Take Heart! God Blesses Mark 5:25–34

Take Heart! God Blesses Mark 5:25–34

Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins

September 20, 2026

Now there was a woman who had been suffering from a flow of blood for twelve years. 26 She had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, 28 for she said, “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well.” 29 Immediately her flow of blood stopped, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 30 Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my cloak?” 31 And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ “ 32 He looked all around to see who had done it. 33 But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. 34 He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

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There are things we learn so early that we don’t remember learning them. They just seem innate in us, like the color of our eyes. We learn what we’re supposed to do, how we’re supposed to act. We learn what the people around us expect. We learn what makes us lovable. And we learn (usually without anybody saying it out loud) what makes us not-so-loveable.

And some of us learned something else along the way: that God is mainly interested in what’s wrong with us. Dare I say that some of us picked that up in a pew? We learned to expect God to be disappointed in us. That God is the ultimate killjoy and the great judge in the sky. We got used to waiting for the other spiritual shoe to drop, as if God is the school principal, and you’ve been called to the office, and you already know what it’s about. We grew accustomed to an ongoing, heavenly beat-down.

Hold that thought as we meet the “woman with the issue of blood” in Mark’s Gospel.

She’s been bleeding for twelve years. Take that in, would you? Twelve. Long. Years. Twelve years is a long time to be sick. It’s a long time to spend money on doctors. It is a long time to go without human touch. It is a long time to go to sleep hoping tomorrow will be different and to wake up and find out it isn’t, and then to do that again, and again, for four thousand mornings. Mark says she “had endured much under many physicians and had spent all that she had, and she was no better but rather grew worse.” Spent everything she had. Every dime. And she’s worse than when she started. I don’t know what that does to a person, but I suspect most of us in this room know somebody it’s happened to, and a few of us may be the somebody it’s happened to.

There’s another layer we shouldn’t skip. Her condition carried weight in Jewish religious life. Leviticus describes a woman with a prolonged flow of blood as ritually unclean. Now, ritual impurity wasn’t the same as moral sin; she wasn’t being called a sinner. But her condition affected her participation in religious life and affected other people through touch. If a ritually unclean woman were to touch another person, that person then became unclean as well, usually until evening. So this woman lived with twelve years of being deemed “unclean.” Twelve years of being the woman other people had to think twice about.

So when she hears Jesus is coming, she doesn’t request a meeting. She simply takes her place in the crowd, comes up behind Jesus, and reaches out and touches the hem of his cloak.

That’s courage, friends. This is different kind of courage than Elijah on the mountaintop or Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego willing to face the fiery furnace. No, this woman’s courage is more subtle. It’s an every-day-kind-of-courage. There’s no speech, no standing up to empire. Just a woman reaching through a crowd, telling herself, if I can just touch his clothes, I’ll be made well. So that’s what she did. Mark says immediately the bleeding stopped and she felt it in her body. Twelve years of suffering, over in an instant.

And she almost got away clean. She was probably hoping to simply slip back into the crowd and go home healed and anonymous, and honestly, that’s what I’d have preferred had it been me. But Jesus stops. “Who touched my clothes?”

And the disciples (I love them for this) are basically incredulous. Look at this crowd, Lord. Everybody is touching you. You can hear the exasperation. It’s the voice of every staff member who’s ever had to gently manage their boss (current church staff excluded, of course).

But Jesus knows something else happened. And the text says this courageous woman came forward in spite of her fear. Trembling, she fell down before Jesus.

I wonder what she thought was coming. Because she knew exactly what she’d done, and she knew her condition, and she had just reached through a crowd and put her hand on a rabbi, likely making him ritually unclean. She probably expected to be exposed. Reprimanded. She may have braced for what were you thinking? She may have expected to be told she should have stayed home.

She expected a beat-down. Instead, she got a blessing.

Matthew, telling the same story, gives us a line Mark leaves out. Maybe you’ll recognize the first part: “Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.”

Take heart. Daughter.

Those three words are the whole sermon, and I’d be fine if you forgot everything else I say. He doesn’t call her unclean. He doesn’t call her a problem, or an interruption, or a rule-breaker. He doesn’t say she’s inconvenienced him. Now, understand, he’s on his way to a dying little girl at this moment; if anybody ever had a reason to say “not now, ma’am,” it’s Jesus right here. Instead he stops the whole parade, in public, and calls her daughter.

Think about what that does. For twelve years her condition had been handing her an identity. Her body betraying her. Her finances wiped clean. Her community called her “unclean.” But what does Jesus call her? He calls her “daughter.” Daughter. Meaning: you belong. You’re in the family. You’re not an outsider, you’re not a contamination, you’re not a problem to be managed. You are beloved. Take heart.

And here’s where I think this story gets bigger than one woman’s healing. I’m walking cautiously here as I dare to challenge status quo thinking . . .

Father Richard Rohr has written about what he calls “original blessing” . . . a way of understanding the spiritual life that doesn’t start with original sin. That phrase, “original sin” isn’t in the Bible. It was coined by Augustine in the 5th Century. It’s a late-developing idea by Christian standards. Rohr points out the first words God ever speaks over creation in the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis 1. God creates. Then God looks at what’s been made. And God says: it is good. Again and again and again . . . good, good, good. And then God creates the first humans, and God says very good. Before there’s a commandment, there’s a blessing. Before there’s any failure, there’s goodness. Before condemnation, belovedness. Original sin? Try on “original blessing” instead and see how that might reorient your entire spiritual life!

Now for the caveat: I’m not saying that sin isn’t real. It doesn’t mean suffering isn’t real, or that we don’t wound each other badly and need forgiveness. I’ve certainly needed forgiveness more times than I’d like to admit. But I think that the church has let the language of sin get so much louder than the language of blessing that people can barely hear the blessing at all anymore. We have been extraordinarily good at telling people what’s wrong with them. The church, historically, has been far better at condemnation than at blessing (and I say that as somebody who loves the church and has spent over thirty years inside it). We taught people to look in the mirror and inventory what needs fixing. And is it any wonder they started assuming God looks at them the same way?

But what if the story starts somewhere else? What if God’s first word over creation isn’t “guilty”? What if it’s “good”? What if God’s first word over you isn’t “disappointing,” but “beloved”?

That’s what I hear in this story. The woman came expecting a consequence. Expecting to be embarrassed, corrected, exposed. But instead of a beat-down, she got a blessing. A seat at the family dinner table.

And notice this: the direction of the story reverses. In the world of ritual purity, impurity travels from the unclean person to whoever touches them. That’s how it works. But she touches Jesus, and Jesus doesn’t get defined by her uncleanness; she gets transformed by his wholeness. It runs the other way. She doesn’t contaminate him. She encounters grace.

Which is one of the most beautiful things about Jesus, and it shows up everywhere once you start looking. He isn’t afraid of people’s brokenness. He doesn’t protect his holiness by keeping his distance from hurting people. Jesus moves toward them. He touches lepers. He eats with folks the religious crowd had written off years ago. He talks with outsiders in broad daylight. He walks toward suffering, on purpose, like it’s the whole job. And here, he lets this woman reach, and when she does, he doesn’t pull back. He turns around. Daughter. Take heart. Your faith has made you well. Go in peace.

I wonder how many of us need those words this morning. Not because we’re sick the way she was, necessarily, but because most of us are carrying something that’s quietly become part of our identity. Maybe it’s a failure from twenty years ago that you can still recite word for word. A relationship that didn’t make it. Something somebody said about you when you were nine that you have been arguing with ever since. Maybe you’ve spent your whole life trying to prove you’re good enough, and some of you have gotten so good at taking care of everybody else that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to receive anything. Maybe you’re carrying shame God never once asked you to pick up. That happens. I’ve watched it happen to people I love, and I’m not entirely innocent of it myself.

And maybe courage, for you, isn’t anything dramatic. Maybe courage this week is just reaching. Reaching for hope. For grace. For help. For forgiveness. For community. Reaching for the possibility that God might actually be kinder than you were raised to expect.

That woman had every reason to be afraid, and she reached anyway. And when Jesus turned around, she found out something she never saw coming: the God she was afraid would condemn her was the God who blessed her. The one she feared would reject her called her daughter. The moment she was sure would humiliate her was the moment that gave her back her dignity, in front of everybody.

Maybe that’s the courage we’re being invited into. The courage to believe grace is actually grace. That we don’t have to earn our belovedness which, if we’re honest, is the hardest one on the list, because earning is the only currency some of us know how to spend. The courage to believe the voice of condemnation rattling around in your head at 3 a.m. is not, in fact, the voice of God. And the courage to reach out and find there’s a hand already reaching back.

Take heart, daughter. Take heart, child of God. Take heart, beloved.

Whatever’s happened. Whatever you’ve carried all this way. Whatever you’ve been told, and whatever name this world has handed you . . . go back and remember the first word. Good. Beloved. Blessed.

And then reach. Because sometimes the most courageous thing any of us ever does is reach toward the One who’s been reaching toward us the whole time.

She expected a beat-down. She got a blessing. And church, so can we.

So take heart, daughters and sons of God: God shows up, God goes with, God sees, God surrounds, God proves able, God responds. And before you ever did one thing to deserve it: God blesses.

Amen