The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.” —Madeleine Albright
Today’s readings place before us the voices and actions of women pushed to the margins—enslaved, unclean, unnamed – essentially, invisible. What is striking is that in each text (2 Kings, Acts, and the Gospel of Matthew), healing is not initiated by those with authority or status, but is set in motion by the faith, speech, or embodied action of three marginalized women—two enslaved and one unclean by illness. And we see how God’s saving work enters the world through voices the dominant religious establishment has learned not to hear.
In the reading from Acts, we are not told why the fortune-telling girl cries out after Paul and Silas. Perhaps, gifted with spiritual perception, she recognizes in them a truth hidden beneath appearances and cannot remain silent. Perhaps the spirit that possesses her seeks to mock or disrupt the work of God. Or perhaps she stands at the center of a spiritual struggle, her voice caught between competing powers of darkness and light, each vying for her allegiance.
What the story does tell us is that, for days, an enslaved woman loudly speaks the truth about Paul and Silas, until her persistence becomes so annoying to Paul that, in the name of Jesus, he casts out the spirit that enables her exploitation. Scripture is silent on his motive. Did he act out of compassion for a girl enslaved by her owners, or out of discomfort with a gospel proclaimed through a voice marked as unclean? We do not know. Yet her words expose an unsettling reality: truth can emerge from the mouths of the oppressed, even when their bodies are controlled by systems of profit and power. When her divination is silenced, her economic value disappears. The backlash is swift—Paul and Silas are beat up and imprisoned—but if we read a little further, God’s liberating work continues, shaking the foundations of the jail itself and opening the way to freedom and conversion for the jailer and his household. Liberation disrupts economies, unsettles authorities, and moves outward in unpredictable ways. God sides with the enslaved and brings freedom, even through conflict and consequence.
How is this story relevant for us? Well, it becomes relevant the moment we ask where truth, power, and profit intersect in our own lives.
This story invites us to consider how often truth comes from voices we are inclined to dismiss—those marked as unstable, inconvenient, or beyond social norms. Like Paul, we may struggle to discern whether a word is of God even when it emerges from the margins or from within compromised systems. Liberation theology presses the question further: whose suffering makes our comfort possible, and what truths are being spoken by those imprisoned in those systems?
The girl’s liberation from slavery exposes an economy built on exploitation. That pattern persists today. When injustice is named and disrupted—whether in churches or institutions—it often provokes resistance rather than repentance. We may celebrate deliverance in theory, yet recoil when it threatens livelihoods, reputations, or the established order.
Finally, the story is a cautionary tale against assuming we can control the work of God. Paul acts decisively, but the consequences spiral beyond his intention. This shows us that God’s Spirit moves not only through clear victories but also through chaos, ambiguity, and unintended outcomes. The question for us is not whether God is at work, but whether we are willing to follow when acts of justice unsettle us, cost us something, or come from voices we did not expect.
The fact that the fortune-telling girl in Acts 16 is the last female to speak in the New Testament is significant because it marks a dramatic contrast between the early prominence of women’s voices in the gospel narratives and their near silence by the conclusion of Acts. Her speech is quickly silenced by Paul, symbolizing both the removal of unauthorized female authority in public and the triumph of divinely authorized male power. For some, this ending underscores the early church’s ambivalence towards women’s roles in public preaching, and highlights the ironic closure of the New Testament to women’s speech with a woman whose voice, though heard, is disempowered and subordinated.
On the other hand, the hemorrhaging woman in Matthew is the first woman to speak in the New Testament. She is unnamed, exhausted from 12 years of illness, and socially isolated, yet she acts with profound intention and focus. Her faith is not just abstract belief but embodied trust: she believes that, even now, God’s healing power can reach her, even through the smallest point of contact. In touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, she risks public exposure, religious condemnation, and further exclusion. Her act is a confession of hope—that God sees her, knows her suffering, and desires her to be whole once again.
Her healing disrupts the assumptions of that time – about purity, agency, and access to God. She does not wait to be invited. She does not rely on a mediator of status or power. She reaches out in faith, and God responds. Jesus does not rebuke her for breaking the law; instead, he names her faith and restores her publicly, returning her not only to health but to belonging in the community.
What better woman than this to open the door for women to speak in the New Testament? We relate to the hemorrhaging woman because her story names something deeply human about faith under the most adverse conditions.
Equally revealing is the order of healing in this story. Jesus is on his way to the house of Jairus, a synagogue leader whose social standing grants him direct access to Jesus. Yet along the way, Jesus stops. The woman with no advocate, no name, and no social power is healed first. This is not accidental storytelling; it is a proclamation that God’s reign does not follow human hierarchies of worth or urgency. The needs of the powerful do not eclipse the suffering of the unseen.
And yet, Jairus’s daughter is also healed. God’s mercy is not a scarce resource. The gospel does not pit the marginalized against the powerful but reveals a kingdom in which healing flows outward, confounding expectations while remaining radically inclusive. In Christ, God shows no favoritism—only a relentless commitment to restoration. All are worthy of healing. All are seen. All are held within the reach of God’s saving grace.
Many of us know what it is to live with a wound that does not heal—physical, emotional, spiritual, or communal. We may have tried every remedy available to us and found ourselves still bleeding, still waiting, still invisible. The woman’s story speaks to faith that persists without guarantees. She does not know for certain that healing will come; she only trusts that God’s mercy might be near enough to reach out and touch.
I think we can also relate to the woman’s courage. She acts in a space where she is not supposed to be. She approaches God not from a place of religious permission, but from desperate hope. Her faith is quiet, almost hidden, yet it is powerful enough to draw life from Jesus himself. In this way, she teaches us that faith is not always confident or public; sometimes it is trembling, private, and born of survival.
Many of us have internalized the belief that we must be worthy, whole, or important before we can approach the divine. The hemorrhaging woman exposes that lie. She comes as she is—unclean, unnamed, afraid—and discovers that God’s healing grace is not blocked by her condition. Instead of contaminating Jesus, she is made whole by him.
Finally, we relate to her story as both recipients and witnesses of grace. Jesus insists on seeing her, naming her, and restoring her to community. In doing so, he teaches us something about discipleship: healing is not complete until the wounded are recognized, dignified, and welcomed back into relationship.
So I ask you, who here in this room longs for healing—in your body, mind, spirit, or relationship? Who in your life requires healing? Where do you see the need for healing and God’s grace in the world around you? The story of the hemorrhaging woman asks us where we might need to reach out in faith ourselves—and where we are being called to notice, stop, and honor the quiet courage of those who have been suffering just beyond our line of sight. May we always be up to the challenge God calls us to. Amen.