unworthiness and very real shame. Now she goes with Jesus’ peace, transformed forever. She also goes with blessing rather than, perhaps, a sense of shame for stealing the healing.

There is another aspect at play here too. Jesus’ delay caused by dealing with an unclean woman has seemingly cost Jairus’ daughter her life. Here is Jairus, an apparently righteous, devout, and influential Jewish leader, whose “blessing” is interrupted by an unclean woman, whose healing was undeserved, on several counts. But the Lord has come for the clean and unclean, the Jew and the Gentile, the “deserving” and the “undeserving”. There is enough blessing for all. Sometimes we may still have an orphan mindset, thinking there is not enough blessing to go round. Perhaps there’s a prophetic ministry time and you don’t get a word, when others did. And you can’t see why. Sometimes there is delay, but God has blessing enough for all. As we see from today’s passage it’s not based on whether you deserve it or not. God will bless you!

Lord, we want to see more healing and blessing on us and those around us. Holy Spirit impart through us healing, life, blessing and peace. Amen

Andy Moyle