Last week here at Christ Church we did something that I found rather remarkable. We held a healing service. This was the first healing service that I had taken part in. I attended one, long ago during my life as a Catholic, but I had never been to a Lutheran service before. During the service, nearly every person in the congregation came forward to receive a healing prayer. As Pastor Carlson, Pastor Farlee and I prayed the prayer, we each put our hands on the person for whom we were praying. For each person, whether I knew them or not, I reached out my hands and laid them on that person’s head, and asked God to drive away sickness, make whole the broken, deliver from the power of evil, and preserve faith. And then I took a little oil, and rubbed it on their forehead, making a sign of the cross.
As I did this, I was reminded of all the people that I don’t touch. I don’t know about you, but I don’t often go around touching strangers. For that matter, I don’t often touch friends. While children will cling to anyone who allows it, as we grow up, we grow invisible shells around ourselves. We stop touching one another, and when we do touch one another, we’re very careful about it. We know instinctively about “personal space,” and we mostly respect it. When I brush up against someone in a crowded store, I apologize, “oops, sorry.” I didn’t hurt that person, I just touched her elbow with mine. What am I apologizing for?
There are other kinds of social space that we are even less aware of most of the time. The space between classes, between races, between religions. These are boundaries that we cross so rarely, and so reluctantly. These social lines control us, guide our actions and our decisions in subtle and surprising ways. Where do we live? Shop? Eat? Exercise? Worship? I tend to go where I’m most comfortable, where I’ll find people like myself. Once upon a time, these lines were clearly drawn by geography, and people rarely chanced coming up against someone so different from themselves. But today, in our pluralistic society, we are confronted daily with difference, and it is easy to feel powerless to reach out across that difference to touch someone on the other side of the boundary. I don’t mean literally – we might bump into someone on the bus or the street – I mean a different kind of touch. It is easy to feel powerless to make a connection with someone who is on the other side of the lines that divide us. And that sense of powerlessness, that inability to connect with others, leads to misunderstanding, hate, even wars.
Jesus lived in a highly pluralistic society, too. With Israel at the crossroads of the Middle East, having been invaded time and again, there were many different races and ethnicities and even religious faiths living side by side. And to intensify the situation, for the Jews at least, there were purity laws that made it clear who was okay and who was not. Who was in and who was out. Any attempt to reach across those boundaries served, not to pull those on the outside in, but to drive those on the inside out. Yet time and again, we hear of Jesus crossing those boundaries, risking becoming an outsider himself, in order to help to draw the outsiders in. He goes into areas where no good Jew would go, like Samaria. He talks to and even eats with people no good Jew should talk to or eat with, like prostitutes and tax-collectors. And he touches people no good Jew should touch. Like lepers.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is still in Galilee, where his fame has been spreading as one who teaches with authority and as one who heals the sick and casts out demons. As he goes through Galilee proclaiming the good news of God, proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near, he is approached by a leper, who says to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” As a leper, this man is already breaking the rules. He is an outsider, ritually unclean, and therefore not allowed to approach others. Yet here he comes, breaking those rules, reaching right across the boundaries, in desperation, begging Jesus for some help, some bridge that might allow him to come back to society, to return to the inside, to be whole again, to be free. And in fact, that is what the Greek word that we translate as clean means. It means “to be ritually cleansed,” but it also means “to be healed,” and even “to be set free.” This leper is asking for all of these things – he wants his body to be restored to health, and he wants to be considered clean so that he can return to his life and to the temple. He wants to be set free from the things that are keeping him from living his life, from being in community, from God.
And Jesus replies, “I do choose. Be clean. Be healed. Be free.” But he doesn’t simply say the words. Jesus reaches out and touches this leper. And in touching him, Jesus frees him. Jesus crosses the boundaries, breaks down the walls that divide them, and shows solidarity with this man who is on the outside. And immediately he was made clean. Immediately, when Jesus dared to set aside those social conventions that bind people and separate us from one another, immediately, this man was set free. By touching a leper, Jesus risked becoming unclean himself. But by doing so, Jesus destroyed the power that this label held, the power that separated this man from society. In being willing to become like the leper, Jesus removed broke the power of the leprosy, and welcomed the man back into society. Jesus drew the outside in.
This story at the end of Mark’s first chapter points us to the story at the end of Mark’s entire gospel, the story of Christ’s journey to the cross. In that we will hear of how Christ broke down all the boundaries of sin and even death, how in Christ, God became like us, was murdered on the cross, and endured all the worst consequences of sin. And we will hear about how in Christ, God overcame them, overcame death and the grave, and in doing so, freed us all from the power that they hold over us. In Christ, we have been set free from all of those things that separate us from one another, even death. In the face of that, a simple touch seems so easy.
As I rubbed oil on people’s foreheads last week, inviting them to receive the oil as a sign of healing and forgiveness in Jesus Christ, I also remembered those I have touched. I remembered how that touch affected my colicky baby, the way that rubbing her forehead reassured her and calmed her and let her know that she was not alone, that she was protected and loved. I remembered my patients at Abbot Northwestern, usually at the other end of their lives, fretful and bed-ridden people fighting sickness in their bodies, how a touch on the forehead reminded them that they were not alone, that they were held by God’s embrace. That is the message of the healing prayer, as well. The oil that was rubbed on your forehead last week, was a reminder that your are not alone, that you are protected and loved, that God has broken down the barriers that hold you captive, that you are a child of God. That you are free: to reach across the barriers that Christ has broken down for you, to touch the lives of others, the proclaim the kingdom drawing near.
Alice Tomhave, whose 100th birthday was Friday, spent much of her career reaching across boundaries. Working in social services, she spent her career helping children who might have been on the outside. She reached out to them, helped children in need, and in doing so, demonstrated for them the love of Christ, bringing healing, cleansing, and freedom. Each of us has our ministry, our way of demonstrating Christ’s love. Each of us reaches across the boundaries, breaks down walls. Whether it’s in a personal relationship, or in your career, whether its in a volunteer position, or a ministry. Here at Christ Church, we are looking for ways to reach out. We are trying to start up a ministry of arts for the local schoolchildren, most of whom we are normally separated from by the invisible barriers that rule our lives. It is never easy, and it always involves some risk. But in doing so, we trust that we are living out the freedom that Christ won for us, and we are experiencing the in-breaking kingdom.
I remember hearing a skit on “A Prairie Home Companion” where a husband and wife are debating whether they will go to church on Easter. Finally the husband says, “Well, okay, I’ll go. But if anyone tries to shake my hand, I am out of there!” That is the way that so many of us go through life – in our comfort zones, hoping simply to get through and get home. Yet each week, on our way to Christ’s table, we take a moment to do exactly what that man dreaded – we reach out, and shake hands. As we do so, we say to one another, “The peace of Christ be with you.” And in reaching out in the freedom that Christ has given us, by breaking down again the walls that Christ first broke down for us, by sharing with one another the gift of touch, our prayer of peace it becomes so, and we receive the peace that we share.
There is a reason that we use the laying on of hands in our healing service. Touch is healing. We have been given a gift, the gift of loving, healing, freeing hands. Because Christ has touched each of us through the waters of baptism, because Christ has washed us clean, set us free, reached across the walls that separate us, we are free to reach as well. Those lines of class, gender, race, religion, even sin, do not dictate who we are or what we can do. We are as free as children to touch one another, to offer healing and love. My daughter still comes to me for that reassuring touch. For a long time, when she was anxious or sick, she would come up to me and grab my hand and put it on her tummy, flat with my palm resting on her belly. I suppose that it was a comfort. These days, she doesn’t do that, but she still climbs into my lap whenever she can. She demands her snuggle time. And I see her share that healing touch with others. Like the little boy at the party who was feeling too shy to join in. Grace went up and gently touched him on the shoulder, and invited him, slowly coaxed him into the group. Or the friend who had such a bad day at work, who Grace greeted with a joyful hug, what we call a hernia hug, and a loving welcome. Children have a natural sense of how they are embraced by and free in God’s love, and so they are free to embrace and share it with others. We adults are also embraced, set free.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment