The day school
kids and I play a little joke on each other every now and again. I guess
I’m to blame for teaching it to them, but I have to confess that they’re
awfully quick learners. It’s the old game of touching someone on one
shoulder while standing on the opposite side. As you turn expecting to see
someone there, the sinister sound of laughter breaks out on the other side.
Sometimes I wonder as I’m sure the teachers do, just what I’ve created.
Touch goes
hand in hand with being human—as routine as a shake of the hand or a slap on
the palm, as intimate as a lover’s caress as brutal as threatening as a
clenched fist. These days, a lot is made of the distinction between
appropriate and inappropriate touch and rightly so. Companies require their
employees to attend seminars to better understand the importance of physical
boundaries in the work place. To be a scout leader these days a person has
to attend “youth protection” training. As we all know, it’s an issue we
have to deal with in the church as well. A couple of years ago, our
insurance company required us to establish a policy on sexual harassment and
misconduct. For good or for ill, whatever way you look at it, there’s no
denying the power of human touch.
Jesus
certainly knew about the power of touch. He touched people all the time and
usually the kind of people others thought he shouldn’t even be seen with.
With a simple touch he healed the sick, cleansed the leper, welcomed the
child and set the sinner free. At the same time, Jesus was open to the
touch of others, the woman who had suffered from menstrual hemorrhaging for
twelve years, “if I but touch his clothes I will be made well” or Mary who
anointed Jesus’ feet with costly perfume days before his death. When Judas
looked askance at such extravagance, Jesus let him have it. “Leave her
alone. She bought it so that she could keep it for my burial day.” And
then there is this wonderful story that comes after his resurrection, after
the familiar events about what happened on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus
chooses to make himself known to those gathered together in Jerusalem. To
startled and terrified disciples convinced that what they’re seeing is a
ghost, he asks, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your
hearts? Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and
see.” Easter as a multi-sensory experience—could it get any better than
this? Please, tell us! Where do we sign up?
Of course the
funny thing is that none of them did. At least that what’s we’re told. To
suggest that any of them took Jesus up on his offer is truly reading between
the lines. By the way, the same is true of the story about Doubting Thomas
that we heard last week. “Put your finger here” Jesus implores. “Reach out
your hand and put it in my side.” But all the once skeptical Thomas could
do was confess, “My Lord and my God!” So, resurrection faith is not matter
of touching the evidence as if it were only for the privileged few who
managed to be with Jesus after he rose from the dead and before he ascended
into heaven. So, as much as we’d like to hear that Thomas, or Peter, or
Mary laid their hands on him, it’s probably better that they didn’t, but
then I doubt that they or anyone for that matter could have. Just when we
think we’ve got a hold of him. He’s gone, out on the road ahead of us. A
mystery as amazing as Easter can never be contained, refuses to be held on
to.
At the same
time, Jesus crucified and risen is not the figment of dazed disciples’ over
active imaginations. He isn’t a ghost or some kind of wispy apparition. He
is real—the kind of body that walks, talks and eats, real, alive and in the
flesh. In him, we behold God in the flesh, not as he was, but as he is, the
first fruits of God’s new creation. Now, in Jesus, God is touchable. He
comes to us to forgive us of the myriad ways in which we’ve failed in that
most basic of human calling—in touching one another whether through violent
betrayal or heartless abandonment.
We are
nurtured by the touch of others. Before we were born, we were enfolded in
our mother’s womb. When we were born, the arms of loved ones held us close
and supported us as we grew and learned. When the day was hard a soft,
understanding shoulder to cry on was welcome comfort. In those moments of
joy there is the welcome, heartfelt embrace of another. And no matter how
old we are or what stage of life we’re in, we are sustained by the touch of
others—from friends, with family and in our church community even in the
liturgy of worship as we join hands with each other in prayer, as we share a
warm embrace with our brothers and sisters in Christ, as we share the peace
of Lord who is with us always.
In the course of my
ministry, I’ve spent a lot of time in adult care facilities. One of the
things that I am most acutely aware of there is how often times in such
places people are so hungry for the touch of another human being. For
someone suffering from the ravages of a disease like Alzheimer’s disease
holding his or her hand often seems to break through the fog. Sometimes
it’s a faint squeeze, barely perceptible, but at other times it feels like
my fingers are going to come right off.
Touch can mend
even a broken relationship, a broken heart. Think of the father in the
Parable of the Lost Son. When his son returns after years of dissolute
living, the father doesn’t stand there alongside the older son ready to
deliver a lecture outlining his expectations for the younger son now that
he’s seen fit to come home. “But while he was still far off, his father saw
him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and
kissed him.” That says it all! Here we are witness to the kind of love
willing to carry the cross and proclaim to terrified disciples, “touch me
and see,” the kind of love that can bring life and healing even when it
seems like there is no hope at all.
So the Easter
Jesus is in the business of inviting, scared and doubtful people like the
disciples, like you and me to “touch and see”, to open our arms up to
receive the incredible gift that he comes to give, the gift that breaches
every wall, that overcomes every obstruction, even death itself. There’s a
great scene in the film Driving Miss Daisy when, at the end of the
movie the black driver and the rich white woman he works for silently and
unpretentiously hold hands with one another. And the image is absolutely
beautiful, a glimpse perhaps of the kind of reconciling that the crucified
risen Jesus is about.
Of course
touching directs us to the future too. When Jesus says, “touch and see” he
isn’t only speaking of his resurrection body, but ours as well, of what is
to come when “the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we shall be changed” and “all things will be made new.”
Then all hope and longing will be fulfilled as Jesus holds out his hand to
at long last welcome us home with him and those who’ve gone before us.
But in the
meantime, our hands and our arms are instruments of Christ’s mercy in the
world—for giving the hungry something to eat, for showing love to the
unloved, for communicating to our precious children that there’s no one in
the world more important than them, for helping to build a home for a young
family through Habitat for Humanity, for reaching across the walls that
divide us one from another so that genuine community would flourish, where
God’s love and true justice reigns for the good of all who are created in
God’s image.
And the wonder of it all
is that as we heed the call to take up the work God has given to us, as we
move into places and enter into relationships that we otherwise might not
enter, we meet Jesus, Jesus the one who invites us to “touch and see.” Make
no mistake, whether smooth and soft or worn and wrinkled—in the face of our
neighbor we see Jesus, the one who stands among us proclaiming peace for us
all.
Christ the Lord is risen.
Touch and see the one who is with us today. As witnesses of all that God
has done, let us follow Jesus as he goes on ahead of us into all the world.
There my friends, there we shall see him. Amen
