By Denise Griebler. Part of a continuing series on badass women in the bible.

“If I could but touch the hem of his garment.
If I could but touch a part of his robe
I know I’d be healed, my sins all forgiven.
If I could but touch him I know I’d be whole.”
– the chorus of a gospel song by Rev. George A Rice

Matthew 9:18-25; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:41-56

The story goes that while Jesus was walking through a crowd, she touched him and was restored to herself.  Imagine that gutsy move.

She’d been hemorrhaging for twelve years.  Her search for a cure had bled her of everything she had and after all that, her condition was worse not better.  Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza says through this woman we glimpse of  the impoverishment of the permanently ill.  And she didn’t just suffer an incurable illness, but she was also permanently unclean and impure.  Whomever she touched would also be made unclean.  Imagine 12 years of untouched isolation. Continue reading “The Woman with an Issue of Blood” →