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Several years ago, a man, who was sick with AIDS, crumpled to the floor while attending a crowded, public event. He had suffered a heart attack and appeared to be dead. His cry for help - like that of the woman with the hemorrhage in our gospel lesson - was a silent one.

Yet it deeply touched a woman in that crowd - a woman who knew him and his condition, and who also knew how to provide the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation it would take to save him. The woman knelt down and, at great potential risk to herself, administered the therapy he needed. The man revived and lived to die another day. I don't know if that woman contracted AIDS from this episode or not, but her action spoke volumes about her compassion and her faith.

In our gospel lesson today, the actions of the anonymous woman in the crowd spoke volumes about her desperation and her faith. She had been bleeding for twelve years. Twelve long years of bleeding that sapped her strength and drained her finances in the unsuccessful search for a cure.

Gynecologists call her disease menorrhagia. There are modern hormone treatments which may bring a cure for this disease, but even they can take years to complete. And there's no guarantee that they will work.

The ancient Jewish writings give no less than eleven cures for this type of illness - including treating the bleeding with tonics and astringents. Other cures seem to modern eyes to be pure superstition - things like carrying the ashes of an ostrich egg in a linen rag in summer and a cotton rag in winter. Or carrying a barleycorn that had been found in the dung of a white female donkey. It's likely that this woman had tried them all - no matter how ridiculous or humiliating they were. And all without success.

But pain and expense weren't all there were to her suffering. According to the laws of purity in the book of Leviticus, certain things were considered ritually unclean for reasons that aren't always apparent to us today. Those things included certain foods and animals, anything or anyone that was dead and anyone who had a disease or a discharge of body fluids.

Many of these laws were probably created in the interest of fighting the spread of diseases, but there was more to it than that. The ancient Hebrews had an incredibly deep sense of the awe-inspiring holiness of God - one that goes far beyond the simplistic Jesus-is-my-buddy theology many Christians have today.

The ancient Hebrews were so aware of the depth of God's purity that they believed that anything - or anyone - that was considered unclean was unworthy to be in the presence of the holy God.

So being declared unclean wasn't like a child coming indoors streaked with dirt after playing outside. Ritual uncleanness wasn't washed off that easily. Instead, it was a sign of a real spiritual barrier between that person and God - an estrangement that could be passed on from person to person even by incidental contact.

This unnamed woman was considered to be ritually unclean because of the nature of her disease. That meant that she was not allowed to take part in the life of her community or even her family. Because of her condition she was not allowed to go to the market like the other women did nor was she allowed to cook for her family.

She couldn't go to the synagogue and sit with the other women to pray. She wasn't allowed to have contact with her children or conjugal relations with her husband. She wasn't allowed to touch anyone and no one was allowed to touch her.

She wasn't allowed to live with her family. In fact, she was worse off than a leper because she wasn't even allowed to live in a colony. So she lived all alone away from her family, her friends and her community.

As one author (John A. Huffman, Jr.) says, "This meant that... this woman... should not even have been in that crowd surrounding Jesus. She was actually infecting them with her uncleanness. You wonder why she was so desperate? Imagine living with that physical ailment. Imagine even more facing the social and religious isolation which was hers." She desperately wanted a cure so she could end that isolation, which was ironically imposed in the name of the God, who calls us into community with one another.

How desperate was she? Think about the risks this woman took - the barriers she dared break through to get what she wanted. She was desperate enough to go out in public when her entire faith system made her an outcast.

She was desperate enough to touch a man in public who wasn't her husband, when that alone could have been sufficient cause to have her condemned as a prostitute. She was desperate enough to be willing to communicate her uncleanliness to everything and everyone she touched, including Jesus, the holy man who didn't even know her, but who was her final hope.

She was desperate enough to break through these barriers in the hope of touching the God who knows no barriers. And, after seeing all this woman had endured and how many barriers she had broken through to touch the hem of a garment, do you really think God could send her away empty-handed?

Haydn McLean writes, "This healing makes me wonder how far any of us are prepared to go to get the touch of God that we need. Will we quit while we're ahead, be glad we're alive and able to function as well as we are, or are we so intent, so desperate, that we'll lay it all on the line and risk whatever it takes to get what we need from God? How many barriers are we willing to cross to touch the hem of Jesus' garment?"

In the early days of jet flight, aeronautical engineers found that with improvements to a plane's design and larger engines, it was possible to reach almost unimaginable speeds - 400, 500, even 600 mph. However, as the planes began to approach 700 mph and the sound barrier, the pilots encountered unexpected problems.

The air flow over the plane, especially in the cockpit, became deafeningly loud, and the changing air currents over the wings would vibrate the whole plane. The closer the pilots approached to the sound barrier, the more irregular the plane's flight became, until the pilot thought the plane was going to tear itself apart in mid-air. Each time a pilot reached this point, he would back off the throttle to avoid certain disaster.

But then one day a young pilot named Chuck Yeagar decided that he wanted to see what would happen if he pushed his speed through the sound barrier. Like so many others, when Yeagar approached the speed of sound, the noise became deafening, the wings shook and the whole plane vibrated.

He pushed the speed up even more, until he thought the jet was going to disintegrate around him. At that point, he punched the throttle. And he found out that on the other side of the sound barrier, it was remarkably quiet, and his plane flew like a bird.

Something similar happened to this anonymous woman in the crowd as she quietly whisked her finger over the fringe of Jesus' robe. It was a very subtle touch designed to pass unnoticed by anyone. And yet it did the trick - she was instantly healed.

But more than that, Jesus immediately knew what had happened and he refused to go any further until he could talk with her to complete her healing by bringing her back into community. Remember that the next time you're tempted to think that God must surely have better things to do than deal with your private problems. Remember how Jesus instantly noticed the tentative half-touch of a woman who was too fearful to approach him directly. If Jesus can do that, he will never ignore you when you reach out to him.

And yet, even when we may be desperate for God's healing touch, how often are we afraid to break through the barriers that keep us from touching the hem of his garment? Breaking through a barrier means being willing to sacrifice life as we've come to know it and stepping into a new life, without knowing how everything is going to work out.

Robert Raines says that she was a "...nameless woman in a crowd. A nobody. Bleeding for twelve years. Doctors, counselors, friends, priests - nobody could help her. The systems of healing had failed her. And not only her. We are also nameless ones. Some of us have been bleeding a long time, and the systems of healing have failed us too[....]

"Sometimes I bleed early in the morning when feelings of inadequacy arise within me; I feel that I am 'over the hill,' or forgotten; [...] Our wounds seek a deeper healing than medicines, counseling or therapy can yield. Physicians can get at our bodies, psychologists at our psyches [...] clergy at our faith systems, but who will heal my soul? 'Lord, say the word and my soul shall be healed.' Everyone has a wound that will never fully heal [...]

"[...] The Church is often an untouchable institution, a place where there's little time for folk[s] who embarrass us with their wounds, their complaints about the healing system having bled them dry, yet left them bleeding [...] Some subjects and situations are untouchable in some churches [...]

"But the church is called to be a zone of touching where we are invited to get in touch with one another, God and ourselves. Church is the place where Christ is always looking around to see who is touching him and where the healing power is moving [...]"

As the body of Christ in the world, we are called to bring into being Christ's vision of shalom - that is, a comprehensive vision of peace and healing, of justice and wholeness that includes both individuals and communities, a vision that stretches out from us to embrace the entire globe. Nothing is too small or too large to be outside the all-inclusive embrace of God's shalom.

John Buchanan, former moderator the Presbyterian General Assembly and pastor of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, says: "Jesus continues to disregard and intentionally disobey religious rules and regulations that divide the human race into insiders and outsiders. Jesus continues to disregard and deliberately disobey strict religious orthodoxy that excludes men and women from the community because of their uncleanness, their physical condition, their moral rectitude even. This is nothing less than a revolutionary, alternate social vision. In the first few chapters of Mark, Jesus is sweeping into God's kingdom [...] all sorts of people who were [...] intentionally excluded by religion [...] people who have leprosy, paralysis, sinners, hemorrhaging women, dead little girls. There is no human condition so bad - so marginal that hope is absent. There is no human condition, even death, that is outside the reach of God's love. It is a vision of human wholeness, unity, harmony, community and peace. It is a compelling vision to which he is inviting his followers. It is called the Kingdom of God."

I don't know what makes you so desperate you'd fall down and beg for help. I don't know what makes you feel afraid of what people will think, or what makes you feel left out, untouchable, or what makes you utterly terrified in the depths of your soul. I do know that one day Jesus will tell you and me and those we love, "Friend, your faith has made you well; go in peace."

God's healing power knows no barriers, except the ones we cooperate with that hold us back. If we're intent enough, desperate enough, if we've got nothing to lose except for what people may say, then maybe the time is right for us to push on the throttle, break through the barriers and grasp for the power in the hem of his garment. Amen.