Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost; Tone 7; Our Holy Fathers Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, and Gregory, Bishop of Agrigentum.
Post-feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God. Nativity Fast. Resurrection Gospel 2.
Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 8:41-56.
Read Luke 8:41-56
A personal boundary is a limit that defines us as separate from others. Healthy boundaries are necessary for the mutual respecting of persons. We all experience the feeling of violation when someone crosses the line with us. God has the healthiest boundaries of any being in existence. His love is pure; his holiness is uncompromised. How we can be in relationship with such a One is the story of our salvation.
Jesus had his boundaries crossed in today’s gospel. Not by, as Peter said, the crowd pressing in upon him. The woman who touched him, “having a flow of blood for twelve years,” was ritually impure – “unclean” – and could not enter the court of women at the temple. By touching someone, that person too would normally be rendered ritually impure. Instead, contact with Jesus healed the source of her ritual impurity.
Exodus 29:37 says that “whatever touches the altar shall become holy.” Just like the alter did nothing willful to sanctify objects coming into contact with it, the body of Jesus – “the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24) – without Jesus’s knowledge, involuntarily healed the woman of the cause of her ritual impurity. Conversely, Jesus did want to heal people in his hometown but could not because of their lack of faith. (Mark 6:1-6)
When Jesus said to the woman, “your faith has made you well,” he meant her faith in him. He is the “door” through which we may enter through God’s boundaries. (John 10:9) God’s love and holiness are undiminished by us entering into contact with him through Jesus. Rather, we are healed.