He Gets Us: Questions Jesus Asked | Plan 3Sample

Who Touched Me?

That you can be lonely in a crowd is something we don’t expect. We join a crowd to be with people, yet loneliness can make us aware of an emptiness that people can’t fill.

There was a time when Jesus drew a crowd wherever he went—mostly because people hollered for him to do a rabbit-out-of-a-hat kind of trick. Instead, Jesus wanted them to listen and believe him.

On a day when someone was pulling Jesus away from the crowd to help his sick daughter, there was a woman in the crowd who had been sick for 12 years. She had some kind of incurable disease and was willing to do anything to feel better. No doctor could help her; she’d been to them all. Nobody wants to be around you when you’re sick. There’s a loneliness that makes itself at home with those who are chronically ill.

But this culture took that loneliness deeper. They called a sick person, “unclean.” You weren’t allowed to touch anyone or be touched. You couldn’t live in your home or eat meals with your family. She had lived apart from everyone she loved for over a decade.

On that day she sat on the curb, exhausted, humiliated, and forgotten.

And that’s when Jesus walked by.

All she did was reach out and grab the fringes of Jesus’ prayer shawl. Immediately her body flooded with colorful, electric life. Surprised, Jesus whirled around and said quickly, “Who touched me?”

When he saw her, he paused and smiled. “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

Did you hear that? He called her daughter. It had been a lifetime since anyone spoke so tenderly to her. And he wished her shalom—that wholeness of life she had lost for so long, and maybe never had.

It was only a moment in time, but she was not alone anymore. Not invisible and lost in the crowd, not alone in her pain. Jesus touched that empty space in her and made it whole.