THE COMPASSIONATE AND HEALING TOUCH

4TH Sun. aft. Pentecost---July 2, 2006

United Lutheran—Red Wing, Minnesota

Mark 5:21-43

              I have two sources for this morning’s homily.  The first it this portion of Mark’s Gospel where two healings take place—the woman who risks touching the clothes of Jesus and the healing of the 12 year old daughter of Jairus.  The second source is Bernie

Siegel’s book entitled, LOVE, MEDICINE, AND MIRACLES.

              Taken from Mark’s Gospel, Jesus makes a house call to the home of Jairus after the father comes to him and says, “My little girl is dying, will you come and put your hanbs on her?”  Such faith, such trust he expresses in Jesus’ ability to heal.   And when he finally does come into the room, after being laughed at by people who didn’t believe she was just sleeping, he takes her hand and says to her in her own language, “Talitha Cum”..”Wake up, little girl!”  And she does and gets up.

              Then there is the woman who has been hemoraging for 12 years and after trying to secure help from all the medical persons touches Jesus garment and is healed.  She is then confronted by Jesus’ inquiry, confesses with fear and trembling, falls down at his feet and is told…”Your faith has made  you well, go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

              In Siegel’s book he writes, “Miracles happen to exceptional patients every day.”  And the defines exceptional in this way, “Do you want to live to be a hundred?”  If you answer with a visceral, “Yes”, no ifs, ands, or buts…You are exceptional!  He wasn’t suggesting that we have all our pains relieved, crooked bones made straight, warts made smooth.  His meaning is this, “You are willing to accept the risks and challenges to live life to the fullest where God has you right now.”  If you refuse to play the victim you are among the 15-20% of the people.  The power of God is often made known in works that God alone can do, such as healing and touch is part of healing.

              The gospels report a number of stories of healing by Jesus. And very often there is a common denominator.   In most, not all, he touches the sick or they seek to touch him.  IN both instances in today’s reading from mark, you find touch being employed.  Either Jesus touching or the believe that all one needs to do is touch him or his garment.  The healing power of Christ is conveyed in the touch.   We know that the touch of someone we love makes us feel good while the touch of someone we don’t like is often repulsive and overstepping a boundary. 

              We hold a child who is sick or frightened and the holding becomes a channel of love.  Our love flows out, the child knows that love.  The child’s pain flows into us, we feel that pain.  Holding is as important to us as to the child.  We most often bring comfort in holding and touching that child.

              In an age when touch has become such a taboo and we have become self-conscious and alert to “bad-touch”, touch is still an important human need.  I find that when I shake hands with people in the hospital, often there is a reluctance to let go.  We end up holding hands or at the time of prayer, placing a hand on an arm or shoulder. There have been moment of sitting by the bedside of patients and  parishioners when the last consciousness was surely that those who loved the person were there touching or holding them.  It points out for me some underlying thought about finding healing in touch.  We come into the world needing to be touched. It’s been demonstrated and documented that infants, born prematurely and who are cared for in a neonatal unit thrive more with touch.  Parents holding the child, nurses constantly taking those tiny infants in their hands, volunteers whose sole job is to snuggle those little bundles of life so that the warmth of the skin, a loving caress, or a heart beat transmit human contact.

              We’ll probably never know the full extent of this miracle.  But God has given us a gift of life that first emerged when god shaped us with his touch—the molding of humans by God’s hands.  

              That touch came home to me, to our family recently in the birth of Joseph Benjamin our youngest grandchild.  His mother had been on bed rest for six weeks, and he still may have been born somewhat prematurely yet needing a week in the neonatal unit of the hospital.  His lungs needed to catch up.  His parents, at first, could not hold him with all the tubes, “whistles and bells” attached to him but he needed to be touched. His parents were encouraged to spend time touching, talking, tenderly reassuring him by using his name.  To sooth him and let him know they were there with the presence of human touch.  And soon they were able to hold him and later he was released to go home.

              Being touched in tender and caring ways can be healing.  In many homes children are fortunate enough to have touch hunger satisfied.  Yet too many settings provide only touch that is punishing and abusive.  Enter a home where tender touch is normal, where the need for compassion is satisfied and you find homes that are havens coping with the stresses of life.  Bu where those expressions of care and touch are infrequent or meted out as with a medicine dropper and there should be no wonder that people desperately search out and too often receive unacceptable touch, or act out behaviors that are destructive not only to themselves but to others as well.

              On of the understandings of life in biblical times, often contrasted or even compared to our age, was the notion that the cause of events were directly related to God’s action.  Human fears attributed pain and disaster to the “gods”.  A more hopeful assumption was that if the gods were pleased, good things would happen.  The shaman became an important person in the culture.  For a shaman was not only a teacher, rain-maker, mediator, but also a representative of the gods as a healer.  People needed a tangible person they could believe had the power of the gods.

              To some degree, Jesus as a representative of God, the very Son of God, is depicted as a shaman, or healer.  In Biblical stories, like these today, he has the power to heal, even to raise the dead.  He personifies the very power of God.  And so out of compassion and concern, he responds to the please of persons like Jairus.   In the case of Jairus, faith is absolute trust and confidence in Jesus and Jesus’ ability to bring healing. 

“All you have to do, is come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well”.

And when the father is told that the daughter has died, those who were with him essentially are saying, “Don’t bother now, it’s too late, she’d dead!” And Jesus response to them is, “Don’t fear…only believe!”  Affirming that confident faith of the father, even in the face of death.  Radical trust, even when the evidence seems to contradict our expectations.

              The touch of Jesus really represents the radical nature of God’s grace.  God is out to recreate us, to change us.  To comfort and make all things new.  IN baptism we’re put to death in Christ’s death, so that we may rise again with him every day.  God is out to change us.  Through Jesus that healing touch brings new life.   Our part in that change is trust.  Trust is the heart of faith.  Trust was in the heart of the woman who risked touching Jesus.  Trust was in the heart of Jairus, the father of the little girl.

              What they saw in the face of Jesus was compassion.  They brought their trust, Jesus brought his compassion.  Compassion isn’t pity!  Compassion isn’t sympathy!  Compassion isn’t charity!  It is suffering with someone.  Standing in another’s place. Compassion means deep caring.  Henri Nouwin writes in OUT OF SOLITUDE,

“Compassion comes from the word, kara, which means, “to lament”.  The basic meaning is “to grieve, to experience sorrow, to cry out with one another.”  Like the lament of the psalmist.  “To suffer with, taking away the barriers which prevents us from entering into communion with one another.  Compassion and touch are ingredients of healing.

              In the Christian faith, touch is sacramental!  We touch with the hands when we baptize, when we confirm, when we administer a blessing, when we pray and intercede for the sick, when we share the peace.  Hands linked in a prayer, arms around the shoulders to comfort, the affirming hand laid upon another’s arm.  If we are Christ’s agents of love in this world we are called to share this compassionate, healing touch.

The hands of blessing, the hands of helping.  When we come to the altar for the bread and wine, we receive through touch and taste of Christ’s forgiving love in our lives.

              When we share the peace with one another with the handshake of touch, being able to use one another’s names, personalizing the healing of relationships, it is a sacred moment.  Jesus believed in touch, practiced the sacrament of touch in his ministry of for-giveness and healing.   Ultimately, Christ’s goal was to restore life and wholeness in the lives of all he healed and all he touched.   Ultimately, that is Christ’s goal with us, and for us and through us as the Body of Christ in our world today as well.

              Mary Schramm in her book, GIFTS OF GRACE,  told of her mother living in an apartment building in Seattle.  One day, as she used the common laundry in the building, she saw an elderly man sitting in the room.  She had placed her coins in the machine and realized that he was crying.  Approaching the man, she said, “I’ve seen you.  But I don’t know your name!  I noticed you were crying!  Is there anything I can do?”  He said, “Thank you, but no!” Then the tears started to flow again.  Then he said,  “Yes, there is something you can do, but I don’t expect you’d want to do it.  One year ago my wife died, and in all that time, no one has put their arms around me and hugged me!”

              Mary wrote, “With that my mother, Norwegian as she is, wrapped her arms around the man and rocked him in her arms.   Mary concluded by writing, “IT WAS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.  SHE WAS WILLING TO RISK LOOKING FOOLISH BY OPENING HERSELF TO THE NEED OF THE STRANGER!”  It was the right thing to do, a compassion and healing touch!

              Prayer is about trust and faith.  It is about placing our burdens on God’s shoulders.  It is about finding comfort in the power of God through Christ and his works of healing.  Of course, we are not always healed in the way we expect.  But healing isn’t always about the physical or the mental.  Yet it is mostly certainly of the heart, where we all need to be healed.

              As we come to the Eucharist this morning, this meal of thanksgiving for the graciousness of Christ’s forgiving love; as we receive once again the precious body and blood of our Lord Christ; know that you are being touched once again to bring not only forgiveness, but healing and hope to this day into the coming week.  Then go into this week and be a compassionate and healing presence through your life and your touch in the name of Christ.   Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

                                                                                                                Pastor Clark Cary