Not long ago, as part of preparation for a meeting with colleagues who teach in Asbury Theological Seminary’s bilingual and Spanish-language programs, I was doing some reflection on the two main courses I teach for ATS: Biblical Narrative and Introduction to Inductive Bible Study (Gospel of Mark). My reflections centered on two questions: (1) What do I love about these courses? (2) What does each course offer to students? It turns out that the answer to question #2 reveals my answer to #1! The Biblical Narrative class offers students, first of all, a new grasp of The Story, which gives greater clarity to their understanding of the biblical stories. Second, through an introduction to Lectio divina, the course also offers them a new way of engaging with the stories (micro-level), of being attentive listeners and not just pragmatic readers in search of material for the next sermon or Bible study. In the Introduction to IBS course, once students get past the initially very steep learning curve and can catch their breath a bit, they find an almost daily dose of “aha!”, as they begin to see the text with fresh lenses and new tools.
I love walking alongside students in all of these learning journeys—and I love that doing so keeps me attentive to new insights from the text and from the Spirit who inspires the text. Over the past few months, a lot of this journey has taken place in Markan territory (in addition to the seminary course, I also teach an IBS-Mark course to undergraduates at Indiana Wesleyan University). In a recent encounter with Mark 5:25–34, a familiar passage, all the learning points that students typically experience were front and center for me, the supposed “expert” in the room.
First new insight: Most of my encounters with this passage in the past have focused on the woman—her excruciating experience of chronic illness, her desperate, last-ditch courage, her healing. And as I walk my own frustrating road with unresolvable chronic illness, this woman and her bold faith have been on my mind a lot. But this last time, after having done extensive IBS work with the passage alongside my students, I sat with it in a Lectio exercise, and the Holy Spirit underlined and highlighted something else. Clearly and gently, my attention was nudged away from the woman toward Jesus, and especially toward his question in v. 30.
“Who touched me?” In that moment I realized that Jesus’ question had always sounded in my mind as if it were spoken in a slightly accusatory tone. But as I sat in attentive silence with Jesus’ question, it suddenly sounded like an invitation, a warm verbal embrace. And yes, I think the previous IBS work with structure and context made it possible for me to hear this, prepared me to be a better listener to the Spirit in and through the text. Mark 4–8 is a veritable zig-zag of lake crossings—back and forth from the Jewish side to the Gentile side. It probably felt a bit dizzying to the disciples! Mark makes it clear, in a host of little ways, that Jesus directed these geographical moves in an intentional, purposeful way, so we can be pretty sure that just as Jesus meant to meet and heal the Gerasene demoniac on the east side of the lake, so he meant to encounter and heal this woman back on the west side. He was not surprised or mystified by her actions or by her condition. Suddenly I could hear in his question not an accusation about her sneakiness (“how dare you creep up behind me like that?”), but an extravagant invitation for her to come fully into his presence. There’s a sort of sub-text here, like a divine heartbeat: “I’m so glad you touched me! Come and tell me all about it!”
Jean-Paul Chrétien (Under the Gaze of the Bible) suggests that we approach Scripture in ways that will allow ourselves to be read by it, a reading that is costly (because it requires something of us), exposed (because it demands vulnerability), wounded (because the truth can stop us in our tracks and shine painful light on our dark corners), and filled with lively patience and active self-discipline that relinquishes our arrogance.[1] Such a reading means that new insights into the text are likely to come accompanied by questions that we must confront. The first such question arose from hearing Jesus whisper “Who touched me?” as an invitation. In what ways is Jesus inviting us to touch him today, to break free of whatever holds us back from bold intimacy with him? How is he welcoming us into his presence, calling us to “come clean and come into the open,” so that we can “fall down before him and tell him the whole truth,” as the woman did (Mark 5:33)?
Second insight: The second thing the Holy Spirit highlighted was not in the text but in me. I had to face the question: Why did I always hear Jesus’ words as if they were spoken in an accusatory tone? What had shaped such a hearing? Was that way of hearing of Jesus’ question coherent with The Story, especially in its Gospel shape? The personal answers to those questions are fodder for another essay on another day! But there is a corollary set of questions for each reader of Scripture: what unexamined assumptions and ideas do we bring to our engagement with the Bible? What do we think we know that keeps us from seeing what is really there? Will we allow the Holy Spirit to help us identify those things?
Third insight: In verse 34, Jesus says to the woman: “Daughter, your faith has healed/saved you”; that’s in the perfect tense in Greek, communicating that it is an accomplished fact. (She’s already realized this, v. 29.) Then immediately Jesus says, “Go in peace and be healed of your disease”. This is in the present active imperative, which conveys a sense of persevering continuity—“keep on being healed.” The miracle, while fully accomplished by the power of God, was not all that Jesus had to offer her! There was more! Her new life had just begun—now came the adventure of living into it, of experiencing more and more of the healing power of Jesus. It struck me that this is a beautiful picture of salvation—the new birth is a radically powerful beginning, but there is more! The process of our sanctification—being conformed to the image of Christ—is the real adventure!
This insight took me unexpectedly to the liturgy and the sacraments. That healed woman had powerful, bodily reminders of the already-accomplished salvation that had transformed her life. Surely each morning when she awoke to a body that was no longer bleeding, it was not only a reason for gratitude but also a reminder that Jesus had called her to keep on living into the fullness of the restoration and healing that he had accomplished for her. In our worship, we use our bodies—tongues, hands, voices—to tell and re-tell The Story of our salvation. In the Eucharist, we participate in a powerful, embodied reminder of our already-accomplished salvation. What might change in our “right here, right now” experience of salvation and sanctification, if we were more attentive to the The Story as recounted in sacrament, Word, and worship? How might we, like the woman, live out Jesus’ command to “be healed” of our diseases, the things that scourge and plague us?[2]
A final question: We don’t have to look very far, in our families, neighborhoods, schools, and communities, to discover people who are living an existence parallel to that of the woman in Mark 5 before she met Jesus. They are trapped in places and spaces of quiet desperation, of chronic disappointment, of betrayal and loss, of scarcity and hopelessness. How can we introduce them to Jesus, so that they can hear his invitation and experience his welcome, so that they can find restoration and healing beyond all that they (or we!) could ask or imagine?
[1] See the discussion in Craig G. Bartholomew, The Old Testament and God: Old Testament Origins and the Question of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2022), 129–130.
[2] The Greek word for “disease” here is also used for scourging with a whip.
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