Covered & Whole

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We're going to be reading Mark chapter 4, and it's a story that actually occurs in another story. And it seems like just a passing story, in a sense, of a healing that Jesus does. But I think there's some really main points to it. In the Gospel of Mark, it's recorded, and then also in Matthew and Luke. But Mark's version is the one we're going to look at today. And it's really a story of disconnection and how does one connect. And what we're going to find out is that faith is what connects you to Jesus. So let's read that story in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5, starting at verse 24. And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all that she had and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, If I touch even his garments, I will be made well. And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, Who touched my garments? And his disciples said to him, You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, Who touched me? And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease. So from this text, we're going to look at three points about how shame feels like that disconnection, that not being wanted, that isolation, and all that cascades with that. And we're going to be studying these three points. Yeah, we're back to three points, people. The last two weeks were only two, but this one's three. And these are the points. Desperation, invitation, and substitution. First of all, desperation. I don't know if you heard in this text, but it is there. This woman is desperate. She is in a male-dominated society of the first century, and she faces the stigma of having this bleeding disease continually, yeah, menstruating for 12 years. I cannot imagine for a lot of reasons. Nadia Boltz-Weber has stated that she had her period then, in other words, for 4,383 days consecutively. Now, that itself would cause such weakness because of the loss of blood. But also, this was in the first century. There are no feminine hygiene products of any type. And women, according to the book of Leviticus, any time there was bleeding of any type within society, you were isolated and set apart so that you could not have human contact with others, otherwise you made them unclean, so you could not worship, you could not be involved in anything for 12 years. She was not physically close to anyone, and everyone avoided her. Have you ever felt, when people are avoiding you, what it feels like? Or looking at you, you know, like that stare? Maybe, I have done this once in a while, but very infrequently do I feel this way. We were in Los Angeles, and my kids, when we were on a vacation, they wanted to go to Rodeo Drive. Any of you have ever been to Rodeo Drive? Well, it's pretty high-end stuff, right? And so there you are in front of like Cartier or Gucci, and you just about are going to walk in, and then you go like, yeah, no, I don't belong here. You know that feeling? That's the feeling of, I'm not connected to this. She felt that about her whole society, all the time, everywhere, for that long. And Mark is careful. It's amazing in Mark's Gospel here that he even goes into all these details, but in this little story, within the larger story of the raising of Jairus from the dead, Jairus's daughter from the dead, here's this little insertion, and yet he goes into details about it. It's not just another healing. He's very careful to say she did not experience just the shame of the disconnection from her bleeding disease. She also experienced the shame from the fact that her cures were so difficult. He states that she suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better, but even grew worse. Can you imagine? The cure in the first century for an ailment like this was kind of awful, at least what they thought was a cure. It was primitive at best. In the first century, medicine, not so great. We didn't understand all of this. In the Mishnah, for example, which is kind of a rabbinical explanation of what to do in certain circumstances, in the Mishnah, you were supposed to, as one cure, was to take a goblet of wine, fill it with pulverized rubber, alum, and garden crocuses. Mix all that together and drink it down, and that's supposed to cure this. She tried this m...