Do we have someone who loves us enough to care for us, even when we are not doing well?
We tend to see ourselves as machines, and the doctors as the repairmen for these bodies. We still have ways to go if we want to have a ‘holistic’ approach to our health, learning how our 'inner' life and our 'outer' bodies are intimately connected.
The truth is, our major health problem is that we want to do whatever we want, and then ask a doctor to fix it without making any comment on how we have handled our body in the meantime.
Our real disease is deeper and yet simpler. We are trying to control our outside world without God. We do what we want, without first learning to align our will with God’s will, without letting God tell us what are his better plans of love, without listening to Him. For the fools, their own plans always taste the best. And in this domain, we are quite a large group of fools.
When it comes to our bodies, we don’t have control over them, and often look for someone to fix this. The doctors then become our little gods, that we will obey completely, as long as they don’t ask us too personal questions - often the real questions that would bring the real answers and more long-lasting healing.
In some western countries like France, we can go to the doctor today without paying a cent, which looks like divine generosity, but can become sheer foolishness. My father worked in France, in the 1980s, as a doctor for the social security, proposing to the state reimbursement policies. When the proposal to have free health care came, he fought against it, arguing that even a very small amount paid for each doctor appointment would help avoid people coming without real need. Like many, his advice was not welcomed and the advent of free medecine came to France.
In such countries, doctors end up with many people who don’t really need them, and can’t help first those who are in real need. Queues are longer, taxes are higher, and medicine then becomes a very imperfect idol that hides deeper problems. If doctors are very good helpers, they are very poor gods.
Today we read the story of this poor woman, who went to the doctors when she had this very problematic flow of blood, a flow that prevented her from even eating with family, according to jewish purity laws.
She gave all her money to doctors, yet she felt rather worse. Then, better than these doctors, she heard about what was happening to people touching Jesus and regained some hope. She wanted to have her flow of blood fixed, and did get healed when she touched Jesus. It seemed that for her the story of her suffering was over.
Yet, Jesus had much better in store for her, a more long-lasting healing.
He had been contacted by Jairus, the father of a very sick little girl, who was very concerned for his daughter.
The woman with the flow of blood had nobody caring for her, she had only doctors as long as she had money, but nobody else. When Jesus searched for her in the crowd, when he found her, it was for a purpose. Jesus was there to invite us in healthy relationships, first and foremost in a healthy relationship with the loving Heavenly Father.
Jesus' first word to the healed woman was: daughter. She, who had nobody caring for her, found in Jesus someone who cared for her, showing a gracious fatherly love. Then, Jesus praised her faith, rather than his miraculous power, and spoke words of love. "Your faith has healed you, go in peace."
This peace, shalom in Hebrew, was not about the absence of war but rather a harmonious relationship with others. With this healing, with this encouragement of Jesus, this woman was encouraged to find again peaceful relationships, as she could again be welcomed in the community. Her physical impurity was removed, she could now have a harmonious life, she could be loved an love again.
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