“Touched by Christ”
3 Pentecost B –
Mark 5:21-43
Brothers and sisters in Christ, Grace and Peace to you from our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Touch. It’s a touchy subject. The line between a caress and a slap, between the expression of love and the expression of hate can be very thin. So thin that it is easy to erase.
Even the way our bodies are made testify to the two-sided nature of touch. Hold out before and open it, fingers splayed out. Look at it. It’s almost pleading, asking, inviting, isn’t it?
Now, as quick as you can, use that same hand to make a fist! How long did it take? A fraction of a second? To go from inviting to threatening. From a soothing and healing touch to touch that can break a jaw. Now slowly open your hand again. Feel the tension, the tightness go out of your muscles as you open the fingers out.
For better and for worse, there is power in our hands and our touch. There is a power of healing and there is a power of harming, a power even to end life.
As a fully human being, Jesus had those potentials in his body. As we see with the money changers in the temple, he could employ his body in anger. But what we hear and see in our gospel today is
There are a lot of stories floating around on the Internet regarding miracles, the power of prayer, visions of angels and Jesus. All of them are meant to be inspiring. People hope that these stories will turn an unbeliever to faith in Christ. They are meant to touch us deeply. They aim to make strengthen our faith while serving as modern day examples and instances of the presence of Christ among us. However, many of them, when first we hear them, sound almost too good to be true.
There was a flurry of them following 9/11. Others have been making the rounds of email and such for years.
Unfortunately, the majority of them are too good to be true. Now faith of course, is not a function of fact, but the revelation of the Truth with a capital T in Jesus Christ. The danger of these stories is that finding that these events never happened, or that the people in them are fictional, can shatter faith.
The upside of the internet these days is that there are people who as hobby I guess run down these stories and check them out. They get the names of the people involved verify they are real. They track down the dates and times and places and witnesses and collect documentation.
But it is not the factual truth of this story that touches us and moves us. It is the larger truth behind the facts. The truth we heard today in these stories of the woman who bled for 12 years and of Jairus’ daughter. And that truth is that Christ Touches Us: not only in our souls and hearts but in our flesh. Christ touches us as surely as he took the hand of that young girl and as powerfully as the hem of his garment was touched by the unclean woman.
How does Christ touch you?
Maybe you read about this story several years ago. I think it was in Reader’s Digest and Life magazine as well the local paper in
The article details the first week of life of a set of twins. Apparently, each were in their respective incubators, and one was not expected to live. A hospital nurse fought against hospital rules and placed the babies together in one incubator.
When they were placed together the healthier of the two threw an arm over her sister in a endearing embrace. The smaller baby's heart rate stabilized and her temperature rose to normal. Here a photograph of Kyrie and Brielle in their incubator.
Intersesting coincidence with names not noted in any of the articles.
Kyrie = Maybe the pronounce pronounce it KAI-Ree, but Christians know it as Keer-ee-a – as in Kyrie as in Lord, as in Kyrie Eleieson “Lord have mercy”
Take a look at the name of the man who took the picture. It one of those things that if some one told you about it or you read it in e-mail, you might say Yeah, right. But here it is. Make of it what you will.
What I will make of it is it’s one of those sly, funny ways in which God wants to see if we’re paying attention. And he wants us to pay attention, because the story of these twins points us back to his Son and what he did in today’s gospel, and indeed throughout the Gospels.
He touched people. Literally. And people touched him. And not the people of power or wisdom, but everyone especially the poor and most shocking of all, the outcasts, sinners and the unclean.
Look at the two characters who touch or are touched by Jesus.
Women. Automatically powerless.
Woman with flow of blood – Unclean, socially and otherwise dead. Dead woman walking Alive but might as well be dead.
Jairus daughter – literally dead even though high-born, daughter of the head of the temple. On the right at puberty.
To touch either of these two would mean that you were unclean. And yet Jesus healed one, raised the other from the dead – and in so doing restored them to life in the world, life a one made in his image.
What could be more powerless than a two-pound preemie We are made in God’s image. The Spirit of God is in our making. That he shows us what it means to touch one another in his name and for his glory.
Kathy Fullarton’s ordination: Pastoral Rugby Scrum
Baptism: Sealed by the Holy Spirit and Marked (Touched) by the Cross of Christ forever.
Confirmation
At every occasion, every opportunity to touch someone is an occasion to be touched by Christ. In fact, let’s jump the gun and do it now:
The peace of the lord be with you always.
And also with you.
Let us share Christ with one another through holy touch! Amen.
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