Homily 663 – 22 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
November 9, 2025
Epistle:  (215) Galatians 6:11-18
Gospel:  (39) Luke 8:41-56

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.

The account of the woman with the issue of blood, like everything in the Gospels, has so much in it that is instructive for us.

Let’s start by thinking about the life this woman had experienced.

For 12 years she had struggled with the flow of blood.  We don’t necessarily know what this involved, but it also isn’t terribly relevant.  Any bleeding of any kind had serious repercussions for the Jews of her time.

To be actively bleeding in this day meant you were ritually impure, that is to say, unclean.  This meant a few things.  First and foremost, it meant you were prohibited from entering the temple or the synagogue.  It also meant that anyone who came into physical contact with you was also made ritually impure.  The difference is that the people who made contact with you had a process for being made clean, and their life continued as normal.

Yours did not, until the bleeding was stopped.  So, imagine being avoided – no physical touch – for a dozen years.  Let’s say from age 20 to age 32.  No human physical contact.  No hugs, no one holding your hand.

Think, just for a moment, think how lonely that would be.  No companionship, certainly.  No marriage, certainly.  Even family can’t really comfort you.  In society, you are a non-person.

Plus – even though this was entirely out of your control – you were banned from God’s presence.  No Church.  No hope of salvation.  No hope of obedience to God.

You did nothing wrong.  You did nothing at all.  And yet you were ostracized.

In a word you had nothing.  No people, no contact, no God – and no hope.

If you are a normal human being, this would make you feel, I imagine, simply awful.  I’m not sure I could bear this for a month.

Think back to the pandemic, when people were separated and segregated for something that was, much like this, out of their control.  Perhaps not completely, but mostly.  Even with precautions, even with vaccinations, even with social distancing, people still contracted the illness.

We knew very little.  The physicians knew very little.  We did what we could.  Now, remembering that feeling, what if it continued for 12 years.  You couldn’t see anyone, or touch anyone or kiss anyone.  12 years.

From first grade to graduation from high school, in a bubble, alone, without any physical contact with other humans.

That is the isolation this woman felt.  Add to all of that misery the idea that not even God would approach her.  And she couldn’t approach God.

And none of this – none – was her fault.  You couldn’t look at anything in her life and say, “Well, you know, if only you hadn’t …”  Or, “Well, you know if only you had …”

Nothing.  Helpless.

Now – here is where it gets interesting.  You hear of a man, some say a prophet, some say a healer.  He is reported to have healing power.  You’ve already spent all your resources looking for physicians who can heal you.  And, found nothing.  But here is a man.  Here is hope.

You reach out to him.  Some have said, “Didn’t this woman’s touch make Jesus unclean?”  St. Theopholact in his commentary says that her belief touched Christ and she was healed, before she physically touched Christ.  She believed that Christ had the power, and the ability, and maybe most importantly, the will to heal her.

With that belief, she touched Christ.  Then, the newly healed woman touched the hem of Christ’s garment.  Christ knows that something happened.  Likely, He knew who it was.  Because in the impossible press of the crowd around Him, He found the woman.  Her healing was complete.  She came to Christ and confessed – her story, and the story of her healing.

There is I think a lesson for us about confession in here.  Healing came before confession.  Healing came with repentance.  What the priest offers in confession is not forgiveness.  He reminds us of our forgiveness, for sure.  But what the priest offers is a witness, on the part of the Church.

When this woman was healed, there was still for her a ritual to perform.  She still had to go to the mikvah and bathe.  She still had to prove to the priest that she was clean.  And we have to do the same.  The priest in confession validates our repentance, validates our cleansing, and reunites us to the communion of the Church.

Now the story of this woman, it’s a nice story, right?  But perhaps we forget that we are this woman.  All of us are this woman.  Through absolutely no fault of our own, through an inherited defect in our humanity, we are unclean and impure, and separated from God.  We are the ones who are in need of healing – broken, bleeding.  We have to have faith, and yet we still need to do the action – the act of reaching out and touching Christ.  Faith heals, for sure.  But faith without works is dead.

We come before Christ, and reach out, and touch Him physically, as our belief touches Him in reality.  We think of the physical as being real.  But even the Greek Philosophers knew that it is the mystical world of God that is the true reality.  This life we live manifests for us that mystical life which, God willing, one day we will see clearly.

What we need to understand, and believe, and act upon, is that everything we know about life thus far in our experience is incomplete.  We are separated from the life-giver.  We are separated from life, and as such, we are broken, dead in our separation.

But in Christ, by putting on Christ, by sacrificing not a dove nor a calf but our very selves, we are filled with Christ, and return to life.  It is our resurrection.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ!