Page 22 - The Plain Truth Spring-Summer 2026

Kate Waterman

Free from shame

Jesus has paid the full price for your shortfall

he woman with an issue of blood must Shame rolled away
$ 2! !!* 0!..%Ƃ! 3$!* !/1/ /'! In the Gospels, Jesus made the same pronouncement over
4
Twho had touched him. A condition like a number of others, including the blind man, Bartimaeus.
For this man, the ‘disgrace’ was being disabled, the
hers made her ceremonially unclean – and also necessary dependency on others to lead him, having to
rendered anything she touched unclean. 1 beg to survive, and enduring the insults and speculation
She should not really have been in the of passers-by about what he had done to ‘deserve’ his
crowd, much less touching the ‘rabbi’. Would plight. Once again, Jesus rolled away years of mortification
Jesus rebuke her, or the crowd shout insults? with his decree.
Shame… we have all experienced it. Sometimes it
Trembling, she made her confession, and Jesus arises from our own sin, sometimes it comes from real
responded with the amazing declaration, ‘Take or imagined failure, and sometimes from being despised
heart, your faith has made you whole’. and rejected. Shame is a universal condition, experienced
His choice of words was important – this by all in some degree, regardless of gender, wealth,
wasn’t just about physical healing, the Greek nationality, age or colour. Who among us has not had
word, ‘sozo’ used here means ‘save, make a childhood experience of feeling shame in the classroom,
whole or rescue from destruction’ as well as the playground, or on the sports field because we didn’t
understand how things worked, or just couldn’t do what
‘restore to health’. 2 was being asked of us? Or as a teenager, trying so hard
Jesus was fulfilling his mission announced to the synagogue to look and behave like the trend-setters and feeling
at Nazareth: embarrassed about perceived failures.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent
me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to
the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at
liberty them that are bruised…’ 3
At this, twelve years of distress rolled away. Twelve years
of being unable to hug her loved ones, of being barred from
going up to the temple for the great feasts, of watching
where she sat and what she touched, and perhaps keeping
quiet about mistakes she had made. Twelve years of shame
was removed publicly.

22 The Plain Truth Spring-Summer 2026 Find us online at www.plain-truth.org.uk