Overcomer for the OVERLOOKED: The hurting
Mark 5:24-34 | Jesus went with him [Jairus], and all the people followed, crowding around him. A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition.
Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her, came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace. Your suffering is over.”
Who in today’s passage was overlooked?
How had the woman been suffering?
Beyond her physical suffering, the woman’s blood issue would have deemed her ‘unclean’ among Jewish people and kept her from worship, friends, and everyday life. She also had no money left and no hope. In light of this, how else was she suffering?
Jesus could have let the woman be healed without drawing attention to it. Why do you think he publicly acknowledges what happened?
How would this have impacted the woman?
How would this have impacted the witnesses?
In today’s society or at your school, work, church, etc., who is treated like the woman with the blood issue was (overlooked and excluded because of their cleanliness, health, weakness, poverty, etc.)?
How would Jesus treat this person?
How can you apply what you learned from Jesus’ treatment of the woman in Mark 5 to your treatment of these people?