21st (24th) Sunday Sermon Luke 8:41-56 2024/11/17 Osaka Church
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
There was a woman who had been suffering from a disease that caused her menstrual bleeding to not stop for 12 years. The discomfort was unbearable. With such a body, she could not go out. She had no choice but to stay at home. And the blood that flowed out gradually drained her strength. She was always tired. But what she suffered from more than anything was the awareness that she was “unclean.” According to the state of something leaking from the body is “unclean,” and if you touch someone in that state, you will also be unclean. Her pain is unimaginable to modern people who have lost their sense of holiness. Wanting to somehow cure her… if she heard of a good medicine, she tried it, and if she heard of a good doctor, she called them, but she did not get better, and in the end she spent all her money on medicine and treatment.
One day, there was a sudden commotion outside her house. Jesus of Nazareth, who was renowned for having performed many miraculous healings, was being led to the house by a father who had clung to him, begging him to help his dying daughter. The woman made up her mind up and left the house. Pushing her way through the crowd of people, she finally crept up behind Jesus. She then briefly touched the tassel of Jesus’ garment. The thought that an unclean person like her could not even stand before such a holy person, much less cling to him, made her hide, but her desire to be healed made her reach out for the garment.
The woman’s blood stopped at that moment. Jesus was not defiled. On the contrary, Jesus cleansed the unclean woman’s impurity.
We live in a world in which impurity continues to defile those who come into contact with it. Sin invites sin, which invites even greater sin, and the sin of all humanity only deepens. Adam and Eve’s sin was merely a nibble. However, today people even kill each other in the name of God. This “sin of man” pollutes the world one after another, and those who are born into that filth have no choice but to be born stained with that filth. For the first time, a reversal has occurred in this horrible cycle in which filth pollutes everything it touches. Christ’s purity has cleansed the filth of people.
Christ is God. He is not one who can be polluted by nature. He is one who purifies those who come into contact with him. It is impossible for the Son of God, who once declared to the Hebrew people after they escaped from Egypt, “Be ye holy, for I am holy.”
And yet, that very man, Christ, was polluted. He was attacked and bound by the people, who were outraged that Christ had not brought about any good in “this world.” He was betrayed even by his own disciples and fled. He was unjustly judged by the religious leaders, whose hypocrisy and evil were exposed by His light. He was insulted and mocked by the people who flocked to him out of sheer curiosity. He was flogged by soldiers who had no particular hatred for Christ, but had no sympathy for him. He was nailed to a cross, stabbed with a spear, and killed. The Pure One, was defiled and continues to be defiled by defiled people, by this defiled world, and even now by us.
But even so, this world could not defile Christ. This world could not defeat Christ. On the third day, the Lord was resurrected. He ascended to heaven with a glorious body. And as his body, the Church, he continues to purify us with the grace of the Holy Spirit that overflows there. And we who have been purified are urged to purify this world, which “groans” and “awaits the appearing of the sons of God.” We are at the forefront of the chain of purification that began with the woman with the flow of blood.
The woman with the issue of blood crept up behind and touched the Lord’s garments, but now we approach Christ directly and drink of his body and blood.