There's just no getting around it. This week that we've spent together on Matthew 9, 18 through 26, this business about the synagogue leader whose kid died and then the

lady who's been bleeding since forever and she sneaks up to touch the hem of Jesus' garment.

There's no way to frame it different, it's just kind of sobering stuff. If we have

any empathy at all, you hear stories like this and you feel things for these people. You compare

them to situations that you've been through, stuff that is nipped at

your heels for a long time, things that make you feel like a social outsider, things that cause

deep abiding hurt and grief.

You just can't help but hurt along with these people, and you kind of can't help but revel in

the joy of their circumstances changing as well.

Well, I should say at least one of them,

because where we're at in the conversation so far

is that we've got a crisis that this fellow,

Gyrus, the leader of the synagogue, bursts into this party with the repugnant

cultural others that Jesus is hanging out with and announces, I got a crisis, my daughter's

just died, but there's also an expression of faith. But you can come put your hand on her and she'll live.

Then as Jesus is on his way over there, this lady who has this terrible, embarrassing,

religiously problematic issue going on, carries out a weird gesture of faith as

well, and in her brain she's like, if I can just touch him, this is going to work out.

So they've both somehow reasoned to the same thing, and that is all it takes is a touch

from this Jesus character. He has such authority and such power that that would solve our problems.

And all of this is reminiscent of the gesture. that would solve our problems.

And all of this is reminiscent of the gesture made by the leper at the beginning of Chapter

...