The stories from the gospels for today are two examples of Jesus honoring as models of faith and practice women who advocate for their needs despite their lack of formal power, and despite the fact that their very bodies and well-being are at the mercy those in power.          

These stories just dropped into my heart on Monday when I had space to do one of my spiritual practices, which is running as an act of prayer. I run and use my breath as an evocation of God, and this often helps me catch up with my heart and body and soul and receive from God what I need to receive. This past Monday when I finally went on a run, I hadn’t had a chance to catch up with my heart and body and soul since the the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision. As I ran and I prayed, my heart cleared and I felt near to my God, and these two gospel stories came to me. 

And what also became clear to me was that I had to take the risk of using the privilege I have of speaking with you during this sacred time to name that this decision is having a monumental impact on our lives, especially the lives of those who can become pregnant; 

I need to name that the divisions within our country and the divisions within our religion, means that for some this decision is the cause of great distress, for others it is the cause of great celebration, and between the two often bitter conflict;

I need to name that because Christianity has been so much at play in the politics of the question of abortion, in a way that does not represent every group of Christians, it is important that we talk about it, as a community of faith, and that we talk about it even though it can be fraught and complex, and that we talk about it in ways that are honest and earnest and prayerful. 

I pray to God for wisdom to guide me and us through this, always centered on God’s grace. 

Let’s being by exploring this first story, about a woman who got healing from Jesus. 

This story itself may bring up discomfort for some or pain – when we give that to Jesus we can find healing. 

The story goes that there was a woman who had suffered an affliction that for some is unmentionable, a mark of shame. It was an affliction that has rendered her unclean for full participation in her people’s life of worship. For twelve years she had had a constant flow of menstrual blood. She had seen all kinds of doctors and healers who were happy to take payment from her, but whatever cures or treatments they gave didn’t help and even made matters worse. This was before the days of evidenced-based regulated medicine – some of these doctors and healers may have been earnest, and some, as we find too often in history, may have just been out to take advantage of a desperate woman with a medical need her society clouds in shame. 

According to the laws of Moses, in our bible, the woman’s chronic condition would have not only made her ritually impure, but would have meant that anyone who touched her would also become ritually impure.   

We don’t know the cause of her affliction. We can speculate about medical conditions. We can speculate about injury. There also seems to be a symbolic dimension to this story: Mark, Matthew, and Luke all tell this story connected with Jesus restoring to life a twelve-year-old girl who had died. The connection is a theme of healing and restoring reproductive power. But it is all within a social contest where women’s bodies and reproduction are very much regulated by male power. 

As someone in a state of chronic ritual impurity this woman would be basically untouchable. In the story it’s conspicuous that she’s out in public without a male relative. That suggests she has been cast out of her family system. As a woman in her society she doesn’t have much power to begin with; it’s clear that she is even more of an outsider and has even less control over her fate. 

Perhaps she was married and then cast off because she couldn’t bear children because of her ailment. 

Perhaps she was married and then cast off because her husband became jealous and suspected her of adultery. Perhaps something worse was done to her. In the book of Numbers in the Hebrew Scriptures, the law says that if a man is jealous of his wife and suspects her of adultery, he is to send her to the priest. The priest then is to concoct a strange potion and pray certain curses on the potion and make her drink it. If she is innocent of adultery, nothing happens. But if she is guilty then the cursed potion causes her “womb to drop,” and, if she is pregnant, the pregnancy miscarries. (Numbers 5:11-27) 

Perhaps that’s what happened to this woman and that cursed concoction did a lot of damage. 

This rule from the book of Numbers is cited as evidence that abortion is in fact condoned in the bible. Now, the woman has no choice in the matter, she’s forced to do it, and that’s a major problem, but still. 

The other law that’s often pointed to is from the laws of Moses in Exodus. In Exodus (Exodus 21:22-25) the laws spells out that if someone attacks a pregnant woman and that attack causes miscarriage, they will be punished with a fine. If that attack causes additional harm to the woman the perpetrator will be punished with equivalent harm done to them – up to the death penalty, if she ends up dying of her wounds. This law indicates that a lost pregnancy is not treated as a lost life. 

Perhaps the woman in the story suffered some kind of violence like this. 

Anyhow, we can only speculate as to the cause of this woman’s affliction. What should be clear is just how little power this woman has, whatever the situation, not only as a woman in her society but as a woman whose physical affliction is in a realm – the female realm – that her society wishes to keep in the shadows and back allies. 

And yet … and yet she insists on her need for healing and wholeness. She takes the initiative to come out into the light and seek out the person of Jesus who holds the promise of mercy and healing. 

I hope it’s clear just how bold she’s being in doing this. She is literally untouchable, and yet, without even asking permission, she reaches out and touches Jesus and takes the healing power she needs. And the healing power that surges through Jesus gives to her of its own accord – it’s indiscriminate, giving to all according to need. 

When he tried to find out who had touched him from the crowd, the woman comes forward, but she is scared that he will be angry with her boldness. Instead he praises it. He welcomes her into his family – she is no longer estranged but is a “Daughter.” And Jesus tells her that it is her faith has made her well. He honors her agency, her bold action led by her “faith”, her “trust,” her “confidence” that if she takes the initiative, God’s healing mercy is hers for the taking.

This is a theme in the stories of Jesus, lifting up the faithful, bold initiative, the prayerful persistence of women who are meant to be silent and passive. Jesus tells the story of a widow – who is someone who has very little power or voice and is quite vulnerable. But this widow is bold in demanding her needs be met. She has some adversary who is trying to take advantage of her. But the local judge refuses to intervene. So, she pesters him and pesters him until he relents and the unjust judge grants the widow justice. Jesus is lifting up this feisty elder lady as an example to all about the persistence of faith. The point Jesus is making is that if those who are disempowered pray and act with such vehemence, God, who is just, unlike the unjust judge, will grant justice. 

Now, what I’ve offered here is a way of understanding these two gospel stories as examples of Jesus honoring as models of faith and practice women who advocate for their needs despite their lack of formal power, and despite the fact that their very bodies and well-being are at the mercy those in power. This is drawing on the theme throughout the Hebrew scriptures of smart and savvy women who find ways to assert their needs and wills despite being denied power, and thereby advancing the story of God’s loving relationship with God’s people. 

But, you don’t have look very hard to find preachers who will interpret these stories very differently to very different ends, and they will point to all of the regulations on women’s behavior in the bible as indicating God’s unchanging will. 

Scripture itself is a contested body. 

We humans have argued about what the words of scripture means for us and for the urgent issues of our day, for millennia. 

What I shared with you about those passages from Exodus and Numbers, that’s the established understanding among Jews of all denominations – Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, Reconstructionist – as well as among many Christian scholars. Evangelical Christians translate the Hebrew of these passages differently to reach a different conclusion. I think Jewish scholars can be trusted to understand their own language. And they’ve been arguing about scriptures for a lot longer than we have, so their agreement means a lot. Still, what scripture says is contested.

What Jewish scholars and many Christian scholar also do is point to passages of the scripture that suggest that someone’s life begins with their first breath. What Evangelical and Catholic and Eastern Orthodox scholars do is point to other passages that suggest someone’s life begins in the womb. This is the kind of philosophical question that you are guaranteed to have earnest disagreement and puzzlement about, and I think we should be able to talk about it together. Our United Church of Christ national synod offered what I think is a thoughtful approach to these questions in a resolution in 1971, which provides a framework for ethical deliberations about difficult reproductive choices while honoring that it should not be legislated. The Episcopalians also offer a detailed ethical framework that honors choice. As so often is the case, theory is one thing, but the complexities of our actual lives are another. 

Scripture itself is a contested body, especially when it comes to issues such as abortion that can be morally complex, and fraught. 

But what is clear to me is that what should not be contested are each-others’ bodies, and everyone’s right to make choices about them, especially choices that will have tremendous impact on their lives. It has taken so much effort over generations for women and girls and others who can become pregnant to not have their bodily autonomy be controlled and legislated. Jesus, as our stories show, in my view, had his part to play in that evolution. 

What Jesus embodied was mercy, holy mercy. As an embodiment of holy mercy, he met people where they were, especially in uncertainty, especially in fear, especially in the fraught complexities of our actual lives, especially in suffering, especially when people are bold enough in faith to take the risk of reaching out in their need. 

May we all feel the embrace of that mercy. However this message of mine is landing for you, I pray for us all to always know we are held by God’s mercy. Thanks be to God. 

(Delivered Sunday, July 3, 2022, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg, at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge)

(Image: “The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow” by John Everett Millais (1829–96), Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported))