Sometimes, we’re afraid to approach God.
We’re afraid to pray, go to confession, or approach for communion.
Perhaps we haven’t fasted, or we’re embarrassed by our sins. Or, perhaps, we just don’t feel worthy of God’s love.
This is common, many people feel this way.
In Jesus’s day, people thought that if you were a sinner, if you weren’t ritually clean, then you could spread your “disease” to others.
They thought that unholiness would undo holiness.
This is why it was a big deal that the woman with the flow of blood touched Jesus.
By Jewish ritual code, she should have made Jesus unclean.
But, something strange happens.
Instead of Jesus becoming unclean, his holiness spreads to the woman and she is made well.
She’s saved.
This story is our encouragement.
Even if we don’t feel worthy, we should still reach out to God.
He’s gifted us with his presence, not so that we can admire him from afar, but so that we can embrace him and allow him to make us well.
By going to communion, even when we don’t feel worthy, is how we find salvation.
It’s how we exercise our faith and become one with God.
The Reading
And he went with him. And a large crowd followed him, and pressed in upon him. And a woman enduring a flow of blood for twelve years, And suffering many things under many physicians, and having spent everything she had, and having gained nothing but rather having become worse, Hearing things about Jesus, came up behind in the crowd and touched his mantle. For she said: “If I may touch even his mantle I shall be healed.” And immediately the fountain of her blood dried up, and she knew in her body that she was cured of her affliction. And immediately Jesus, recognizing in himself the power going forth from him, turning in the crowd, said, “Who touched my mantle?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in upon you and you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see the woman who had done this. And the woman, afraid and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you; go in peace and be healed of your affliction.” (Mark 5:24-34)