Jesus, it’s like this. Some of us have to dirty our hands, pollute ourselves just to survive out here. If we don’t link up with folks who aren’t exactly saints, we get trampled on as ones who have no strength, no pull, no influence, no voice, nothing. So here’s the question: what do you bring to the table that flips, changes all that? How can following you make life good in some way?

Good question. A real good question. The world almost seems structured to either eat or get eaten, kill or be killed. Some win just by taking it all. Others get strangled in a chokehold until they drop.

And Jesus? People watched him through that same lens, this perspective. And it wasn’t just a small group that kept a scope on him.

Some worshipped him while some decried, dragged his name through mud. Some believed him even as others rejected and rolled their eyes when he spoke. Some praised him and most just stood around like, “Whatever,” passively ignoring him. But wherever Jesus went, a crowd was either very near or not far behind.

Questioned Power

They watched him nonstop, no getting away from it. On the one hand, they knew an oppressive regime led by narcistic and paranoid leaders, the kind that would strip your rights just to feed their ego. On the other, they had no recourse for even their own leaders controlled with laws that kept them under religious thumbs. The crowds, the rich, poor, political, apolitical, diverse in background and status, looked to see if Jesus had it in his power to offer them anything better than this mess.

Exchange of Power

If so, he sure didn’t flex it the way people expected. He picked as his deputies the most unqualified ever to lead a spiritual movement, and Matthew was one deep in the game, tarnished. This Jew, despite his heritage and religious tradition, profited by cooperating with the Romans by collecting toll taxes on any trade moving through the region. Not only did these tax collectors rob their own people of fair opportunity in commerce, but they helped line the hated Palestinian tetrarch pockets. And if they demanded more money than the authorities required, that was just extra for themselves. If you didn’t care about loyalty to your tribe or had a moral conscience to impede the practice, you could get rich real quick. Knowing the likes of his kind, Jesus stepped into Matthew’s office, directly saying, “Come, be my disciple.” To anyone’s amazement, Matthew just gets up. Leaves the bag behind. Follows.

You’d expect from here on out there would be a holy procession, fancy robes and angel choirs. Those anticipating it were disappointed. Instead, Matthew has a Jesus-party to which he invites every tax hustler and street-level “notorious sinner” he knows. (We’ll leave the specifics of “notorious” to your own imagination.) The religious leaders lost their minds. Eat with scum? You must be scum. Birds of a feather sin together. Discredit this hero, and the crowds will go home.

Not so fast. If you have a problem with holier-than-thou attitudes, stop reading now. Jesus fires back, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.” Then he throws their own holy texts back at them. “Learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to be merciful; I don’t want your sacrifices.’” (Hosea 6:6)

Back up a minute. While Jesus didn’t call out Matthew and his friends for their failures, he does tell these religious leaders what their problem was. God wants hearts, not performance. In their exclusive attitudes of with whom to socialize, that is, only of their own kind, he denigrated their rituals by which they held their prideful self-esteem. What’s more, it was beneath them to offer what God would offer any who come and repent, any who leave one life for another, any who would like Matthew walk away from the good life to a better life.

He then dropped a hammer. “For I have come to call sinners,” Jesus says, “not those who think they are already good enough.” His call lay in a life of acceptance by forgiveness in the God-love of who you are now for what you will become in disciple-life.

Empty Power

Desperation though can crack even hardened minds. And changed thinking can make all the difference. A leader of the local synagogue, no less, comes begging for a saving miracle for his little daughter. Possibly he was so desperate because she was his only child. Having sons would have made her loss less significant. He pleads, “My daughter has just died, but you can bring her back to life again if you just come and lay your hand upon her.” Jesus agrees to go. Crowds press in.

But hidden within that crowd was another female, older, exhausted, for the most part, one who knew a living death. For twelve years she suffered with a “hemorrhage,” a menstrual period that would not end. She was a walking “unclean” label, cut off from community, from worship, from touch, from life. Likely covered and heavily veiled, she sneaked up behind him and “touched the fringe of his robe, for she thought, ‘If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.’”

On one hand, you would think she didn’t have much to lose at this point. But she did. By her very presence there, she had made virtually an entire crowd, and specifically Jesus, unclean. Every Jew knew that the law of Leviticus was strict in delineating how a woman was made ceremonially unclean with each menstrual period. Not only that, but anyone touching her or that which she touched, even if one sat on a bed where she had been, would be infected by her uncleanliness. Having done that, one had to bathe, wash clothes, and would be considered defiled until evening. Washing and bathing were no easy tasks given that water often had to be carried, so this in effect isolated her for several days. Then she had to wait another seven days.

Finally considered ceremonially clean, she had to present herself to the priest with two offerings, one a sin offering and another a burnt offering. “In this way, the priest will make atonement for her before the Lord for her menstrual discharge.” (Leviticus 15:19-30 NLT)

Bad enough she was socially isolated for likely two weeks at a time, but also there was implication that she was sinful for having a period. Under such circumstances, women were subjected to lives lonely and dependent on the rigors of the law. There was no way to protest but only endure.

This was her danger. She’s risking everything. Should any in the crowd press against him, they may also press upon her. Would her need for deliverance from this illness matter to the crowd as much as what she had done to them? Her healing could mean her death if Jesus called her out.

Instead, Jesus stops. He turns. He sees her. Jesus did not seem to care about ritual cleanliness. He calls her, “Daughter.” He affirms her efforts and desire to be made whole by saying, “Be encouraged. Your faith has made you well.” She’s healed on the spot.

Later, among those who laughed at Jesus’ claim that the official’s little girl is not dead but asleep, he uses the power of God by taking her hand to restore her to life as well. In one day, Jesus bestowed a God-power on two females who could have been written off and forgotten by all around her.

Power Reversal

Jesus tied her story to the synagogue leader’s daughter, one young, one grown,

both written off by society in different ways. “Daughter,” he says, and all females, young girls and mature women, are touched in that place which distinguishes them as feminine. By faith, women are raised up, healed of whatever life gives, and restored by a reversal of power and healing that is only of God. He shows that God’s power doesn’t play favorites even as the world often doesn’t see them at all.

Power Transferred

This is what Jesus does. He flips power. Power transferred is power that reverses, raises, and restores the ones everybody else steps over. We’ve seen it here for a despised man, a little girl, and a sick woman. It’s a power known in healing that comes in more than a physical sense. It is the kind of power that redeems and restores any who in life will leave and follow Jesus. It is power just by his touch raising precious life when others see no hope. And it is power found even when all you’ve got left is a fingertip’s worth of faith reaching for the fringe of his robe.

And the crowd?

They carried that story everywhere.

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

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The Trouble with Jesus: Considerations Before You Walk Away by Constance Hastings

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