Intrinsic Worth

Actually, I've seen this person before. She's not a stranger! I've seen her in others. I've seen her in you and in me. What I've seen is a spirit of DESPERATION. It's controlled desperation! It's subtle, reserved and mostly concealed, but it is DESPERATION none-the-less. "If I but just touch his clothes, just touch... just touch… just touch..." she muttered to herself as she, with quiet determination, squeezed her way through the jostling crowd to get at Jesus.

Twelve years had gone by, and she had been to every doctor, medicine man, faith healer and anybody who held out promise of a cure for her condition. But nobody had an answer. Nobody had a cure. Nobody cared anymore. She was out of money... patience... ideas... control... and she was desperate! Can you picture her in your mind's eye -- chasing after Jesus through the crowded, hot dusty street - on a desperate mission - pressing on, pressing on, pressing on!

I've seen her as I've watch and participated with people over the years struggling with the issues of life -- little things and big things alike -- like this woman, running from one thing to another to try to overcome and defeat whatever issue it is that's shaking life at the foundations: kid problems, marriage woes, work problems, financial struggles, a variety of worries, anxieties, fears, depressions, old emotional scars, new emotional wounds, failing health, regrets, guilt, etc. I've seen the quiet desperation of this person in you and in me!

But she wasn't only DESPERATE, she was also ALONE. She was an alienated person -- because, you see, as far as the religious law of those days was concerned she was considered to be "ritually unclean" and rendered an outcast! This was serious business! In those days a person's status and worth with the community was a religious issue and was determined by the priests. If a person was declared unclean, the person was separated, isolated and alienated from the community.

Anybody who touched her, or came into contact with her, would also be rendered unclean. Any place she visited and anything she touched would be unclean. This oppressive, dehumanizing religious practice had cut her off from her community... and it was a practice and mindset that most likely had taught her to hate herself... to despise her very body... ...her very personhood and womanhood!

But I have seen and experienced various kinds of imposed alienation. I've seen and experienced the ways that we sometimes cut each other off and out of our lives, because we don't like some aspect of somebody's personality -- or their politics – or their opinion on an issue -- or their lifestyle -- or the color of their skin -- or their ethnic background -- or sexual orientation -- or a disease that might afflict them. Oh, maybe we don't consciously and intentionally do it --maybe we just end up avoiding each other -- or being cold and indifferent instead of connecting with people and extending hospitality and creating community.

I've seen ways that we even get alienated from ourselves, denying certain aspects, characteristics, or past experiences that we don't like about ourselves, that we'd just as soon forget about. So we don’t deal with it, and it continues to simmer under the surface, insidiously exerting its influence upon us.

We too, can feel powerlessness when we find ourselves laid low by circumstances. Those times we've tried to make ourselves heard, and we wonder if anybody not only hears, but really cares. We can end up staying home -- and I don't mean just sitting in our houses -- I mean staying home -- emotionally, mentally, socially disconnected from others - - locked in a prison of powerlessness!

We look for ways to cope and endure -- but none seem to really work, they only dull the pain - dull the pain of desperation -- dull the pain of loneliness -- dull the pain of powerlessness.

One wonders what this woman was doing in this crowd of people. For one thing she was taking a great risk! If anyone would have recognized her as the unclean one, they would surely have sent her on her way - or worse. Maybe she had been invisible to them for so long they simply didn't see her any more -- they just looked right past her!

Think of the inner conflict she must have been feeling. "If I can just touch his clothes, I will be made well!” “But if I touch his clothes, he too, will be made unclean!" What an incredible barrier to overcome! But her desperation was such that somehow she did! She reached out! She took the risk! She touched him.

Jesus stopped dead in his tracks! "Who touched me?” he asked. The disciples were dumbfounded! "What do you mean, Who touched you? There are people pushing and pressing in all around you, and you say who touched you? You've got to be kidding!"

- It wasn't the touch of a powerful person trying to use Jesus for personal advantage over others -- as some use Jesus.

- It wasn't someone who touched him just for the sake of saying they did so that later on they could brag about it -- like someone might boast about how they shook hands with the President.

I think what's at stake in this passage is what could be called the nature of religious identity. Up until the time this woman encountered Jesus, her identity was determined by a religion that had minimized and marginalized her. She was cut-off, isolated and avoided because religious law determined she didn't measure up. The religion had deemed her deficient and lacking, and hence and had rendered her desperate, alienated and powerless.

My pastoral counseling ministry over three-plus decades has included many wonderful and gifted people who have been victimized and reduced by a particular Christian religious expression that has portrayed a finger-shaking God of requirements and rewards before whom they could never measure up; a religion that emphasized their deficiency at the expense of the cherishing love of God.

But it's not just religion that can instill a pervasive sense of inadequacy in the human psyche. Secular culture can do the very same thing. In the process of socialization and self-actualization, especially in the younger formative years, a person's sense of self-worth is often largely determined by the three A's: Appearance, Achievement and affluence - and the messages we get from the three A's. Are we attractive enough? Do we look good enough? Are we cool enough? Are we successful enough? Have we achieved enough? Is our resume sufficient enough? Do I have enough money and stuff? The three A's of appearance, achievement and affluence can form a devious symbiotic relationship playing off one another in such a way that no matter what, a person can still end up experiencing a self-worth deficiency. You don't think so? I would point out to you that a primary strategy in marketing and advertising is to make you feel deficient in order to get you to buy the product.

I once counseled a very depressed and suicidal adolescent young woman who was very attractive and had an excellent grade-point. Her core issue was rooted in the ongoing experience since she was a child that no matter how well she did at anything, (and she did well) according to her parents it was never good enough!

Due to any number of religious and/or secular socialization messages, we really can end up living our lives in relation to what Thomas Keating calls "the false self," the self created and conferred by either culture or religion. Frederick Buechner, theologian, pastor and author describes it as "living our lives from the outside in rather than the inside out."[i] We live surrounded by many secular and religious voices that do very little to affirm a person's intrinsic worth. This can become so deeply embedded in the human psyche and soul that the gift of grace and the unconditional love of God that declares intrinsic self-worth can be seen as something that must be deserved.

Driven by a sense of desperation this woman of our gospel was truly a remarkable woman, a perceptive woman and a courageous woman. She likely had a "so-what-do-I-have-to-lose attitude." It was forbidden for a woman to approach a man in public and to initiate conversation or contact, not to mention a plethora of further prohibitions conferred upon by her state of ritual uncleanliness. Breaking a myriad of cultural and religious rules she reached through all the prohibitions and touched Jesus. It's was religiously and culturally scandalous.

If it would have been a priest or other religious leader that she reached out and touched she would have incurred severe religious punishments. But this woman was willing to risk with Jesus, and Jesus was willing to risk with her. Jesus made the matter of her life, her situation, her pursuit of a fuller humanity a very public issue -- something that the entire community needed to experience. She had broken all the rules of convention and religion but Jesus didn't chastise her. Rather he said, "Daughter, your faith has made you well!" "Daughter" is family language. Daughter is community language. Daughter is relationship language. "Daughter" is a word that confers dignity and declares intrinsic worth.

She no longer was bound and reduced by oppressive religious restrictions but set free by a new state of self-worth. Her experience of God was no longer that of a finger shaking God of accusation and judgment but a God of love, grace and empowerment she experienced in the one she touched - Jesus.

The crucial question for us as the community who gathers around Jesus is when others reach to us in need: from desperation, from alienation, from powerlessness, from the margins, from oppression, from a state of victimization from prejudice and oppression, is there anybody there to grab their hands to pull them out? Is there anybody there who is sensitized enough with the compassion of God to recognize even the faintest and most subtle touch of need? If we call ourselves the body of Christ then we are called to be nothing less than Christ to each other; we are called to embody the very compassion of God who, when a desperate, lonely and powerless soul touched him in a frantic crowd, he was compelled to stop and look into that face, see the beauty that was there, and bring good news of intrinsic worth to that weary soul. I pray God will give us the strength, sensitivity, resolve and courage to be that body of Christ.

[i] Thomas Keating, Intimacy with God, p 163 (New York: Crossroad, 1997); Buechner's remark was made in a lecture at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco in 1990 and referenced by Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity, page 116, (HarperOne, 2003)