Ministry that Draws

While he spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live... And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment (Matthew 9:18 & 20)

Here we have an episode of two daughters: one dead and one dying. But Jesus is the God of wholeness and resurrection. Jesus is the answer to whatever ails us; He will give life to the dead and wholeness to the hurting. The paradox here is that the faithful will follow Jesus; and consequently, Jesus will follow the faithful. He will follow the faithful …to his home …to his job …to his community …to his church. Here the ruler, the dead girl’s father, came to Jesus not with doubtful request but with faithful admission, confession, acknowledgment, recognition; “My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.” This was not a commanding of the person of Christ, but a commendation of the power of Christ: “I know what will be so, if You will to do so.”

In the mist of Jesus’ journey to this faithful politician’s home he is touched by a faithful commoner, a woman with a lineage problem, an issue of blood, she’d been battling with for 12 long years… no open confession or outward vocalization, as popular theology claims to be essential to the formula, but speaking in herself… motivation in her heart… resignation in her mind… determination in her body.

And that is the point: this Christological ministry is characterized by its drawing power; it will draw rulers and regular folk. What a comparison made in this passage: On one hand, a politician, a man of nobility, somebody in the community; on the other hand, a common woman. And perhaps “common” or “regular” is my extreme overreaching for alliteration. She is in all likelihood less than common, at the very least due to her issue of blood, of which the number 12 indicates symbolically that the curse was inherited. Literally, for 12 year she was shunned by peers and ousted from the community; she was considered unclean. While the ruler came to Jesus in some sense standing, this woman actually came crawling. And in my years of hearing about this woman in countless sermons, I have heard all sorts of mystical meanings poured into the significance of the “Hem of His Garment”. However, it is apparent that the touching of the hem points not to Jesus, but to the lowliness of this woman, her dyer condition, and her utter rejection by the masses. The ruler could get to Jesus face to face; crowd and all, yet who would make room for this defiled woman? What right does she have to an audience with Jesus? Yet the contrast is just that, Jesus was not too busy helping somebody to stop and help nobody; because, nobody to men is still somebody to Him.

Often the lofty believe that the lowly is not Jesus’ kind of people and the lowly thinks their condition automatically puts them in the way of God’s grace and mercy. This passage says neither is true. Such determination is God's business alone and our business is to lift Jesus up and receive whosoever He draws. God is respecter not of persons but of the faithful; that is the common denominator here that merited the reward of God. Christological ministry draws the rich and poor, the lofty and lowly, the Jew and the Gentile, the bond and the free, men and women, the rulers and the regulars. God is a rewarder of any and all who faithfully seek him.