As Jesus was pressing through the crowd to get to Jairus’s house to heal his daughter who was at the point of death, a desperate, nameless lady who had a flow of blood for twelve years made her way through the crowd seeking to touch Jesus’ garment. She believed that if she could but touch his garment, she would be cleansed and made whole. She believed the message of the good news of the kingdom Jesus had been proclaiming throughout that region. She had heard about how he had been touching the unclean and they were becoming clean. This was very different from everything she knew about the whole system of clean and unclean up to this point in history. Up to this time, only uncleanness spread. Holiness did not. If she were to touch someone, that person would become unclean. That’s what the Law said in Leviticus 15. The other person’s cleanness would not be contracted by her. That’s just the way things were up to this point in history.
Obviously, something was changing. This wasn’t happening with Jesus. The unclean were contracting cleanness from Jesus. She believed God was spreading life through Jesus, so she took her chances and sought to touch his garment.
The prophet Haggai gives us some insight by contrast as to why she would seek to touch his garment. In speaking to the priests of his day, Haggai asked them, “If someone carries holy flesh in the fold of his garment, and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil, or any food, will it become holy?” The priests answered, “No.” (Haggai 2.12) They were right. If you touch a corpse, you become unclean or unholy (Haggai 2.13), but the reverse isn’t true … at least not in Haggai’s day. Holy flesh in a garment doesn’t make the garment holy and, consequently, can’t make holy anything it touches. But the situation changed with Jesus, and the woman knew it. The holy flesh in Jesus’ garment made Jesus garment holy and, consequently, anyone who touched the garment would become holy or clean. That’s what she was seeking.
We are unclean. We are unholy. We are dead in our trespasses and sins. Our flesh is corrupt. What is the answer? The answer is for our flesh to come into contact with the garment of Jesus. Paul says that this happens in our baptism. Using the language of being clothed, Paul tells the Galatians, “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3.27) Your flesh has come in contact with the holy in the waters of baptism, and as you touch those garments in faith, looking to Jesus for cleansing as this woman did, you are clean. The holiness of Christ is “contracted” by your flesh so that you are now holy.
Being clothed with Christ not only means that we are clean, but it also means that we now have a holy garment that can be touched by the unclean for their healing. When people come desperately searching for Christ, and they find us, his body, they ought also to be able to find a place where they can be healed. While their physical maladies may continue through life and death until they are raised again with new bodies, there is healing that goes deeper.
The unclean world that seeks Christ must find in his church a place where the true declaration of God’s peace is so that they hear that their sins are forgiven when they are repentant. They can be healed from the guilt that weighs them down. They can also begin to experience what it means to be in good, healthy, life-giving relationships. They should hear words that are directed toward the healing of their souls. Sometimes this might be the words of a scalpel that cut out the cancers of sin that still plague us. Other times it might be words of encouragement and praise when they have done well. It might be the assurance that they are forgiven when they have wronged you, or they hear you humbly asking forgiveness from them when you have wronged them. Being clothed in Christ as a holy garment is a responsibility to be a place of healing for a desperate and dying world.
