WOMEN ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN RELIGION.

Now, with our new awareness of the prevailing attitudes about women that play into the Gospel stories, we can get closer to the truth in passages such as Matthew 9:20-22. This passage tells the story of Jesus healing the woman with the issue of blood. Because of her condition, she was considered unclean. Can you image the awful sense of hopelessness, rejection, and alienation she had been feeling? Sick. Weak. Depressed. Useless.Hopeless. Rejected. Yet, this woman’s determination to press through the crowd to touch Jesus personally says much about her belief that He is different from the religious leaders—that He really cares about HER! Her courage gives us the sense that she believes that He accepts her and that He can and will heal her. He can and will meet HER need. Such expectation could not possibly have arisen in a vacuum! She had become aware of Jesus, probably through reports from others, and perhaps from seeing Him with her own eyes on previous occasions. She saw love that vanquished rejection. She felt faith that drove out the fear that had bound her. Blazing hope burned up the hopelessness and despair. She had met Jesus, and He had changed everything! It is important to recognize that this story is not just about Jesus healing someone; it is about Jesus healing a woman. It is about the circumstances in which He healed her. It is about Jesus’ confrontation with the religious leaders, and how He offended them personally by breaking their sacred laws— to help a woman! In all of this, He showed that one woman is more valuable than sacred rules and religious rituals. Beyond this, however, we can learn from what Jesus did not do when He healed this ‚unclean‛ woman. He didn’t attempt to diagnose the cause of her hemorrhage. He didn’t tell her she was sick because of some personal sin. He didn’t connect the cause of her sickness to authority issues by telling her to submit to her husband or to a religious leader. In fact, Jesus didn’t probe for the cause of the sickness! He just healed her! And He did so with the same compassion and simplicity with which He healed men, such as blind Bartimaeus. We learn more about Jesus’ attitude through a couple of things He did that were socially unacceptable in this situation. By speaking to this woman in public, Jesus risked rejection or worse, because that gesture was socially unacceptable. By allowing this ‚unclean‛ woman to touch Him, Jesus was allowing something that made him ritually unclean, according to Leviticus 15:19, 25-27. Jesus did not heal this woman based on religious rules or for personal gain. He did it for HER! He disregarded laws and shattered opinions to help HER. In so doing, He demonstrated God’s values and priorities—and He showed that, in God’s Heart, a woman is far more important than religion. How much are we like Jesus?