Thronging Christ and touching Christ.
Note:
I. The mighty difference, it may be a difference for us as of life and death, between thronging Jesus and touching Him. The multitude thronged Him; only this faithful woman touched Him. There was nothing to the outward eye which should distinguish between her action and theirs. Peter and the other disciples could see nothing to distinguish this woman from any other member of that eager, inquisitive, unceremonious multitude which crowded around Him, as was their wont; so that Peter, who was always ready, and sometimes too ready, with his word, is half inclined to take his Lord up and rebuke Him for asking this question, "Who touched me?" A question which had so little reason in it, seeing that the whole multitude were thronging and pressing upon Him at every moment and on every side. But Christ re-affirms and repeats His assertion: "Somebody hath touched Me." He knew the difference, He distinguished at once, as by a Divine instinct, that believing onefrom the unbelieving many. There was that in her which put her in connection with the grace, the strength, the healing power which were in Him. Do you ask me what this was? It was faith. It was her faith. She came expecting a blessing, believing in blessing, and so finding the blessing which she expected and believed. But that careless multitude who thronged the Lord, only eager to gratify their curiosity, and to see what new wonder He would next do, as they desired nothing, expected nothing, from Him, so they obtained nothing. Empty they came, and empty they went away.
II. Is there not here the explanation of much, of only too much, in the spiritual lives of men. We are of the many that throng Jesus, not of the faithful few who touch Him. We bear a Christian name; we go through a certain round of Christian duties; we are thus brought outwardly in contact with the Lord; but we come waiting for no blessing, and so obtaining no blessing. Faith is wanting, faith, the divine hunger of the soul, the emptiness of the soul longing to be filled, and believing that it will be filled, out of God's fulness, and because this is so, therefore there goes no virtue out from Him to us; it is never given to us so to touch Him as that immediately we know in ourselves that we are whole of our plague.
R. C. Trench, Sermons in Westminster Abbey,p. 318.