Touched by the hem of his garment

My third text is taken once again from the Bible, it is actually two separate texts that I’m grouping into one. The first is found in the book of Matthew at chapter eight, verses one to four. The second is from Mark 5:25-33

“When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" Immediately he was cured of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."”[1]

And also:

“A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, "If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed." Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?"

"You see the people crowding against you," his disciples answered, "and yet you can ask, 'Who touched me?' "

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth.”[2]

At first glance, these biblical verses may seem completely irrelevant to us here today, but if we take a closer look, we can begin to see similarities with what’s happening in our world.

We know today that leprosy (Hansen’s disease, though the Greek lepra could refer to many different skin diseases) is not contagious, but in Jesus’ time Jewish law was quite clear about how it should be treated:

“The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!'

As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.”[3]

People were certainly afraid of contamination, but the disease became more of a ritual impurity than a medical problem. Those living with the disease were forced “outside the camp”, no longer allowed to be a part of normal life, they were considered worthless.

Today of course, we tell ourselves that we’re far more civilised than that, that we wouldn’t make people walk around shouting that they’re ‘unclean’, that we’re not as primitive as to marginalise a woman because she’s “bleeding”. The world has moved on we say…

In 1989, as the AIDS virus was spreading rapidly, Amanda Heggs, a young sufferer of the virus said, “Sometimes I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable.”[4]

Untouchable is exactly the right word to describe those who had leprosy and the woman who’s bleeding. Unfortunately, it’s also a word which all too often can be used to describe people with AIDS today.

AIDS is still associated with homosexuality, prostitution and drug use, allowing people to stigmatise sufferers and increasing the psychological and physical exclusion.

In 1985, the late Princess Diana shocked many people by touching a patient in an AIDS hospital. Two thousand years before, Jesus shocked everyone by touching a leper and a haemorrhaging woman. The significance of the action was in breaking down social boundaries and prejudices.

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[1] Mathew 8:1-4, New International Version

[2] Mark 5:25-33, ibid

[3] Leviticus 13: 45-46, ibid

[4] Amanda Heggs, AIDS sufferer. Quoted in The Guardian, June 12, 1989

- andrew, from my travail de maturité