Covenant Presbyterian Church

I often recognize myself in those unnamed miserables with whom Jesus came into contact in his earthly ministry: the blind, the lepers, the lame, the prostitutes, and the otherwise socially outcast. In each of these encounters, I see my fallen condition portrayed: sick, filthy, helpless, despairing, hopeless, with inner contagion producing a host of diseases. From the Gospels, we learn that Jesus constantly interacted with the dregs of society. His daily ministry focused upon them, for he did not come to seek and save those who thought they were well but those who knew they were sick and needed a physician. Their very real misery is a portrait of the overall human condition as a result of our sin and alienation from God. Only Jesus can heal us, bring us back to God, and restore our hope. Though these were real historical encounters followed by real miracles of healing and salvation, they are no doubt intended by the Holy Spirit to lead us to see more clearly our true condition and to seek the Great Physician in every hour of our lives. However we might view Jesus’ ministry to them as a call to us to help the poor, sick, and struggling of this world, its primary purpose is to teach us to cry out after Jesus Christ, the only Savior, for sight, cleansing, and meaning. Outside of him, all is darkness and despair.

There was a woman of Galilee who had been sick for twelve years. She and her disease are unnamed, but her "issue of blood" made her socially isolated, for she was ceremonially unclean. This feminine malady had also impoverished her; her doctors had been many and equally unable to cure her. She was confined, deeply embarrassed, and intensely hopeless. Then Jesus came into her town. Word had traveled throughout the region of a wonderful Teacher who went about doing good, healing, and preaching the arrival of the kingdom of God. We cannot imagine that her forced retreat from society removed all human contact from her. News reached her of his approach. The gathering crowds told her of his arrival. A small flicker of hope entered her despairing soul.

She determined to go to Jesus in the midst of the crowd. Perhaps she was too embarrassed to seek a private audience. If she could only touch him, even the hem of his garment, she thought to herself, I will be healed. There was faith in her, as Jesus soon recognized - not superstition, as if Jesus was a magician or charismatic wonderworker - faith that the things she had heard of Jesus were true, that he was the Messiah of God. Jesus would recognize and commend no other kind of faith. The crowds were pressing. Jesus was stopped in his progress by Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, whose only daughter was dying. Here was her chance. She came up behind him. In a large crowd, this likely left her one option: stooping and crawling. It is unthinkable that she would have the boldness or strength to push aside or squeeze through the hundreds of bodies that stood between her and hope.

Already crushed under the weight of suffering, she began maneuvering to touch Jesus’ hem. She reached out and touched him. Words cannot describe the surge of hope and joy that engulfed her as her disease was swept away by the power of Jesus. What friends, doctors, and counselors were unable to accomplish, Jesus did for her in a moment. But Jesus stops. He has felt virtue or power go out from him. "Who touched me?" Peter is incredulous. "Everyone is touching you," he says in effect, "for we are surrounded by people." "No, who touched me?" Jesus, it may be surmised, knew exactly who had touched him. He also knew that the woman’s cure would be incomplete if she simply slunk away. She crawled to him; she must not crawl away from him. "I did," came a trembling voice. She fell at his feet and confessed everything - her condition and her cure. "Daughter," Jesus addressed her with love and tenderness, be of good comfort, your faith has made you whole; go in peace."

Jesus knew that her healing required more than the removal of disease or sickness. In fact, we can be very healthy outwardly and very sick inwardly. Inward disease is far more serious and ravaging than any physical disease can ever be. One can only imagine what years of isolation and frustration had done to this woman, the deep embarrassment she constantly carried with her, the fear of ostracism, the sense of God’s heavy hand upon her. These had to be removed. Without surgery upon these, she may as well return home unhealed. Hence, Jesus forced this woman to tell her story in front of her own townspeople. She must confess Jesus, not only to be restored to them but also to be restored to herself. Jesus would effect a complete cure; confession is the only way. She went away delivered from disease, but, more importantly, the Lord raised her from crawling to confessing him, from isolation to community.

Obviously, I have never had this particular disease, and cannot. But I share this woman’s inner disease: sins that I carry with me from whom no earthly physician can deliver me. I have guilt that drives me inward, fear that isolates, despair that paralyzes. We all do. It takes different forms, to be sure, for sin is a hydra; its tentacles are tenacious, sucking the life out of us. We are living dead men. Until I recognize this - my true condition, not what others think of me, what the world says to convince me otherwise - I will never crawl to Jesus. The first step in my cure is honesty about my condition, that I am inwardly miserable, have an indelible sense of alienation from God, and am afflicted by an inner contagion that is wholly beyond the ability of man to cure.

There is then the issue of crawling to Jesus. Too often we receive little if any virtue from our Physician because we come halfheartedly. A preacher has told us we must come, so we do. Or a spiritual guru has told us how good Jesus will make us feel, so we giddily skip and frolic over to Jesus, as if he is another ride at the amusement park. We cannot be cured unless we crawl in faith, and we will not crawl in faith unless we are convinced of our true condition and of his power and willingness to help. In other words, we must come with an overwhelming sense of our neediness, a neediness that is just as deep and sharp as the woman who crawled to Jesus. Jesus does not help the self-sufficient; those who think they are well have no need of a physician. O, they may go for a yearly checkup, but this is usually just to make them feel better, for the doctor to confirm their health. Jesus does not confirm our health; he exposes our disease. Until we feel it, however, until we have seen the majesty and holiness of God, the depravity of our nature, and the hopelessness of all halfway cures, we will never crawl to Jesus.

And when we crawl, it must be in faith. Our lowness is only matched and surpassed by his highness. He is the Son of God and Savior of sinners. All power in heaven and earth is his. He is our Shepherd, our Comforter through the Holy Spirit, our mighty Deliverer from sin’s ravages, and our Cornerstone who gives stability when all of life seems to be crashing around us. We must believe that he is able and willing to help us. Sometimes this help is tangible, as in health, material blessings, and family restoration. At other times, but equally real and more necessary, his help comes with a clearer vision of his sufficiency, his glory, and his power. In the light of his brilliance, whatever our malady, all is calm and bright. He is on the throne. He will only reward the crawling of those who recognize this, who are done with their insipid feelings of self-sufficiency, the world’s dissatisfying offerings, and the aid of man. They look to Jesus alone. They reach out to him. If I can only touch him, faith says, all will be well. We can only touch him by faith, which is the reason our lives must be saturated with his word. We can have none of Jesus unless we believe that he is who the Gospels proclaim him to be. We can have none of Jesus unless we believe ourselves to be who the Gospels tell us we are - sick, needy, and hopeless without him.

But there is one more step if our cure is to be complete. In our present culture, there is a persistent demand for everyone to be accepted as he is, to be considered normal, basically in good shape. We hide our blemishes, radically alter our body shapes, and live under the delusion of wealth, which is really nothing but living on extended credit beyond our actual means. We want our religion to make us feel good about ourselves, about what we are doing, that our way of doings is acceptable. In other words, every man does what is right in his own eyes, which is just another way of hiding - from the truth about ourselves and about God. It will not do for us to obtain a few blessings from Jesus, keep them secret, and then push ahead without confessing that every good we have comes from him. Jesus, in our culture, is just another one of the easy remedies many doctors prescribe; they address the symptoms but never descend to the root disease. The Great Physician does. This woman had to confess everything; only then could she be truly freed and healed. She had to be honest. There are no secrets in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Each one of us is a member by grace alone, and each of us teems with various sins. Our commonality lies in the fact that we have all been healed by Jesus. And we must confess this. It keeps us humble. It forces us to be honest. Confession purges away the delusion of self-sufficiency, that we can have Jesus and still maintain our way of life, our image. Our only image is Christ. Our only hope is to be remade into his image. He alone has healed us, and we must therefore be done with the attempt to deceive others, to make them think that we are anything other than men and women who were diseased but who are now healed. This is the confession we must make. Without it, we are nothing better than the Pharisees and the multitudes that enjoyed being healed but later shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion. We want Jesus on our terms. He comes on one term: that we recognize our inability to deal with the ravages of sin, crawl to him in faith, and confess that cure before men.

I feel in many ways that I am still crawling to Jesus. Each new day discovers my own "issue of blood," the many dark recesses of my heart that contain a host of demons. I have learned, however, that all earthly physicians are of little avail. The world cannot help me at all; its entertainments and diversions are anti-medicines. If I take them, the disease only grows, as do the darkness, despair, and depression. I must crawl to Jesus. He is my physician not for one time or experience only but for each day. I have need of constant crawling, for I am constantly tormented by sin without him. I have found him to be the Great Physician. His word enters into every recess, confronts every disease. He heals. By faith, I hear his welcome voice: "Be of good cheer; go in peace. I have healed you." I look forward to the day when I can, body and soul, fall down before him, touch the hem of his garment, and confess my cure before heaven and earth. No more crawling - only standing before the unmediated brilliance of his love and tenderness, clothed with his righteousness, fully cured, always confessing.