Two people press toward Jesus in the same few verses, and they could hardly be more different. One is a ruler who kneels in front of him with the worst news a father can carry: 18"My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live." The other is a woman who comes up from behind, unseen if she can manage it. Her bleeding had lasted twelve years, and under the law it made her unclean and made anyone she touched unclean too. She has no business in that crowd, and she knows it.
So she settles the matter privately. 21"If I only touch his garment, I will be made well." She reaches for the fringe and tries to slip back into the crowd. Jesus stops anyway, turns, and looks at her, because he refuses to let her stay anonymous. 22"Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well." He calls her daughter, a family word for a woman the law had shut out for twelve years.
Matthew uses the same verb three times in these verses, "made well," "has made you well," "was made well." It is the ordinary Greek word for being saved, and Matthew lets the body's healing and the soul's rescue sit together under one word without choosing between them. Uncleanness ordinarily traveled from the sick person into whoever she touched. Here it runs the other way, and whatever Jesus is flows into her.
Meanwhile a father waits, and the delay costs him. By the time Jesus reaches the house, the flute players and the noisy crowd have already gathered, professional mourners doing what custom required. 24"Go away, for the girl is not dead but sleeping." They laughed at him. Their laughter carries some authority, since they handled death for a living. Jesus claims that death has met someone who can reverse it, and the church would later call believers who died by this same word, sleeping.
He puts the crowd outside, and then comes the plainest sentence in the story: 25"he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl arose." Touching a corpse was the deepest defilement the law knew, deeper than the woman's bleeding. Jesus takes the hand anyway. Life goes from him into her once more.
Look at who comes to him. One is a man with standing, a name, and a synagogue, and the other has lost all three. Both need something only he can give, and neither gets turned away. The ruler is asked to keep trusting after his news has gotten worse. The woman is asked to be seen. Jesus meets each person at the point of their particular need, and in each case the need is met with a touch or a word.
If you have been reaching from the edge of the crowd, in a faith too small or too shy to announce, take heart. The reaching counts. He turns to see who touched him, and he means to call you daughter or son.
Prayer
Father, thank you that reaching for you in quiet, uncertain faith still counts as faith. Thank you that your life flows toward us, stronger than any uncleanness we carry. Give us the courage of that woman to reach from the edge of the crowd, and the trust of that father to keep believing when the worst news has already come. Turn and see us, and call us your own. In Jesus' name, amen.