Sermon preached by Emily Tanis-Likkel

July 2, 2006

Mark 5:21-43

I was talking with a dance instructor at a conference recently, and she told me about how once she had taken a dance workshop in which the dancers had access to blindfolds, canes, wheelchairs and other tools for disabled folks.  They danced many different dances trying on these devices.  She said that it woke up her senses. Temporarily turning off some of her ability helped her identify, even if for a few minutes, with those who are disabled.  It helped put her in touch with herself as an embodied being.  Focusing on one sense at a time, or on all senses together, grounds us in who we are as humans.

Over the next several weeks we are going to explore together how we sense God through touching, seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting.  We’re also going to explore how we sense God spiritually.  Today’s text in Mark interweaves the stories of Jesus being touched by a woman in need of healing, and touching the hand of a girl who had died. In both of these stories, touch preceded what came to be miraculous healing.   In fact, many of the healing stories in the Bible include touch.  The power of touch is throughout the Bible.  The metaphorical hand of God brought the Israelites out of slavery and into the Promised Land.  It was with bare hands that Moses was commanded to build an altar at Mt.Sinai.  It was with a healing touch that Jesus healed a man with leprosy and made a blind man see.

What are your impressions of where in the world people are most in tune with the tactile sense?  Where is it least?  In the United States are we a culture of touch?  Cultural anthropologist Mariana Caplan experienced first-hand the vast differences in the degree that the sense of touch is used in various cultures.  Her findings are that we live in a touch-starved nation, and that it has led to problems such as loneliness and depression.  She writes, “I think that human beings were placed here together both because we have some business to do together, and because we need each other.  We cannot get the same physical nourishment from spending a Saturday evening on the Internet . . . as we can cuddling with our husband or wife, or by spending a quiet evening with close friends.  It is simply not as satisfying to heat up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave after work as it is to have a home-cooked meal.”   Touch roots us in our bodies, reminds us of the beauty of our created selves as reflections of God.

Touch goes hand-in-hand with blessing.  We lay hands on those who are ordained to ministry or commissioned for service.  We lay on hands in intercessory prayer, asking God to heal a person of sickness or pain.  We embrace a person whose spouse has died; we touch the arm of a friend who is upset.  The touch that Jesus gives is to be carried out by his disciples everywhere and in all time.

It is important that we reach out to one another because we are not disembodied beings.  We have flesh and bone, muscle and skin.  Dr. Caplan writes “Touching has to do with the acknowledgment of our shared humanness . . . it results from an acceptance of the separateness of each individual, and the knowledge that it is only through contact that union and communion can come about.  Beyond this, the possibility of fulfillment through the medium of touch—whether it be physical touch or not—is far beyond what most people have ever known or considered.”

The healing stories we heard this morning tell of two people who are very different from one another, but are both at the most critical point of their lives. Jairus’ daughter was twelve and dying of an illness.  Their house was full of people bustling around trying to do all they could to save her, but she was slipping fast.  Jairus, who was a synagogue leader, had heard of the miracles Jesus has performed, and so sought him out as his last hope.  Jairus came to Jesus and begged him to lay hands on his daughter who was gravely ill.  On the way to his home, a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years touched Jesus. This woman had spent everything she had to seek a cure for her disease.  She was deemed ritually unclean and so was an outcast, and practically speaking was deemed dead in society.  Even though there were people pressing in from all sides in that crowd, Jesus knew that someone had touched him in order to be healed.  He wanted to know who it was that had touched him, and when the woman spoke up he immediately healed her.  Jesus and Jairus were nearing the house where his daughter lay sick.  Some people came out to Jairus asking “why did you bother to bring Jesus here?  It is too late.”  But Jesus told them that she was not dead but asleep.  He gently took her small hand in his large hand, and said to her “talitha koum!”  Little girl, I say to you, get up!  She immediately stood up and walked around.  At these ultimate low points for the woman and twelve-year-old, the openness to touching and being touched by God facilitated healing.

            Thinking of our spiritual lives in terms of touch may seem strange.  We don’t see Jesus, let alone the hem of his robe that beckons us to reach and touch.  But it is this kind of intimacy God desires, and it is available to us.  Let me give you an example.  Years ago my Dad who is a pastor led the congregation during a church service in a time of reflection, asking to experience God’s presence.  Afterwards he was shaking hands in the back of church after a service when a woman approached him full of emotion.  She pointed to a place on her arm and said “he touched me right here.”  He answered, “I believe you.  Thank God.”  Later that week she sent him a note, saying, “Thank you for believing me.”  Sometimes people experience the touch of God and don’t recognize it.  Other times they feel it but don’t think anyone would believe them. 

            Praying with outstretched hands invites the touch of God, reminds us that God is present with us as we pray.  Directly asking God to hold our hands when we are afraid or sad can instantly bring assurance and comfort.  We can also experience the touch of God through other people.  Holding hands while praying with another can powerfully remind us that Christ is truly present among us, and link separate people into a communion.  It was faith that prompted the woman with the flow of blood to stretch out her hand and touch the robe of Jesus.  It was the faith of Jairus and his daughter that opened them to the healing touch of God.  Being open to the touch of Christ takes faith, even faith mixed with doubt.  This faith opens us up to God when we pray and in all of the ways we live our days.  Fortunately faith isn’t something we are supposed to manufacture on our own.  Faith is a gift that we ask God for and gratefully receive. 

Helen Keller wrote that if she had been forced to choose between sight and touch, she would choose to remain blind.  She wrote, “The world I see with my fingers is alive, ruddy and satisfying.  Touch brings the blind many sweet certainties which our more fortunate fellows miss, because their sense of touch is uncultivated . . . through the sense of touch I know the faces of friends, the illimitable variety of straight and curved lines, all surfaces, the exuberance of the soil, the delicate shapes of flowers, the noble forms of trees, and the range of mighty winds.   We make sense of the world in many ways through touch.  We know other people through touch, and we are made known to them through touch.

            On Friday I picked my daughter Eva up from school and after her busy day of play she fell fast asleep in the car.  After carrying her into the house I tried laying her down on the couch, but her little arms tightened around me in her sleep and I couldn’t pry them off.  So I resigned to rest with her plastered against me while she had her late day snooze, and I was glad for it too.  All of you who have cared for children have probably experienced carrying a child until your arms and back ache as the child gets heavier, sinking into your arms, the one who loves her.  Young children are so open to receive.  Perhaps this vulnerability is what God craves from us.  God yearns to carry us until we are glued together, resting in God’s loving embrace.  When we are really content we don’t say a word.  We listen to our breath and God’s breath and try to match them like a child might do.  As we breathe with the spirit, we know that we are children, that there are things that we don’t understand, but like children we are given the precious tool of imagination to gain a glimpse of God.  All the while we realize that in the midst of this intimacy God is also very “other” from us.  This paradox means that as we are invited to crawl into the lap of mama God or grandpa God or whatever image we are given, even while peering at God in wonderment, we are saying, “who are you?”

            As we put our hands in the hands of another, as we move our hands through the garden, as we knead dough, fold laundry, craft a piece of furniture, or open our hands in prayer, let us remember that God created this wonderful sense of touch.  Let us know that God touches us, and that we may stretch out our hands to touch God.  For some it may be a metaphor, a way of perceiving the nearness of Christ.  For others it may feel more tangible, something that is actually felt. If that is the case, I believe you, and thank God.

To Touch is to Live, Prescott, AZ:  Hohm Press, 2002, p. 12-13.

To Touch is to Live, p. xxiii.

Helen Keller.  The World I Live In.  ed. Roger Shattuck.  New York: New York Review Books, 2003, p. 30-31.