Discretion and Confession

One

The Woman with the Hemorrhage 

Once, while Jesus was on his way to heal someone else, a woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for years and years saw Jesus passing by. She’d been to doctor after doctor, with no improvement. And she thought to herself, “If I can only touch the hem of his garment, I can be healed.” She reached out, she touched the hem of his garment, and she was healed.

Jesus stopped. He turned, He looked around, and He said, “Who touched me?”

None of the apostles knew what He meant. Who touched Him? Everybody was touching Him! But the woman knew what He meant. She knew that she’d been healed, and she knew that it was Him. She came before Him, and she bowed to the ground. He said, “Rise, daughter – your faith has made you well.”

What a strange, beautiful, beautiful story. But what, exactly, is the takeaway for us?

Two

A Private, Hidden Condition

The first thing to notice was that the woman’s problem was embarrassingly personal. Other people in the Gospel go right up to Jesus and their problem is clear to everyone.

“I’m blind.”

“My boy has epileptic fits.”

“I can’t walk.”

This woman doesn’t do that. She has a sense that this very difficult gynecological issue isn’t the sort of thing to declare in front of the mob. But, of course, she still wants to be healed. She doesn’t want to go on living like this. So she tries to find a way of being healed by Christ discreetly. And Christ gives her the opportunity to do this

Three

Christ Offers Healing Discreetly 

Notice that it’s not just the woman who seeks healing in a discreet way, it’s Christ who heals her in a discreet way. He knew, of course, that He had healed her. He’s true God. He knows everything. The reason she was healed was that He made a conscious decision to heal her. He made a decision to heal her without making her publicly declare her problem.

Now remember, all of Jesus’ miracles of physical healing are images of the spiritual healing He offers. How many of us have private, secret sins, faults, addictions, and resentments based on past experiences? How many of us want to be free of these problems but they’re not the sort of thing we want to broadcast?

So Christ has given us the opportunity to receive His healing without making a public confession of our most ugly, embarrassing issues. We can go, in absolute secrecy, to the confessional. We can sit on the other side of a mesh screen. And we can receive Christ’s healing. 

We don’t need to go public with all our problems. In fact, one of today’s problems is that nobody seems to be discreet about any of their sins.

There’s way too much public oversharing, almost as if people like the attention they get from going around talking or posting about the most shocking or disturbing sins. Our sins are something we should be embarrassed about. We should be discreet about them. We can go to Christ quietly in the confessional, unsensationally, without any impulse of exhibitionism. And He will quietly, privately, take away our sins.

Four

Public Acknowledgment that Christ is Our Savior

So it’s often appropriate to be discreet about our sins. But it’s not appropriate to be discreet about our salvation.

Jesus allowed the woman to be healed without her having to publicly declare her private, personal problem. But He did want her to come and declare that she had been saved by the power of Christ.

He looked around and said, “Who touched me?” Until she came forward. So too with us. 

Our friends, and our kids, and our coworkers, the general public online, they don’t need the graphic, grisly, sensational details of our sins. But they do need to know that we credit Jesus with any of the health and happiness we do enjoy. We can’t let people think we’ve just got it all together, or that there’s some life-hack, “secret to our success.”

Again, we don’t have to get specific, but people need to know that we know that without Jesus, we’d be a total mess. Let’s be discreet about our sins. But let’s not be discrete about our salvation. Let’s let the world know that we owe everything to the Lord.

Five

Don’t Hesitate

One final point about the woman healed from her hemorrhage: It says that she’d spent all her money, and all her time over the past twelve years, looking for some kind of cure. Nothing had worked. It turned out, all she’d had to do was touch Jesus’ garment.

The moral of that part of the story is obvious. No one can ultimately heal except for Christ. Therapies, programs, strategies – these can all do some good. They can all help. But only in the confessional do we meet Christ in His full capacity of spiritual healer.

It’s as simple as touching the hem of His garment. It’s quiet, it’s discreet. And it takes your sins away.