Contagion flows both ways

Listening to the Lubwisi Bible yesterday, Luke 8 . . . full of crowds, requests, miracles, women, storms, revelation. In Lubwisi they don't even try to translate the disease of the woman who seeks Jesus desperately . . . it is called "a disease of women".  In English the Greek becomes: A flux of blood, an issue, a haemorrhage.  A flow. Something that by the laws of her day defined her not only as unclean, but as a transmitter of uncleanliness. Anything she touched would be impure. The hesitant translation speaks of shame. The position she is in becomes untenable. Basically, she's contagious with evil.

Meaning that as she is bumped and shuffled in the crowd, she cannot say why she is there. It would be like a person with flagrant COVID wanting to see Dr. Fauci by showing up at a political rally with no mask, coughing and sneezing on everyone, elbowing his way near to the stage. Not only would the crowd be unsympathetic of one person's right to demand the famous doctor's attention, they would be angry that he was putting them all at risk. By first-century standards she is likewise putting everyone around her at risk of ceremonial impurity. So she keeps quiet, and sneaks close enough to touch his robe, hoping against hope that her years of dwindling resources and useless cures will end. 

The Encounter, by Dan Cariola, featured in Biola Lent

And in that moment, the unstoppable tide of blood, pain, shame, contamination . . . stops. Instead there is a flow in the opposite direction. Jesus feels power flow out. The word refers to the nature of who Jesus is, a strength, goodness, virtue, force of miracle and wonder, that transmits from him, to her.

This story is rich with nuance and meaning. But for today, I'm just thinking about the contagiousness of evil vs. good. Disease DOES pass from person to person, and we need measures like masks and sanitiser. Isolation is a good public health principle. But other evils also exude, spread, flow. Racism, criticism, sarcasm, doubt. We are people who are disturbed on many levels and we too often drag others down. This woman's sickness was not actually harmful to anyone but herself, but she and they did not know that, so she suffered the consequences all the same. 

How much more rare is the flow in the opposite direction, the river of good, of health, of life, of hope. And what a story to show that the power of love to reverse damage exceeds the force of wrong. That the darkness can't overcome light, that evil can't overcome good. The streams of blessing the freely spring up in Jesus were offered to the woman at the well, to the woman in the crowd, to all of us. 

The same day I read Luke 8, I was teaching on Abraham at the hospital staff meeting. Abraham was blessed IN ORDER TO BE a channel of blessing to the world. Through witness, through faith, through obedience, through Isaac. Yes, he eventually inherited land and livestock too. But the blessing was meant to flow.

I go through my days trying to limit my contact with contagion. And aware of the ease with which my own weariness and frustration and sin can harm others. But I'd like to be the kind of person through whom light flows like the painting, abundant, healing, unstoppable. 

The owner of this brain had a heart rate of 200 and a temperature of 103. 

Not pictured: a child post-op from a typhoid bowel perforation, I palpated and pus and stool came right out of the old incision.

Or the baby with intractable seizures.

Or the one starving after his mom stopped breast feeding.

Or the preem who the other moms told me "died three times" the day before but was revived  . . . 

This was all yesterday, all places that felt quite impure and evil and broken and sorrowful.

This baby was also so so so hungry.

And yet . . . the triplets that miraculously all survived to discharge 9 months ago are still OK! Well, they are all down with gastroenteritis and all slightly malnourished but I think this is one family where the flow and power of love is prevailing.