Issue of Blood - Matt 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:42-48

After Jarius asks Jesus to heal his daughter, they are walking to his house when “a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse.” This is a situation that I feel only a woman can fully understand, and me especially because of what I do for work. I am a sonographer, meaning that I do ultrasounds on women all day long who have been bleeding non-stop, sometimes just spotting, sometimes like a waterfall. These women come in sick and anemic from blood loss and I often reference this account saying that I totally understand how this poor woman could be bleeding for 12 years back in the day that there was no effective medical treatment for it. My heart breaks for her because of the awful physical state that she finds herself in, sick to the point of incapacitation, and desperate, and now poor because she spent all her money on doctors. Then we have to factor in the ancient Hebrew culture of women being unclean when they were bleeding, and not only was she physically unwell and going broke, but she also would have been a social outcast, not being allowed to go to the synagogue. I think I’ve mentioned before that I used to have harsh feelings toward this policy until I took a Hawaiian studies class in college where I learned that the ancient Hawaiians also had a policy of women being unclean when they were menstruating and therefore had to leave their homes and go to another place to stay during that time. That concept sounds very oppressive and demeaning but the way that my professor explained it was, “what do you want to do while you’re on your period? Nothing, you want to rest and relax. When these women would go away to these places because their period made them unclean, they were there with friends, no children, no household responsibilities, no cooking, no cleaning, and no taking care of their husbands, with their families making and bringing their food. Sounds like a dream come true. I can only imagine my ancestors saying, ‘tell your father, one more day.’” This completely changed my perspective on menstruating women being “unclean,” because my professor also explained, “if you tell a man that you are on your period and want to rest, they won’t respect that. But if the religious leader tells the man that they can become contaminated by interacting with you while you’re on your period, by eating the food that you made, wearing the clothes that you washed, then that man will view you as unclean and will carry on the house hold chores without you, while you go to your place of rest.”

If we believe that Jesus is the champion of all women, then looking at it from that perspective, why would Jehovah tell men that menstruating women were unclean and shouldn’t be allowed to cook, clean, perform labor or be sexually active during that time? This reminds me of the part in the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where the women are trying to figure out how to convince the man of something and make him think that it was his idea, and the one woman says, “yes, the man is the head of the family, but the woman is the neck and she can turn the head however she wants.” If we want women to be able to rest while they are on their periods, and we know that most men won’t care enough about the women to grant them that, how do we make it so that the women can rest and the men won’t hassle them? Tell the men that the women are unclean during that time and that the men can become unclean by interacting with them. Sounds pretty legit to me. But of course in the case of this poor woman, it’s not an exact science and can go wrong sometimes.

This woman who has been sick and bleeding for 12 years, “when she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be made whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague. And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said Who touched my clothes? And his disciples said unto him, thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou, who touched me? And he looked round about to see her that had done this thing. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in her, came and fell down before him, and told him all the truth. And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.” The IM comments that this second miracle recounted in the middle of the first miracle (Jairus’s daughter) might be put that way on purpose by Mark to help us see that both Jairus, in his elevated social wealth and position needed the Savior just as much as the outcast woman with little means. The IM says, “The two miracles together show that the Savior’s compassion and power to heal are extending to all, regardless of social standing.”

I had the same attitude as the disciples when Jesus asked who touched him, I thought, “why does it matter who touched you and was healed, why do you have to say something? Why can’t you just let her go in peace?” The IM tells us exactly why Jesus stopped to say something saying, “The Savior’s response helped the woman and others present avoid the misconception that the miracle had resulted from any miraculous power in His garment itself- ‘Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole.’” People get caught up in sacred objects, and I think that this is part of our superstitious nature. We think that it’s too difficult to keep the commandments, so we want to get the same result without doing the same work. So we’ll ascribe the power of God to a physical object and spend a lifetime in pursuit of that instead of a pursuit of righteousness. The IM also notes that Jesus’ statement “also declared to the woman’s neighbors and the townspeople that she was now healed and no longer subject to the social and religious exclusions that had been imposed upon her for so many years. God’s power can restore both purity and wholeness.”

I had also never understood the Savior’s meaning of “virtue” that had gone out of him, I thought that virtue was a trait that you possessed in who you are and couldn’t be taken away. The IM explains, “In the original Greek text of the New Testament, the word corresponding to virtue is dunamis, which means ‘power’ or ‘strength.’” The IM also tells of an account in which Joseph Smith was blessing children, which weakened and fatigued him. Referring to the virtue that left Jesus when the women touched him, Joseph Smith said, “The virtue here referred to is the spirit of life; and a man who exercises great faith in administering to the sick, blessing little children, or confirming, is liable to become weakened.”