In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I have mentioned before, my brothers and sisters in Christ, a rite I have never seen—but who knows what the future holds. That's the consecration of a bishop. The last three of our bishops in this archdiocese were consecrated over in Damascus, so we haven't seen the consecration of a bishop in the Antiochian Archdiocese up close so we can actually watch it for quite some time. But I'm familiar somewhat with the ritual.

The consecrating act in the ritual comes when the priest or deacon kneels down before the altar, and the gospel book is opened up and laid on his head, pages down. Then the consecrating bishops come and around, and while the prayer of ordination is being sung, they press with all their might on that book. They press the stories into his head, sort of almost a physical act. And when he stands up, he's supposed to have the Gospel inside his mind.

The story, I believe—I mean, this rite illustrates a central concern of the Church to build our lives in the Christian life around the stories in this book. It is as though a man would be made a poet by putting the works of Shakespeare on his head and pressing them in. Or maybe Mother Goose! But this is interesting that in the transmission of the apostolic authority, we chiefly use a storybook! That should strike us, I think: a storybook! I think this comes to my mind every Sunday. I don't mention it that often, but it comes to my mind every Sunday. At the beginning of the service, when I'm holding the gospel book and getting ready to begin the Divine Liturgy with the gospel book, holding against my head, reminding myself that this storybook is what gathers the people of God together. We come here, and we came here this morning, to listen to a story, and you just heard the story.

It's a story, told by all three of the synoptic evangelists, which recounts a double miracle: the healing of the bleeding woman, the raising of the daughter of Jairus. And of the three accounts—we had Luke this morning, but of the three accounts, Mark is the longest and most detailed and undoubtedly the earliest literary presentation.

Of these two miracles, this double miracle today, I propose to concentrate our attention on the first, the healing of the woman with the chronic bleeding. That's simply said in half a verse, a subordinate clause, maybe even a participial phrase, but it's said very quickly. She's been bleeding for twelve years. It says that.

I'm going to cover three considerations today: the lady's situation, what she does about it, and the significance of the result. Let us first consider the lady's situation.

Twelve years earlier, this woman began to experience the menstrual hemorrhaging, which is natural, something she had taken as usual since probably the age somewhere between ten and twelve. It was a nuisance. She did not worry about it. It was a normal inconvenience women experienced ever since the day when Eve took the first bite of that forbidden apple. She was confident it would be over in a few days. It's just one of the things about being a woman. In fact, she may have reflected she was very happy the first time it happened because it showed that she was a woman. But by now the thrill of it is already gone.

The lady recognized also—she was a Jew—she recognized she was ritually impure according to the Mosaic law, another inconvenience. As ritually impure, she suffered a limited measure of monthly ostracism. During that time she was bleeding, she no longer ate with her family. Indeed, she was forbidden to prepare the family's meals. She slept alone and was prohibited from touching her husband or children. It would only last a few days. The whole business was, in short, an inconvenience, but she was accustomed to it and did not complain. It would be over, the proper sacrifice would be offered, and she could return to her normal life and routine.

Much to her chagrin, however, the bleeding did not stop. It should've stopped, but it didn't. It continued a whole month, and then a second month, then a third. By this time, she's in some trouble! At a certain point, she consulted physicians about the problem, but to no avail. Over the period of the next twelve years, this bleeding would impoverish her family. According to Mark, the physicians that she consulted actually made things worse. This morning we listened to Luke, the doctor, who left out that point. [Laughter]

By the end of the year, the lady was in terrible shape. She suffered from severe anemia, from loss of blood and blood gasses and iron. Her nerves were on edge. She had not touched another human being in twelve months. I don't know about you, but I don't think I can go twelve hours without touching another human being. Instead of enduring ostracism for a few days, she had suffered the emotional ravages of total isolation. Her responses became erratic and strange. A chronic depression set in. By the end of a single year, her self-image and sense of personal dignity were completely destroyed. A second year followed, and this one much worse. Her responses became strange. She said and did things she would not normally do if she were feeling normal. People watched her. I've seen people like this. I don't know about chronic bleeding, but I've seen ladies that neighborhood children make fun of because her responses are strange.

This woman does not appear in one of Jesus' parables. She was not a fictional character, but a real person whose soul and body were being destroyed by a condition over which she had no control. By the time we meet her in today's gospel, this lady has suffered the trauma and devastation of her condition for twelve years. There's not much left. She is bent and beaten. Those who knew her could say, "Who has believed our report? There is no beauty in her. She is despised and rejected of men, a woman of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We turned our faces, as it were, away from her. She was smitten by God and afflicted. She was oppressed and afflicted, yet she opened not her mouth, led like a lamb to the slaughter." Meanwhile the lady's children had grown up. She now had grandchildren she was forbidden to touch. Life was passing her by, and her whole hope, sole hope, was that it would pass by quickly.

We think of Job as the suffering patient man of the Bible. Let me suggest to you, however, that Job got off easy beside this woman. Like Job, she must have longed to die. Anything to escape the fate in which her existence was reduced to the confines of a coffin. And such, my beloved, is the woman we find in today's gospel: sick beyond measure, emotionally isolated, physically weak, unable to think clearly, totally listless in mind and body, deprived of elementary hope, a skeleton of a human being. There's her condition.

Second, what does she do? Rumor reached this woman of what seemed to her a long shot, a final hope. She learned of Jesus of Nazareth. According to today's gospel, I quote, "Now a woman having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, came from behind and touched the fringe of his garment." Observe that this woman was unable to approach Jesus openly. We suspect she was afraid that Jesus, too, could not or would not help her. Totally devoid of self-confidence, reduced to barely a faint spark of human existence, she determined to gamble everything on a single last throw of the dice. She had but one move to try to avoid checkmate.

In an attempt at complete anonymity, this lady violated the law by hiding herself in a crowd. She crept up to the point where her extended finger, reaching through the other bodies in the crowd, could barely touch the fringe of Jesus' garment. Supported by who knows what meager confidence, she dared to advance her final pawn. She leaned forward and played her last deuce. And this deuce, according to the gospel story today, was a wild card. It trumped twelve years of awful torture and suffering. She played her hand, and immediately, says Luke, her flow of blood stopped. She felt the sudden surge of health rushing into her wasted frame. It was over.

Well, it was over. But something knew it was just about to begin. You see, this lady was not the only one who felt something when Jesus' garment was touched. Jesus also perceived that power, dynamis, had gone out from him, and he was not willing to let the matter go. Turning about, he declared, "Somebody touched me, for I perceive power going out from me." Now, notice that. "Somebody touched me"—somebody. For twelve years, this woman has thought of herself as a nobody, but to Jesus she was somebody.

He does not permit this woman to be absorbed in the crowd. He who calls each of his sheep by name now requires that she come forward and declare herself. "Now," says Luke, "the woman saw she was not hidden. She came trembling and falling down before him, declared to him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched him and how she was healed immediately. To the daughter, Jesus says, 'Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go in peace. E pistis sou sesoken. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.' "

It's legitimate to wonder what this lady thought about this reference to her faith. I suspect very strongly she didn't think of herself as a believer at all. You see, faith can sometimes come disguised as desperation. Please know that. Faith can sometimes come disguised as desperation. Yet, weak as it was, no larger than a mustard seed, this faith had filled the finger she placed on the fringe on Jesus' robe. It had been sufficient. This faith moved the mountain and threw it into the sea.

Third and finally, what is the significance of what transpired in this encounter between Jesus and the afflicted woman? Doubtless the significance is manifold. This morning I want to consider only one aspect: the mystery of the Incarnation. We confess in the Creed, and we shall do so presently, that God's Son assumed our physical condition. This is the reason the sick woman in the gospel can touch him. This is the reason that he himself can reach out his hand and touch the daughter of Jairus. That's the second miracle. The fulfillment of almost half the world's fairy tales. A twelve-year-old girl lying dead, and the prince comes and touches her.

In the assumption of our humanity, God's Son shares the same physical substance as ourselves. He is put together as we are. The divine and the human are joined in his flesh. The Person that looks out through his eyes is a divine Person; they are the eyes of God. He hears our prayers with human ears; they are the ears of God. That is to say, in the Incarnation, God has found the means of touching us in a whole new way, a human way. He touches us as another human being. In the touching of the hem of his robe, a desperately sick woman received a jolt of the divine power. "Someone touched me," says Jesus. "For I perceived power going out from me." Power indeed, for, according to St. Paul, in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, bodily. By his touch, Jesus drives out sickness and restores the lady to wholeness. Beyond sickness, he also drives out death. Thus when his hand touched the dead girl, and her dead ears heard his voice, her spirit returned and she arose immediately, says the evangelist.

You see, my brothers and sisters, God's Son assumed the fullness of our humanity precisely to drive out death. When he touches us, as he's going to do very powerfully not many minutes from now—when he touches us, power goes out from him into our flesh. It's the power of the resurrection. The flesh of the believer, when it's laid in the tomb, is different from other bodies that are laid in the tomb, very different, because the transforming dynamis, power, of the resurrection has been poured into his flesh. God's Son assumed the fullness of our humanity, says St. Irenaeus, not only to die for us but to rise again for our justification.

What he does in this gospel story this morning, healing the flesh of this woman, raising the little girl to life, is a prophecy of his own resurrection and of ours. He assumed our mortal flesh in order to confer on it the power of the resurrection. Now those of you who have been Orthodox for a while have had the chance to observe this, are no longer shocked that on the night of the resurrection during the Divine Liturgy we don't read an account of the resurrection; we read the account of the Incarnation. That's when we begin the gospel of John. We read John's account of the Incarnation. It is precisely in connection with the resurrection from the dead that we say, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." And, dwelling among us, he can be touched by us, and he touches us, and the power of his life flows into us. Amen.