Classic Sermon 6046: The Greatest Doctor of All

Gospel according to Saint Mark Chapter 5. We are going to read starting with verse 21 until verse 34. We are going to meditate for a moment on this very special woman, full of faith: she touches the mantle of Jesus and receives healing and salvation.

Says the word of the Lord: "As Jesus passed by again in a boat, to the other shore, a great crowd gathered around Him and He was by the sea and one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and immediately he saw him He fell at his feet and pleaded with him saying 'My daughter is dying, come and lay hands on her so that she may be saved and she will live'. for twelve years he had suffered from an issue of blood and had suffered a lot from many doctors and spent everything he had and nothing had been of use, before it was worse for him. When he heard about Jesus he came from behind in the crowd and touched his cloak because he said ' If I only touch his hand I will be saved.'

Immediately the source of her blood dried up and she felt in her body that she was healed from that scourge. Then Jesus, knowing in himself the power that had gone out from him, turning to the crowd said: 'Who has touched my clothes?' His disciples said to him: 'Do you see that the crowd is pressing in on you and you say "who touched me"?' But He looked around to see who had done this, so the woman, fearing and trembling, knowing what had been done in her, came and fell down before Him and told Him all the truth. And he said to her: 'Daughter, your faith has made you safe, go in peace and be healed of your scourge'." May the Lord bless his word.

We are seeing different characters who, through the Gospels, found themselves face to face with the person of Jesus and either through a sustained dialogue with Him, such as the case of the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus, as we have seen in the last two weeks, or through a very quick but accurate crisis encounter had a transformation in their lives. We invite ourselves to see Christ as the source of all hope, as the source of all aspirations for transformations in our lives. I ask you, brothers, to look at how different characters through the pages of the Gospel come to the Lord with different types of problems.

Some of them seem insoluble, without solution, without possible change, and yet through a restorative encounter with the Lord, their tears were transformed into a song of joy, their illness was turned into health, their spiritual need was turned into a word. of consolation, of hope, of satiety.

And today we have this character who is this woman who suffered for long years from an issue of blood and we could continue making that comparison with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. And we can see here brothers, how in a sense in this story that we have just read the two dimensions that Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman incarnated come together.

In a single story the two extremes of Humanity are given. In the case of the Samaritan woman, we saw a fallen woman, morally compromised, perhaps isolated from her community because of her behavior that was known in a small town. A woman with little scriptural knowledge but in need of Jesus Christ and the Lord meets her at her point of need, dialogues with her and gently but very firmly leads her towards a revelation: that He is the promised Messiah.

In Nicodemus we see a man who is the complete opposite. A man like a Pharisee in the end, like a leading man, perhaps a member of the Sanhedrin, an upright man with a good reputation, probably blameless before the society in which he moved, respected, perhaps even feared.

A man who walked the straight path, surely well versed in the Scriptures, well acquainted with the religious aspects of his Faith but also deeply in need of a fuller revelation of what Jesus Christ is.

And the Lord also takes Nicodemus - a little more abruptly, as we saw from his very response, which perhaps could seem sharp to the Pharisee who courteously approached that teacher with whom God was, as he saw it - but also the Lord he takes Nicodemus through a process of increasing awareness until finally the Lord says to him: 'Just as the bronze serpent was lifted up before the Jews who were being bitten by fiery serpents and they looked and were healed; so also must I, by implication, the son of man also be lifted up in the eyes of man and exalted as Christ so that by looking at me they may receive healing and salvation.'

But also raised -figuratively- as one day he would be raised on the Cross. It is an image very impregnated with associations, He would also be raised on the Cross one day and that death too: that raising Him on the tree would also bring salvation. Today we look to that cross to receive our healing and our salvation.

And as Lisette also pointed out, but that's not all, the drama extends and also the Lord Jesus Christ one day will be raised in a totally new and different wood. He will be lifted up and worshiped and recognized by all mankind as the Savior of man. Those who did not want to acknowledge it the hard way will have to admit it the hard way, they will have to bow their heads and acknowledge Christ as Lord and Savior.

And I believe that the entire Gospel is there and everything that we can say in the following Sundays will actually be contained in those extremes that the Samaritan woman and Nicodemus exemplify. The rest will be elaboration and a propping up of those fundamental truths. And for this reason it seems logical to me to continue in sequence and enter now where these two extremes meet and dialogue with each other in the same text. But I am not so interested in focusing on Jairo, but rather simply as a background against which the person of this woman and her faith can stand out with crystal clarity.

We see that the story begins as so many stories begin in the Scriptures and actually also as so many stories begin in human life, the natural life of man. A powerful man, one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus, comes before Jesus Christ.

This man has a great need: his daughter - despite his great power and his great influence and religious knowledge - his daughter is dying, she is dying. Another of the Gospels puts it in an even more urgent way and as if linking the two events, because later they come in this story and tell him that his daughter has already died. But the other evangelist says that Jairus approached Jesus and told him: 'My daughter is already dead. But You can do what is necessary for her to live.'

But the fact is that Jairo suffers from a great need and approaches the Lord.

I see this as the natural way in which human stories proceed because in reality when one looks at ordinary society, what happens? A powerful man when in need usually knows where to go, has the necessary resources or has the necessary knowledge, the necessary connections; He goes to the person who can solve his problem, he appeals to that person and because of his position and his influence and perhaps because of his eloquence with which he can express his need and by being able to go to the right person he receives the answer he needs.

But this is not a story like any other story, rather this story wants to reveal something even deeper to us.

You will remember, brethren, all the Gospels were written with a very definite purpose in mind. First led by the Holy Spirit who wanted to leave us with a rather rich revelation of what the person and ministry of Jesus was and the way in which the evangelist Mark directed by the Holy Spirit elaborates and that the Lord himself directed these events to unite these two stories in one and these two events in one is because they want to tell us something about the person of Jesus: his way of ministering.

They want to give us signs and directives for what we should do in situations similar to these. And I believe that the first lesson that the Lord has directed us to look at is that in the Lord the rich and powerful and those who do not have any type of resource, any type of renown, or fame or influence in society, both they are equal before the person of Jesus and that the Lord, as he says: 'Whoever comes to me, I will not cast out'.

The one who approaches me with a sincere need, with a needy heart: "Come to me, all you who are labored and loaded. I will give you rest".

The Lord calls each of us who are here, no matter what your condition. If you have been coming to the Church for many years, if you are a faithful tither and a faithful servant of God in different ways, a faithful worker in the affairs of the Church.

That person is in the same condition as perhaps you who are coming to church for the first time today and who do not know the Bible well. Maybe you don't even understand the figurative language of Scripture, maybe you don't know how to pray. But if your faith is deposited in Jesus Christ for you there is also hope. The Lord wants to have an encounter with you. The Lord wants to dialogue with you.

Praise the Lord that powerful encounters with Jesus Christ are not for theologians or seminary-goers or those who have spent their lives searching the scriptures. Although all these things, Glory to the Lord, are beautiful and necessary and good, but what connects us with Jesus Christ is a living faith, a natural faith, a sincere faith.

That is why the Lord has made things very simple in a sense: if we believe in our heart, if we confess with our mouth we are saved. If we approach the Lord with a contrite and humiliated heart, we will find in the Lord a great disposition to heal and to save. And this woman with her simple faith was injected into the path of Jesus.

And I think that this is another of the threads that this text invites us to raise awareness of, to focus on, is the fact that -if I am interpreting the implications of the text correctly- we are taught that we can even change -even though this seems heretical up to certain point- the mind of God, we can change the dispositions. I understand that human language fails us in these things.

It is not that God did not know that this was going to happen, or anything like that, but it shocks me and moves me that the Lord tells us the text, He is very focused on the need of this man, He is going to attend to a being human being in need, that their situation is urgent.

There is an urgency, a very big emergency and the Lord goes with his mind very focused on going there and with his power to restore the daughter of Jairus. And this woman comes like an arrow and is injected into the body of the story and you see that the Lord Jesus Christ -Mark describes him as being surprised in his humanity, in his human dimension, the Lord Jesus Christ- is also shocked by this woman and he says the scripture presents it as her extracting something from the Lord.

That is there in the text and it is not for us to over-interpret it but it is for us to understand the level to which we have authority before God when our faith is focused and powerful enough and when we are marching within what is the character of God.

We cannot change God in terms of his character, brothers, nor of his general, universal purpose. But the Lord likes it when we come before Him affirmed in His word and because He invites us to come with sure faith and say: "Father, I have a terrible need and if you don't satisfy me, I'm going to die. I need You."

The Lord, honor, brothers, let us not have issues of dealing with the Lord in those sometimes strong terms. There is a balance that the Church of Jesus Christ has to learn in these things. I think it has been abused too much, also by the preaching of Health and Prosperity as they say: 'Name it and claim it'- Name it and claim it and it's yours.

The Gospel of prosperity and riches that many times in a sneaky way to cover up materialism and even witchcraft. Wanting to turn the Saint upside down and wanting to steal certain things from God. Because if we use the correct formula He has to answer me. But many times we have gone to the other extreme, fleeing from that false Theology to the extreme of simply saying: 'Well, Lord, if You want. Amen' and 'Thy will be done' and adopt a passive attitude. I believe that in the long run unproductive before the Lord.

Between those two extremes of total passivity and unproductive pietism that simply says 'Well, Lord, You know what I need to pray for, my life is in your hands. Have mercy on me. Thy will be done'.

Between these two extremes there is a very thin, but very safe point in which we, like Jacob, can approach the presence of God and establish a loving struggle with God and a dialogue of prayer and pursuit of love and divine mercy and God is glorified, brothers, also in that ardent search.

As long as that ardent pursuit is grounded in an understanding that God is sovereign and that God knows all things. In the end He gives the last word and when the last word has been given we will say: 'Lord, Thank You. Fulfill your purpose in my life'.

And when another crisis comes, another need, we will once again proclaim the power of God and we will once again put on all the irons and continue fighting because we believe in that faithful God and for those moments in which God decides to say "no" there are also "yes". powerful that we have seen how God has taken us out of crisis in our lives and that is why we come to the altar and that is why we proclaim the mercy of God and the people of God will always be an invincible people that will continue to proclaim the goodness of God.

And as the writer says: 'I know that my Redeemer lives and even if he is dead, I know that I will be able to see him. I will trust in his mercy.'

All of us in one sense or another are Job's brothers, we are all in a wrestling match to receive God's blessings. And I see over and over again in the gospels, these agonizing beings - let's call them that - beings, agonizing brothers of the existentialist Kiekegar who was consumed with anxiety, I don't think that's the spirit either. But for me, maybe I identify with them, maybe because one finds an affinity in these things and sometimes the characters we associate with reveal a lot about our personality.

But I love these agonizing beings like this woman with a terrible need. I had nothing to lose. He put all his chips on the table and said, 'if I perish, I perish and here I go. I'm going to meet the Lord Jesus' and she came out victorious.

And we can think of Zacchaeus, we can think of the Syro-Phoenician woman; returning to this of the dialogues and the fights in love with Jesus Christ; look at the Syro-Phoenician woman. Then we will study it at some point. This woman is in terrible need: one of her daughters is in crisis and comes to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ tells her "don't bother me, you are not from Israel and I have been called - even though He had said the opposite - only to the children of Israel."

And this woman does not allow herself to be discouraged by that slight push that the Lord Jesus Christ gives her, and not so light because it was almost an insult: "it is not good to give food to the dogs" and that same woman turns the phrase of Jesus Christ against the Jesus Christ himself in a sense and he says "Yes, sir, but if that's the way you want to see it, even the little dogs have the right to eat the crumbs that fall from the table and the Lord says: "Woman by that word your daughter is healed".

And I see that this dynamic of struggle, of search, is new. Brothers, the Lord wants passionate men and women, the Lord wants men and women who are clear about why they are seeking God and in whom they have believed...

Now women like these and characters like these invite us again and again to rethink why we serve the Lord? Is my faith, is my conception of Jesus Christ sufficiently defined for me to pursue Him in an incarnated and delivered way and total?

Because that is the attitude that will bring blessing to your life and that is why I believe that through Scripture we see those agonizing characters who are there fighting and bellowing as the psalmist says: 'as the servant bellows for the streams of the waters, so he cries out for you, oh God! my soul'

What more intense image than that? My soul thirsts for the living God.

Are we looking for Jesus Christ with that thirst? We have to purify our Faith, many times brothers. It is full of so many different things that dilute it and confuse it. Why are you here today? For the Pastor, for family commitment, for inertia, because you have come on other occasions. Truly plant yourself.

Or are you here wanting to receive power from the Lord Jesus?

If your faith is clear and if you are looking for that blessing from God here. God will speak to your life. God is going to touch you, God is going to transform you. God is going to give you the solution to your problem. So this woman, we say, injects herself and breaks the course of the dialogue, alters Jesus' agenda, so to speak, and with one sentence changes the whole turn of the situation. But a woman, those buts of writing sometimes make us tremble when they appear. But a woman who had suffered from an issue of blood for twelve years, when she heard about Jesus, came through the crowd and approaches him.

Contrasts. Jairo man, this woman for being simply a second class citizen woman. Jairo has a name, Jairo; this woman does not even indicate her name, completely anonymous.

Hello, God bless you, Pastor Roberto Miranda speaks to you. Thank you for listening to our messages and it gives us great joy to know that this program is being a blessing to your life. I want to leave you with the blessing words of Moses to the people of Israel. "The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace."

It is a privilege for me to be part of your life.

I hope you stay tuned to our program "A date with Christ". I bless you in the name of Jesus.

Principal Jairo among the synagogue, recognized, this woman, poor, needy, had spent everything she had on doctors. religious Jairus; this impure woman, she suffered from blood flow, a disease that you may not even know about, she suffered from continuous bleeding, she had spent twelve years. And this disease had a double edge, on the one hand it was physically exhausting and terrible in what it did to the body: this person would suffer continuous anemia and on the other hand it was also horrible because it made this person an outcast. It was not because of the rites of the law and the requirements of the Jewish law that she was not fit to be among pure people, ritually speaking.

According to the law, the touch itself, because that is what the Old Testament established, this woman was in a continuous state of impurity, technically and legally, and therefore her presence and her person were unpleasant to the religious society, to the acceptable society. Her touch was like the touch of a dead person or a leper, she was persona non grata as they say around there. She wasn't supposed to be in that situation, she wasn't supposed by law to touch a rabbi, especially since her touch made him unclean.

It was a pressing situation, as it reminds us so much of the situation of so many people, perhaps in a sense you are in something similar, the wonderful thing is that something is taught here, it is that the law divides but Christ reconciles.

Religion many times and the requirements of "good" people, in quotes, tends to make us feel impure, perhaps you are here suffering from some spiritual bondage; perhaps there is some impure habit in your life; perhaps there is some moral condition that makes you feeling that you are on death row in a sense, perhaps offending God with your presence.

Let me tell you that the Lord is glad that you are here on this day, the Lord is glad that you are in need, he is not glad because he is in need, but rather he is glad that the need that you have makes Him fulfill His purpose. for which the wine He said "I have come not to the healthy, I have come to the sick. I have come to restore the fallen. I have come to bring liberation to the oppressed" and the Lord Jesus Christ tells you today religion has no power to separate you of the.

The law cannot do that, if you seek Him and seek reconciliation in Him, He is powerful to reconcile you with God and that is one of the threads of this text as well. It invites us to think that no matter what our spiritual or physical condition is or whatever in the Lord there is hope, in the Lord there is great mercy, his very nature as we see here, beyond all dialogue that we can engage in with Him , his very being, makes him be attentive and be prepared to respond to the needs of those who approach Him with urgency and need.

There is something else that intrigues me about this passage, it says "that for twelve years he suffered from a flow of blood and had suffered a lot from many doctors and spent everything he had, and nothing he had used before was worse for him."

Studies have apparently been made of all the nonsense that the doctors of that time invented to solve this situation, and apparently there was a long list of possible remedies, some totally improbable and ridiculous things.

But apparently this woman had exhausted all the possibilities, she had gone to all the doctors, perhaps this woman who knows, had money at one time and exhausted all her wealth to find a solution on a human level, she searched science and did not find the solution what i needed

Twelve years, he had suffered from the disease. We can extract two little things from there, in those twelve years there is something, this woman spent twelve years, sad and suffering until she had a liberating encounter with Jesus Christ.

How old is your problem? How old are you praying for your husband or wife? How old are you with the burden of a difficult or troubled marriage? How many years have you had with a disease, which is perhaps taking away your taste for life or peace of mind? How old are you with some secret need that you have brought before the Lord over and over again?

Even before Jesus Christ and the Lord has still told you: 'Enough of my grace. I have already been waiting' and perhaps you think that there is no solution, that there is no answer, that there is no way out for you. No matter how long you are praying before God, keep trusting in the Lord, keep bringing your need before God. Because you don't know how long God, for some reason that only He knows, will take before he gives you the answer to your need.

The People of God must be an insistent People, a People that is there looking for the Lord. I was thinking this morning of the paralyzed man from Bethesda, he was paralyzed for thirty-eight years, until the Lord approached him and touched him.

I was thinking of this stooped woman, I think it was eighteen or twenty-eight years that she was said to be 'under the burden of Satan,' says the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord touched her at the time, and many other brother examples. We cannot get tired, we have to come before the Lord over and over again, every day to renew our request, I have petitions before the Lord, that every day with obedience and with an almost unhealthy delight, I return to remind the Lord, "Lord answer me, Lord I need you" and until the day I die if I don't see the answers I will continue to remind the Lord and thank Him also because I know He is merciful.

Let us not get tired brothers of bringing our needs before the Lord, let us not get tired of crying out before that merciful and powerful Christ.

But there is another thing about that, he says "that nothing he had used before was worse for him", and I felt motivated to think in this world, that this woman is also a symbol of this society, of the man of all times, although the I think modern man embodies this in a much more exquisite and expressive way. He is looking for the solution to his problems in so many different things, so many doctors that man consults to answer his problems.

Right now as we speak the president-elect of the United States may be sitting somewhere, perhaps playing golf but I prefer to see him - for the convenience of my sermon - sitting at a very long oval table with his advisers trying to finalize their plans. to solve the problems of his nation.

Every so often in Times magazine the characters that he has put in different positions appear or the people who are going to play a key role in regulating the economy and the political and social life of this country and I also think of Jorge Bush perhaps in some other part licking his wounds and packing his things and putting away his paintings and all the things that have characterized his years in the presidency and a number of cabinet members and characters who were in the spotlight of the cameras for many years and were the lovers and they were the lucky ones of Washington.

Now many of them are depressed thinking about who they will send their résumé to to return again to continue with life. And I think of this image of those who leave and those who enter and the solutions that one has tried to give and another will now try to give as well. And then I think of the millions of people in this society and I see how the problems in our society are getting worse and worse every day and the problems seem more and more difficult to solve.

Despair seems to take shape more and more in this nation and I can already see in the future another renewing the same ritual of returning again to make promises that he himself knows in his heart that he will not be able to keep most of them. But the man needs and the people claim and ask for new solutions and although already deep in their hearts they have a subconscious sense of "that this is simply a lover more than what he wants is to sleep with me", but even so they also feel They get into the ritual, and they come back again to be enamored during the campaigns, to vote for the new Romeo who has also come to offer them solutions.

I recently read a small article, where it says that a very exhaustive study has been carried out through different countries such as twelve or fourteen nations of the main nations of the world where an interesting sequence has been established, and that is that every ten years from the time from the beginning of the centuries to the 1990s, every ten years the youth of those ten years - I'm not sure of all the details of the study - but each new generation is more prone to depression than the previous one.

These groups that were ten years older were more likely to become depressed as the century progressed than the earlier ones. This against the claims of progress of humanity, against the great inventions, medical progress and the progress of psychiatry and medicine and the supposed knowledge of at least the brain and human biology.

I know that it is not from the human soul, because God has that knowledge. But as doctors invent new scalpels and new techniques and new things that promise, like, the happiness and blessing and grace that man needs to lubricate his processes is fading more and more. Sand that slips through our fingers, that is the history of humanity, doctors who try to get our problems solved.

Look at the terrible drama of Eastern Europe, this great Soviet empire with all its aspirations, all its initial sincerity, how it crumbles under its own weight, like a weak old man, because it did not have the basis, which was the power of God. They wanted to extract God, they wanted to tear and destroy the name of God and everything that smelled of spirit from the confines of that nation and with the passing of the years, despite all the musculature they accumulated, all their aspirations collapsed, and now what do they leave? Certainly what he says here: 'nothing he had taken advantage of before was worse for him'.

Just ask those Eastern European nations destroying themselves like ferocious beasts when the coach who kept them at bay with his whip leaves. Now they are eaten again and all those ethnic hatreds that were repressed there from the First World War, the Second World War are now coming out again. "Were there" seventy years repressed or almost eighty years repressed like a spring that you go down there and keep it with a strong boot. As soon as you remove the boot the spring jumps again with a vengeance.

Psychiatrists say that the things that we repress without solving them and without working on them sooner or later come out with a vengeance among us. And what these people did was precisely repress and put a lot of perfume on the hidden dirt and when the farce ended and they gave up, then it is discovered that the situation not only remains the same, but is worse.

Brother, I want to challenge you and myself to ask ourselves today, which are the doctors that you and I are consulting? What things are we making up to mask the fact that we have not yet gone to the source which is Jesus Christ? What trials are we doing to hide the fact that only in Jesus there is hope that only he is the way, the truth and the life and that no one has an approach to God except through Him?

That is why I have told you that I want to take this series to renew our vision of Jesus, because many times Jesus Christ remains implicit in our sermons, we speak around Him, we speak above Him because we are founded on Him, we speak below Him because we know that He is above us, but we do not look at Him.

And I believe that the Churches and we, the Pastors and the Ministers and those of us who serve the Lord, have to by spiritual discipline choose certain days of our lives, to say 'Lord, like Mary I have been working around you doing things for you, but I need to go back and reconsider your person.” Because in Christ I find in his person, in his word, in his methodology, in his ministry, in his body itself, in his word I find something mysterious, intravenously edifying.

With the fact that we look at Jesus and although we do not understand everything he is saying, nor do we understand all the implications of his person, but the fact that we plug ourselves into him and his direct word vivifies us and strengthens us. Let us never forget brothers that Jesus Christ is the alpha and the omega, he is the beginning and the end of all our aspirations.

And we can talk about all the truths of the Gospel and we can search all the pages of the Bible and find edification in different characters, but the Lord Jesus Christ has a unique ability to strengthen us and bring hope to our lives, because his way of being is eloquent. . He is the son of man who speaks to us in a language that no other person can speak to us and this woman embodies all of these things.

Let us always know: the rest solution to all my aspirations is in Christ Jesus and I want to challenge you on this day to dust off the image of Jesus Christ and to look at it again as the writer of Hebrews says -I think it is-, that we look at Jesus, I don't remember the passage right now, says, "Let's not tire ourselves out but look at Jesus Christ in a different way."

Hebrews chapter 12: "Therefore, having around us such a great cloud of witnesses, let us strip away all weight and the sin that besieges us and run with patience the race that lies ahead of us with our eyes on Jesus." Set eyes on Jesus.

The author and finisher of faith says in verse 3: “Consider the one - and I understand that the word that is translated into Spanish 'consider' means to focus your gaze in such a way that you exclude everything else - consider the one who suffered such contradiction of sinners against themselves so that your spirit does not tire until you faint.

When you are in crisis, when you are in trouble, renew your look at Jesus, consider Jesus Christ, consider his claims, consider his message, consider his person, consider his healing record and put it back in your bowels and start diluting it again within you so that it fills the whole part of your being. That sustained meditation on Jesus Christ will bring healing to your life. It will bring blessing to your soul.

And when this woman hears about that Jesus, who speaks in a way that the Pharisees do not speak, who does things that the Pharisees cannot do, who promises things that doctors cannot do, she goes to Him as her only hope.

How important that people know about Jesus! We are going to tell them about Jesus, we are going to tell them that Jesus saves.

Although apparently they are not listening to us, we are going to proclaim that in Jesus Christ there is a solution for your problems, we are going to be disturbing in our factory, in our school, in the offices, wherever we are, in the street, wherever, brothers, we are going to be bearers of that liberating message. Because you don't know a day when that person, having heard about Jesus, goes and turns to Him in their need and in a prayer perhaps in the dark of their bedroom, there they find what they need from Jesus Christ.

Our part is to sow the seed, our part is to announce the gospel. Our part is to lift up the son of man so that everyone has to look at him and then they choose if they want to hold the gaze or not. Proclaim Jesus Christ. This woman heard about Jesus, who would have been blessed that through him or her this woman gave us such a beautiful story as the one we are given today?

And she comes from behind in the crowd and touches his cloak.

Wonderful variant of the gospel story, because Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman meet face to face and have the pleasure of conversing with the Lord of Lords and King of Kings in a long term and in a relaxed manner and the Lord enters into a sustained dialogue with them.

But this woman does not even have the blessing of approaching the Master as Jairus the great Pharisee approaches and saying: 'Lord, I need your help' etc. She comes as a fugitive, as an elusive figure like a moving shadow who doesn't expect great things, who wants to get in and out as quickly as possible so they don't know of her need and simply receive something from the Lord.

And she enters from behind and cannot even touch her person, another of the Evangelists says that she 'touched the edge of her cloak', as if to indicate that what you need is a minimal encounter, even with Jesus Christ. In it there is such power that if you just touch the tip like a great source of electricity, just establish your contact in any way with your spirit or your being, you will receive the blessing, you will receive the download of grace that comes from Jesus Christ.

It doesn't matter how weak or how imperfect your faith is. Because I also see a bit of superstition in this woman: perhaps she is thinking that nothing more than a physical touch from this mysterious being -as there are people out there who believe that a portrait will bring them the grace of the Saint or things like that it will bring grace, or a symbol or a fetish- I see in this woman a bit of a primitive faith, devoid of all ornamentation.

But sometimes, brothers, I discover that we become so sophisticated that like Hamlet we are always 'to be or not to be', to be or not to be, I do or I don't do, I shoot or I don't shoot, I believe or I don't believe. .

And if this happens and if the other happens? But look at what such a book says and look at what such a theologian says, and look at what such a denomination says.

Brother, today there are so many theologies floating in the air and so many interpretations about the phenomena of faith, that one threatens to remain catatonic without moving simply looking for the common denominator and doing things that are safe and proven and we dare not. somersaults and many times we lose the blessing that God wants to give us.

I confess that I am continually fighting against the claims of my reasoning and I have had to go back a long way to reach the minimum faith that I have in the Lord and in his power and in his word. I am continually fighting within myself to get rid of a number of things that I know are hindering me in my search for the Lord.

Because the intellect often tends to make us stumble more than to help us. I thank the Lord that he has given us the reason. But many times fallen reason prevents us from seeing the Lord Jesus Christ with simplicity.

Nicodemus, with all his knowledge and all his theology, did not have what this Samaritan woman had, for example, that when Christ told her: "I am the one who is before you" she immediately ran away and became an evangelist who brought all that People to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

What a contrast, the intellectual is often stuck by so many things. And we who live in a market where all of us in a sense are intellectuals, compared to the man of the middle ages or the primitive man.

We have so much because of the television and the magazine that we have and the education that we have received and the things that we see in the newspapers. You don't realize how much that reason of yours and your critical capacity have been cultivated and exalted and developed.

And when the Lord tells us: 'Here I am, simply put your faith in me, rest in me' That inner being begins to ask all kinds of questions and we begin to look for the cat's five legs and we lose the grace of the Lord that gave us you are currently visiting.

Brothers, we have to be daring, we have to be creative. I prefer, as they say, to err in a great cause than to be mediocre all my life. I prefer that our congregation bet on great things even if it has to suffer a little and lose sleep a little and get upset about some things, but we are looking for spiritual gold.

Before I pointed out the figure of the conquerors who go there and risk everything for glory and we want spiritual glory as well. But if we remain safe in what has been proven in the status quo, in what does not challenge or worry, we will remain like this for the rest of our lives, we will not grow.

Brothers, I invite you and I always invite myself to be entrepreneurs in the name of the Lord, because the Bible says 'Those who trust him will not be ashamed', it is not that we are crazy, but we are not so conservative that we are bourgeois spiritual.

Between those extremes there is a healthy point of daring, like Esther: “If I perish, let me perish.” I'm going to get in there and if they give me grace, Glory to God and if they cut off my head: Glory to God. But I will fight. Launch yourself in the name of the Lord, there are many things that people do sometimes that I as a Pastor have to stay like Mary and keep it in my heart, because this person has had an outburst of faith and although I understand it perfectly, my theology fits there, go ahead brother Glory to God.

And I see many times that it works out and I have had to learn from those daring beings who dare to trust in the grace and mercy of the Lord.

So, brothers, many other things we could say, but that precious outcome: this woman receives the grace, receives the blessing, receives the healing. His bet paid off. She dared and we see that she overcame the crowd, overcame the obstacles, overcame the threat of her religion.

Touch the mantle of Jesus and what a wonder it is that 'power has gone out of me', says the Lord Jesus Christ.

This woman stole from him - may I use that word? Power to Jesus Christ, his faith, drew something from the Lord Jesus because the inherent nature of Christ is to give grace, it is to give healing, it is to bring deliverance, it is to bring light into our lives. If you come into contact with Christ, brother or sister, the only thing that can happen to you is that there is a blessing in your life.

Oh! Yes, perhaps you are going to suffer, perhaps you are going to have to abandon many of the stagnant or petrified structures of your life. Oh! Yes, it will worry you. Oh! Yes you are going to have troubles that you never considered. Oh! Yes you are going to have to pay a price and you are going to have to leave things that are dear to you. Oh! Yes, sometimes you're going to wonder what am I doing here? But keep going because the Lord is going to bless you.

The line of the believer is an ascending line. There will be its moments of ups and downs but we will always see that rise.

Through the years we will see the blessing, the grace of God visiting us and healing us and stirring up and bringing water where there was dry and hard ground. There the Lord like an underground stream will go from the inside out until we begin to see the buds of life. Because that is Christ. He is the life, He is the light, He is the salt of the world, He is the door, He is the way, He is the truth. In Him we are going to find what we need. He is not a human doctor.

The Lord Jesus wants an intimate relationship with you. The Lord Jesus was not satisfied with this woman receiving power from Him. He said: 'Where is this woman? Where is this woman who by her faith has stood out from the rest of the crowd? Where is this woman who with her primitive and simple faith has made something come out of me? A special grace.

The disciples could not understand this. If you approach with that look of faith, you have a blessing because the Lord wants to give you a blessing. And the Lord wants to have a dialogue with you. The Lord wants before you leave, He wants to sit down with you and talk. The Lord could not let this woman go. I think she would have felt, perhaps, in the long run guilty – a little – because she forced something.

It will have felt incomplete. That process had not reached an adequate culmination, something was not resolved if that woman left in that way.

I also see here the Lord who ministers to us at the different levels of our being. So many years this woman had spent as a lonely figure, anonymous and elusive. People dealt with her from afar. And I believe that her soul was more twisted than her body and she had a well of sadness and loneliness there that also needed to be addressed. And I believe that when the Lord addressed her at that level of her emotions and approached her and when that woman tells her, the Scripture says that "he told her the whole truth."

Don't you see something here for the psychiatrist and for the psychologist and for the counsellor? Our people often need to tell us the whole truth. It's a kind of catharsis. We need an ear.

She will have said to the Lord Jesus Christ not only "Lord, it was I who touched you", but she will have also told him of her years of solitude, of sadness, of how she felt desperate and had to come before Him because she no longer had any another resource. How she had felt a special grace visit her when she touched his cloak.

And when the Lord tells her, "Yes, woman, your faith is powerful and that faith has made you saved..." Not only has it healed you, but that word is much more comprehensive, much more encompassing: "your faith has made you saved ,” the integrity of your person, the totality of your being has been touched by that grace. Go in peace, you don't have to fear. There was healing for her.

Brothers, you and I need to be healed by Jesus Christ. We need to come before the Lord. If you don't have anyone else to talk to, talk to Jesus Christ. He is interested in your drama, He not only wants a runaway meeting, fast, He also wants to rescue you from your anonymity.

I find in the Lord, in my prayers I rest. When I find it in nothing else, in the Lord Jesus Christ I find rest. Use that resource that God gives you. Tell the truth to the Lord, He already knows it but He wants to heal you by exposing that truth and opening it to the touch of the holy spirit that will illuminate that sometimes dark, harmful and sick truth and will restore it.

But let us open our lives to the Lord, because the Lord is interested in every corner of our being. Let's not settle for superficial religiosity, let's not settle for coming here for a while. How I rejoice to see that moment of spontaneous worship! Not planned, not requested, not manipulated.

God's people have many burdens and when we feel the touch of the mantle of Jesus Christ touch us, we jump. The Spirit within us like Elizabeth's spirit leaps for joy and we break out into song. Never be ashamed to express your love to the Lord like this, never be ashamed to bellow before Him, sob before Him.

I wish I could sob more times before my Lord Jesus Christ! Because that crying always has healing.

Celebrate your life, celebrate your drama, celebrate your tragedy even before the Lord and bring your burden to the Lord, because He is interested in knowing about you.

May the Lord bless us.

Hello, this is Pastor Roberto Miranda speaking. God bless you. Thank you for tuning in and listening to this message. If you are interested in learning more about our ministry, we invite you to contact us through our website: www.leondejuda.org.

May God bless you and remember God always has a solution for your life. Blessings.