June 29, 2003

Reach Out and Touch

A terminally ill young man came in to the clinic for his usual treatment when a new doctor said to him, very casually and cruelly, “You know, don’t you, that you won’t live out the year?” On his way out, the young man, by now weeping, stopped by the office of the medical director and complained bitterly, “That doctor took away my hope.” And the director replied, “I guess he did. Maybe it’s time to find a new one.”

Is there hope when hope is taken away? Is there hope when the situation is hopeless? That question leads us to Christian hope, for in the Bible hope is no longer a passion for the possible. It becomes a passion for the promise. Or as Paul put it, hope is faith in things unseen, yet expected.

Today’s gospel lesson is very much a twin story of healing, one of many in the scriptures, but one that really grabs us by the heart. There are actually two stories here, but Mark wants us to consider them together. Neither the woman no doctor could heal, nor Jairus, the man with a dying daughter, had actually seen Jesus work miracles, but they believed, they expected, they hoped with all their heart. And they were desperate. They came hoping when they had no hope at all.

Let me just run this idea past you this morning—anybody can hope when things look hopeful. When you’re young and maybe you haven’t quite made it yet but you’re full of pep and promise, it’s easy to be hopeful that things will work out. But maybe if you’re a little farther along and you’ve had your share of disappointments in your family or your finances or just how far you got in life, and maybe your health is starting to go south, then hope doesn’t come so easily. Yet because we who call ourselves Christians proclaim ourselves to be the people of hope, we must cling to hope even when our last nickel has rolled down the storm drain, even when the doctor has come into our hospital room and said “I have bad news, Mr. Jennings.”

If we believe that Jesus Christ is who he says he is, the Lord of Life who has conquered death, if hope is to be a virtue that illuminates our life and makes the dark moments bearable, we must hope when things are hopeless, when hope has dried up.

All hope had dried up for this woman and her bleeding, and this man with a dying daughter. Yet they discovered that when faith connects to Jesus, there is no hopeless situation. The simple truth, what I want you to carry out the door this morning, is this: no life is hopeless, unless Christ is absent. Life with Christ is an endless hope; life without Christ is a hopeless end.

Mark often ties together two stories for the sake of contrast, and that’s how these two people who come to Jesus should be taken: one female, one male, one poor, one rich, one a pillar of the Jewish community, the other made ritually unclean, an outcast, by her bleeding. But they are equal in the sight of Jesus. The only thing that matters to him, the only things that moves his heart, is faith. That’s all anybody has to offer, and all he requires of us. Faith that connects with Jesus.

Neither Jairus nor this nameless woman had perfect faith, and neither do any of us. Both had made Jesus not their first resort, but their last desperate bid to outwit death. But what saved them was the object of their faith: they made contact with Jesus. They touched him, and he touched them.

One moment in the worship service that is very, very important to me is the passing of the peace. I make sure that the passing of the peace is included each and every week. Most of you seem to share my feeling that it is a very special, very important moment, and the rest at least tolerate it. If you come Wednesday night you will find that I love doing a prayer circle. I love being with you, my friends, and praying for you in that kind of setting. I think you can feel Christ’s presence with us in those moments.

But you’d be surprised how many churches never pass the peace at all. Before I came here I would preach on average twice a month at any church that would have me, and almost always I would be told to draw up the service to suit myself.

So I would include the passing of the peace, and often I would do so in a church that wasn’t used to it. When we came to that point in the service people would show their discomfort on their faces. They simply didn’t like being called out of their comfort zone to shake hands with their neighbor. They came to church with a little invisible shell around themselves, and they didn’t like anybody cracking through that shell. But such an attitude simply is not the example of Jesus.

So often in the gospels we witness a Jesus who wants to convey the power of his redeeming love by a touch, an arm around the shoulders, a quiet moment when he takes someone’s hand and says “I know you have sinned, but you are forgiven.”

I think it’s sad that we’re so paranoid on the subject of touching in America. People are so ready to read the wrong motivation behind touching of all kinds. We are touchy about touching. People in other parts of the world don’t seem to have this cultural hangup. Jesus touched people whenever possible, and obviously took great joy in showing people his compassion in that way. Whenever he worked miracles, they occurred with a touch. He had waited through eternity, until the moment was right, to take on a physical presence so he could touch those he loved, and heal them. Frankly, I think that the joy of being able to share his love in a physical touch made it possible for Jesus to face the physical torture that awaited him on Calvary.

Karl Menninger, one of the fathers of modern psychiatry, founded a clinic in Kansas that still bears his name. There they conducted an experiment in the value of being touched. They identified a group of babies who did not cry. Why do babies cry? Because they know instinctively that crying is a way of getting attention. But these particular babies came from settings where they had been abused. Not physically abused, but psychologically. Their parents had allowed them to cry and cry, and never responded. What happened? The babies eventually learned to stop crying. They learned that it wasn’t worth the effort.

So the Menninger Institute tried an experiment. They recruited volunteers from senior citizen homes to come in and hold these babies and rock them. The object was to get these babies crying again. And it worked. Touching made the babies whole again, and study after study since then have shown that children who are touched and held in a loving way grow up with a positive sense of themselves, and they learn to love others. But children who are deprived of such loving touches grow up to be fearful, even hostile to those around them.

Our need for physical touch continues throughout our lives, but even more important is the need for spiritual touch. To put it in a nutshell, we are not meant to live in isolation from one another. We are hard-wired to need one another, to live in community with each other. This is one of the strongest selling points the church has to offer to today’s world, the idea that we can come here and bear one another’s burdens, to lift each other up, to touch one another, maybe not hand to hand so much as touch one another in the heart. Years ago the telephone company came out with one of the most successful ad campaigns in history. Remember what that was? “Reach out and touch someone.”

And of course, that’s just the course of action this anonymous but very sick woman took in today’s gospel lesson. She had this superstitious belief that all she had to do was touch Jesus’ clothes and this terrible disease would finally be healed. We might smile at this naïve woman, but to understand this woman’s desperation we have to realize that her bleeding had cut her off from society for 12 years. She was unclean. Under the law she could touch nobody and nobody could touch her. The doctors had been no help, and now she was broke, and broken.

But there was one doctor she had not consulted, and she was determined to see him without an appointment. So she sneaked her way through the crowd and touched the hem of Jesus’ cloak. What happened then is very puzzling for us. Jesus stops and says, “Who touched me?” The disciples were mystified. “Why, master, look around at the crowd. Everybody touched you.” But Jesus insists, one particular touch was different. “I felt power flow out of me.” What does that mean? Did this woman drain his battery? It sounds like he’s describing a power surge, like his circuit breaker tripped.

No, I think what happened is that Jesus was so acutely sensitive to us that he could tell the difference between a crowd milling around him and one desperate woman who reached out in faith. That faith, that’s the link. It’s like lightning crackling between two poles. Zap! God’s healing power flowed out.

But whatever happened here, what is important to remember is that in the midst of the crowd, Jesus never lost track of the one. He felt the touch of a single desperate woman, even one who was unable to speak to him, unable to plead out loud. So often we come to the Lord and we’re not able to tell him what we need. We can’t speak the words. But he knows anyway. Don’t ever say that in the enormity of the universe that God doesn’t know you or hear you. This is sinful. Not only does God hear you, he wants us to reach out to him. This is the God who told us, “Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Meanwhile, what of Jairus? He doesn’t even come asking for himself. He comes begging for the life of his precious 12 year old daughter. My niece Rachel is 12, and such a sweet child. If she were dying I could see myself begging Jesus for her life, too, and she’s not even my daughter. How much more would a father plead in desperation. Maybe this man had prayed in the synagogue night and day, and seen the girl grow weaker and weaker. Maybe he came, like the bleeding woman, in desperation, as a last resort. It doesn’t matter. What matters is our attitude, our faith. Jairus humbled himself before Jesus and said, “You are the savior, and I’m the one who’s drowning. Save my daughter, and save me!”

That attitude, that humility, that willingness to say, I’ve tried everything, I’ve spent all my money, I’m tired of relying on myself and my puny powers, I’m willing to turn everything over to you and believe, that’s what moves God’s heart. That’s all he asks. Faith. And in return he offers the world hope.

To close today I want to tell you the story of Pandora’s box. It comes to us from Greek mythology, and it is their tale of how the world and especially men and women came to be created. Now the story goes that when the Greek gods created the world there were no animals to populate it, only a race of creatures called the Titans. Two of the Titans were selected for the task of creating animals, Prometheus and his brother Epidemius, and they were given a sack full of qualities that were to be distributed to each of the animals so they would be able to survive in the world.

One by one Prometheus and Epidemius created animals and gave them great powers. To the lion they gave courage, to the fox cunning, to the elephant strength, and on and on. But finally the brothers created an odd animal and called it a man. They looked it the sack to give this man a quality for his survival, but the bag was empty. They had been so generous with the animals that all the qualities were gone. What could they do? How could man hope to survive?

So Prometheus went back to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, and stole their most precious possession, the one that was forbidden even to the Titans—fire. With the gift of fire, man could make weapons to defeat the animals, and would be able to see in the darkness even with his weak eyes. Man’s survival was ensured.

But when Zeus, the chief among the gods, learned of this theft, he was very angry. He decided to punish man by creating a woman. So he fashioned such a creature, named her “Pandora” and each of the other gods was allowed to give her a gift. Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo gave her music, and so on, until she was ready to be sent to earth. But Zeus, being the sly one, gave her a box to take along which she was forbidden to open, ever. Zeus knew the kind of creature she was, and knew that her curiosity would soon be her undoing.

And so it came true. Pandora was very happy in her new home, but she grew more and more intent on learning the secret of the box and until one day she said, “I will just peek inside and quickly close the box again.” But once she had broken the seal, and opened the lid just a tiny crack, “Whoosh!” Tiny winged creatures came flying out of the box, ugly foul creatures that buzzed horribly, biting her, swarming and stinging and then flying off through the windows to infest all the earth.

Desperately Pandora tried to close the box, but she could not. A seemingly endless stream of these creatures flew about, and Pandora to her dismay realized what they were—Zeus had given her a box full of evils which he meant to inflict on man—evils such as envy and ignorance and prejudice and want, selfishness, anger, pride and gluttony. Some bore the diseases which attack man to this day, and some were the horrors that man inflicts on himself, like wars and famines and feuds and even the pain of a heart broken by unrequited love.

Pandora realized, as we all sometimes do, that her actions had caused an unspeakable calamity for the world, and she sank to the ground weeping as all the winged creatures flew away to the far corners of the world. She wept a very long time until she realized that inside the box there was a soft glow. Fearfully she looked inside once again, and out flew a beautiful winged creature like a butterfly, only more lovely still. Pandora asked the creature its name, and it told her: “I am hope.” Pandora watched as hope flew out into the world, and knew that for all the evil and wickedness in the world, man would have a refuge from his own despair, for hope was alive.

You may ask, why am I telling you a story from Greek mythology? Because for all the elaborate and beautiful poetry of such a story, the Greeks still had no one at the heart of this story to believe in. But praise God, we do. We have the central figure of Jesus Christ, who loved us so much that he was willing to come to earth and assume human identity so that he could touch us and heal us, and so he could suffer and die for us. He wants to touch us today just as much as he did 2,000 years ago and I tell you, he stands ready here, this morning to touch us spiritually and heal us.

There are four steps to healing that we need to take away from today’s Gospel lesson: one, we need to come to Jesus. First or last, we need to come to him seeking a miracle. Second, we need to fall before him as Jairus did, as the bleeding woman did, and say, “Lord, you’re the savior and I’m the one who needs to be saved.” Third, we need ask him for what we need in prayer. It’s not that he doesn’t know our needs, it’s because we need to place our trust and hope in him. And lastly, we need to believe that what we ask will be granted. We need to be contented and sleep at peace knowing that God is in charge of the world.

Maybe you came into this building today feeling as if your hope had all dried up. Maybe you have given up on solving a problem with your child or your health or your job or your finances. Maybe you’re feeling as isolated and alone as a woman slowly, for 12 years, bleeding to death. If so, if you’re looking for good news, my friend you’ve come to the right place. Here is where Jesus takes our hand and looks us in the eye and says “My child, get up.”