Touch can be a good thing. As physical, flesh and blood people, we need and long for “touch” especially from those whom we care about. We wish to be able to “touch” them in return. Studies have shown that if newborns do not receive physical touch and care, in addition to the basic necessities of feeding and changing, they will die.
Why is touch so necessary for humans? The sense of touch removes loneliness. Good touch creates and expresses bonds of intimacy and affirmation of that person. This kind of touch is seen when people shake hands as a greeting which expresses respect, a lack of fear and repulsion of the other person. Friends may hug in greeting, or in comfort or sharing in a happy moment. Parents hug and kiss their children, they hold their hands. Husbands and wives, kiss and cuddle.
Then there are times when touch is desperately needed: times of fear, worry, anxiety, grief. The human response at those times is to fling out arms and hands and clutch for something, somebody, to give reassurance by a comforting touch.
Hence the value of holding the hand, of reassuring those who are ill, helpless, near death: whether conscious or unconscious. This touch is of great comfort to both the bed-ridden and the care giver alike. The fact that so many of us in 2020 and 2021, had been forced apart, forced to forgo those tender, precious, and beneficial moments of touching or being touched especially during illness and recovery, or during the waning health leading to death of our loved ones, has been a bitter and tragic part of that Covid era, and we must not soon forget those enforced deprivations.
Without touch, we feel even more “fear” and loneliness, like people unclean and forgotten, forced to deal with everything alone, our minds quite often will wander into dark and scary thoughts. The desire and need for touch, for community are actually a longing for God’s perfect creation of mankind before the fall when perfect fear-less communication was the standard.
God created people for community. Think about that word: community. Do you see the word: unity in it? It’s there. God created us soul and body in unity to exist in communion that is, in community with Him. Even when God created Adam, He did so in a very personal and physical way: touching and gathering together the soil and dust of the ground, then breathing God’s own breath of life into man’s nostrils. To form Eve God did not say “Let there be”, but He used the physical means of touching and taking Adam’s rib, and formed from it, the first woman.
As Lutherans, we confess that the body is not bad in and of itself. However, our bodies have inherited the flaws and weaknesses of our parents going back to Adam and Eve’s curse. The weakness and fallenness of our bodies reveal what is going on spiritually. Since the fall into sin, every man, and woman has been conceived and born spiritually dead and separated from God. No longer set within the framework of living in community with God by faith and knowledge of Him, our bodies reflect the spiritual loneliness and longing that should find its answer and its fulfillment in God. We are conceived with a spirit no longer connected to and in unity with God, but a spirit that seeks its own way as St. Paul wrote in last week’s epistle text (Ephesians chapter 2): “you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Often the emptiness of people’s spirits without the Lord, is lived out in the sinful passions of the flesh. People seek to be satisfied in the touch of the things of this world. Grasping at lust, or wealth, health, honor, glory, popularity, possessions, even family, through them, they seek to comfort themselves from the loneliness and emptiness of the spiritual void which lingers within them, without God. Yet, they can find nothing to grasp and touch that does not shift or fade with the passage of time in this sin-plagued life. All things pass away: parents, children, health, fame, pleasure. None can help and comfort when sickness attacks the body and death beckons. We may cling to the hope of life extended from drugs, the work of doctors, but no matter what, death will come. Death is the great cleaving and tearing of soul from body. This is the terrible wage of sin. All must pass through this ordeal of death of the body. It seems to unbelieving eyes that everyone must pass through it alone. But that is not how it has to be.
This is the joy of the Gospel, the great and good news that God does not forsake the flesh of mankind nor see it as repulsive and unclean and unworthy of salvation. He desires to purify, rescue, and comfort us soul and body. To bring life to the body through the giving of His Spirit to bring faith in Himself. His will is to renew and reconcile the community that was ruined by the sin of Adam and Eve: to cover over every sin committed by every person since.
That is why the Son of God came into the world. God saw that this flesh is something that is still worthy of redemption and salvation along with the soul and person. He desires that you, and I and all those who would believe would be reconciled to Him in a restoration of the paradise that was lost. Despite the rebellion of humanity, He does not desire you nor I to receive the full measure that our sins deserve. So, the Father sent the Son to bring the flesh of humanity into community with His divinity in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus felt in the flesh everything that we feel: temptation, illness, suffering. He hungered; He grew tired. Though He did not sin, He took upon Himself the sins of the world. When He healed, He took the spiritual ailment of sin along with its symptom. That really is how we should look at illness, birth defects, mental disorders, accidents, cancers, sufferings of any kinds, yes even death. These bodily troubles are symptoms of the reality of sin. That is why we suffer in the body and in the spirit when these things come upon us.
So, we see in today’s Gospel text how God seeks to interact with humanity: to comfort and to rescue. That is why Jesus touches the man who was deaf and dumb. Jesus touches him to absorb the man’s sin and to pour forth His healing Divine Power. His action also show God’s pity and comfort in our suffering flesh. Very often when Jesus heals or raises from the dead, He touches. He wouldn’t need to. He could just say the words. He does that too. But often, He touches, He grasps a hand, He spits and places His fingers, He heals when others touch Him. This shows that there is healing and comfort in the touch and presence of Jesus Christ!!
As the crowd proclaimed “He does all things well” in today’s text, so He does. He accomplished our salvation by receiving all the bad touches that our sin deserved: the whips, the nails, the humiliation, God’s wrath, and an excruciating death under the weight of sin upon His body and His spirit. Jesus died on the cross so that your death in your body is temporary. So that you do not die as one who is “alone” when your last hour comes here on earth. Death has been defeated in Christ’s sacrifice. To prove that the division between soul and body, the division between God and Mankind is temporary and has been overcome, Jesus rose bodily from the dead! He showed that human flesh is indeed redeemable in Him.
Even as the devil, the world, and our flesh would try to make us despair in this life, God comes to you and desires for you to rejoice in Him today, to be comforted in Him, and to be established and renewed in faith by His Spirit. He gives us the good touch and reassurance of His presence in Jesus Christ today. He continues to descend to comfort us in His true presence through material and physical means.
In Holy baptism, He uses water with the Word to touch our skin and our soul to wash us, drowning our evil nature, and bringing our spirits from spiritual death through the cross to life in His resurrection.
He touches us on our hands and tongue when we receive Christ’s crucified and raised body and blood in the bread and the wine. This is His communion to those who come in repentance and faith. This is where He pours out His power to forgive and deliver true comfort and unity in that confession and His presence. This sacrament works forgiveness of sins, it renews our faith and the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and it comforts and strengthens these weak bodies by His victorious body. We are physically reminded that death is overcome and these bodies which received Him in bread and wine will at the last day be raised imperishable. And through Him we are gathered into this body of the church with one another, to care for, pray for, and communicate for each other as further proof that we are called into a holy and redeemed community in Christ.
That is how Christians can survive this world of loneliness: “with hope” even when apart. How they can face even death without the trembling of an unbeliever. We can grasp and hold onto something that cannot and will not pass away: the Word of God in Jesus Christ. God in Jesus Christ has come to us, and grasped us to Himself. He will hold our hand, and He will lead us through the gateway of death, unfearing, alone nevermore. To be taken to our eternal home to live forever in His presence, surrounded by His angels and saints, victorious and rejoicing because of God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Pr. Aaron Kangas