Sermon Notes, April 19, 2015
All You Need is Love: The Healing Power of Touch, John 1:1-5, 14-18; Mark 1:40-45
Today we’re talking about lovein our lives and in our churchso we can love people better because life is about love. Spiritual maturity, spiritual growth, is measured by how loving we are.
People respond to love differently. For some it's words of affirmation, for others it's spending quality time together. For some it's acts of servanthood. Today, we're looking at physical touch. We are talking about this today because the master of this love kind of love, like all kinds, is Jesus. We're looking at Jesus and touch. It's very powerful and it gets us into one of the most important areas of understanding Christian faith.It’s called the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Something happened in the story of God and the human race that nobody could have predicted that is terribly important. The apostle John, when he's an old man, starts telling this story. "In the beginning was the Word..."He starts it with the same phrase that the Old Testament starts with, the greatest story of all, "In the beginning..." John says, "In the beginning was the Word..." The “logos” was the Greek word for it. We get our word logic from that, reason, understanding, insight, to be able to study. All of John's readers would have loved this beginning. "In the beginning was the Word [the logos]..."
Ancient Greeks loved reason, logos, so much that some of them believed it was actually an eternal, spiritual, divine kind of being or presence of powers that you ought to worship. It was forever separated from this fallen material world we all live in with bodies that are corruptible, where stuff rots.
Israel loved wisdom so much that Old Testament writers would speak of wisdom as a person. You see this in the book of Proverbs. They would talk about wisdom being with God from eternity. Wisdom, the Word, wasn't just available to God; it was God's identity. It was His character. It was His essence.
When John writes, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,"Jewish readers would love that. But then John writes, "The Word became flesh..." Didn't see that coming. Nobody saw that coming.Jesus is God with skin on. "The Word became flesh..."
The reason this claim is so central to the Christian faith is because it means God became one of us. He entered into our world. That's part of what love does. It enters into the experience, the existence, the burdens of another person. Through Jesus, we can know what God is like. Also through Jesus, God experienced everything we’ve experienced. "The Word became flesh..." This has staggered people for 2,000 years. In Jesus, God knows what it's like to be tired and hungry and thirsty. God was tempted. God bled. Somehow, in Jesus, one day, God died. Didn't see that coming.
Whatever you think of this, to John, this is not poetry. This is not metaphor. This is not just a lovely idea. It happened. This matters, not because it is some abstract doctrine you have to affirm before you can be called a Christian or before God will let you into heaven. It matters because it means God is not just an idea. Trace this out. In churches or traditions or denominations, where this belief is lost, God turns into this kind of pale, lifeless, abstract idea, and faith never keeps its vitality. It matters because God is real, and God is alive, and God is active, and God has inhabited our planet. If you'll let Him, God will inhabit your life.
The Word became flesh, and the heaven and the earth came together as God always intended, and that was Jesus. Jesus is God with skin on.Touch and healing love in the life of Jesus. It’s amazing how many times the Gospels talk about Jesus touching people and how essential touch was to Jesus' life, to the way He interacted, and to His ministry. We’lltake a few of those episodes, then we’ll look at how we can express love through physical touch with people in our lives the way Jesus did.
- The touch of healing.
It’s very clear from Mark’s Gospel that Jesus delighted in touching needy people. There are no less than eight touches recording in the Gospel of Mark. Over and over when Jesus heals people, He does it by touching them. One instance in Mark will show the significance of why the Gospels keep talking about Jesus touching people when He healed them. Aleper came to Jesus askingJesus to heal him.
This is a very dramatic moment. A leper in that world was regarded not just as sick but as unclean. The law was clear about this. If a person touches uncleanness, that person is defiled. A leper comes to this rabbi, Jesus. Everybody watches to see what Jesus is going to do. Filled with compassion, "He reached out his hand and touched the man.”
This story is loaded. Jesus, the Rabbi, has deliberately touched the unclean in order to heal, in order to save another human being. Why does Jesus touch the man first while the man is still unclean? Jesus didn't have to do that. He could have spoken the word first, could have kept the law. What is Jesus doing? Well, because the Word became flesh, to God, nobody is untouchable anymore. Up until Jesus’ time whenever the holy and the unholy touch, whenever the unholy touches the holy, someone dies.
So why did Jesus do this?We’re looking at the human reasons, but there is an overshadowing theological reason. The touch of Christ’s pure hand on the rotting leper is a parable of the Incarnation. Jesus in the Incarnation took on flesh, became sin for us, and thus gave us His purity.“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus laid hold of our flesh. He touched us and healed us.
Here is the application for us. We will never affect others as Christ did unless there is contact and identification. To God, there is not a human being on the planet from which He must keep His distance. This is a huge change in the notion of what it means to be spiritual. This week, if you see somebody hurting, take a moment and reach out. That's what your hand is for especially if you pray for them, brings healing to souls. That's the touch of healing. It's amazing.
- The touch of reassurance.
In the gospel of Matthew, there’s an event where the disciples are shaken and terrified.“But Jesus came and touched them…He said. 'Don't be afraid.'" Matthew includes this tiny detail that before He says anything, Jesus touches them. They're on the ground in fear, and Jesus comes along.
Touch has the power to soothe people in the grip of intense fear. Instinctively, if somebody suffers grief or loss or sorrow, we hug them. Why? Well, touch can communicate what words can never say when there is a question you cannot answer or a problem you cannot solve. A touch just says, "I'm here for you." God made our bodies for this.
The church in the Bible very often is called the body of Christ. That ministry of sanctified touch, "You don't have to be afraid," belongs to us now. I mention this because sometimes, it doesn't get practiced. If you're part of our church, let's just make it a deal that we will ever be mindful of the power of healing touch. Look for chances to offer the touch of reassurance. "It's okay."
- The touch of reconciliation.
The very last healing story recorded in Jesus' life comes just hours before His death. Roman soldiers are sent to arrest him, and the Peter decides he's going to defend Jesus, so he grabs a sword from one of the soldiers and cuts the ear off of one of the arresters,a man named Malchus.Jesus, though, touches the man's ear and heals him. This little story is recorded in all four of the Gospels.
Jesus turns to this enemy who has come to arrest Him. He reaches to his face (it's a real intimate gesture when you touch somebody in the face) in this moment when everybody feels hatred and fear.
Look at your hands. Think about why you have them. Put them together. Hugging for some is not all that comfortable. But you know what? Do that a thousand times and it will start to feel a little less uncomfortable. Even if it doesn't, this is not about feeling a little less uncomfortable. It's about love, and love is not about my comfort. Love is willing to experience discomfort in order to will and work for the good of the other.
- The touch of blessing. (I love this one.)
People were bringing little children to Jesus to have Him touch them…He took the children in His arms and put His hands on them and blessed them.This is a picture of extraordinary beauty, quite unusual in the ancient world. The ancient world was not at all sentimental, as we tend to be, about children. They were regarded as lowest on the status pole. That's why Jesus would sometimes use them as a picture of life in the kingdom, of greatness in the kingdom. Children were made to be loved.Children whose bodies experience loving touch develop better emotional lives. Their brains actually develop quicker. They become closer relationally than those who were touch starved.
Here Jesus touches them. And He says something remarkable. He says, "Don't hinder them because to such as these belong the kingdom."Lead them to Me for blessing, because they represent the kind of people who will inherit the kingdom. He is always looking for those who were least likely to be blessed.
Often in the Biblewhen people prayed for people they would lay hands on them because they recognized touch is never just physical. Spirit body are all interwoven because the Word became flesh. To refuse to touch is to dehumanize, so Jesus touched people other folks would not touch, to bless them.
Now I need to say a word about the right kind of touch and the wrong kind of touch and how this form of the expression of love through touch needs to be redeemed.
Folks who work in this sphere say every human being has a kind of personal space, our little kingdom, which should not be violated. If somebody violates another person's personal space, particularly if a man violates the personal space of a woman, it's creepy and offensive and a little scary, and we don't do that.Unwanted sexual advances are wrong and sin and not okay.
Then there is also a clingy, needy touch that can actually drain life out of you.
There’s a very interesting story of Jesus being touched once and His immediate response was, "I felt power go out of me." Only Jesus can heal the infinitely needy soul. It simply is not right to try to manipulate a human being to satisfy the need that only God can satisfy.
Also, because our bodies are made by God and are so important and so enmeshed with, imbued with our spirit, the wrong kind of touch can be incredibly destructive. We see this in the destructive acts of sexual abuse and physical abuse. These acts between spouses or a parent and a child or in any relationship are wrong. They are sin.
The Bible talks about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit. That means when I'm dealing with the body of another human being, I am on holy ground.
Jesus’ hands were healing hands.On the last night of His life, those hands took bread and broke it and gave it to His friends and said, "This is my body broken for you." The Word became flesh, and then He died. Then came this strange story that He didn't stay dead and it puzzled people. It still does.
"The Word became flesh..." Jesus is God with skin on. "Why would God do that?"
It turns out human existence, your life, if you want it, is kind of a love story. There is this hero, this Prince, the best human being who ever lived. His name is Jesus, and He lives in serene perfection and joy. Then there is the human race, you and me, all ragged and sinful and hurting. In John chapter one, we’re told that, “to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” And then in Ephesians Paul tells us the Prince sets out to marry all those who have believed and make up His church. He actually becomes a peasant, actually becomes like us, actually sacrifices His life so one day the Prince and His bride, Jesus and His church, God and you, God and me could be one. Didn't see that coming.
Let me tell you something. The Word is behind you but also goes before you. The Word made flesh walks with you and is within you, and therefore all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.