Sermon: "Healing Hands"

Intro to Mark 5:21-43

This morning’s gospel reading contains a story within a story.

This in itself is not unusual when it comes the sacred stories we find in our Bible. As Jesus tells his own story he embeds it within the story of the ancient Israelites.

Giving it roots and purpose in the process.

The Gospel writers in turn embed their stories within the story of Jesus. And we in turn embed our story within the stories we find in the Gospels.

Always looking back for connection and meaning.

Always looking ahead for hope and healing.

In this particular story within a story told by Mark,

Jesus has just returned from a journey he took to the Gentile side of the Sea of Galilee – and as soon as he steps out of the boat and back onto Jewish soil he is surrounded by a mob of people.

One of the first to approach him is the leader of the synagogue, a man of great status, who begs Jesus to come and save his dying daughter.

But on the way Jesus gets waylaid…

when a woman with no status, who is in desperate need of healing herself, pushes through the crowd and reaches out and touches him.

Suddenly, her story intersects with the story of the dying young girl,

and both become part of the Jesus story.

In the end two healings take place, two daughters are made well,

and in the juxtaposition of these two stories we find a common theme.

Those who seek healing, will receive it – but perhaps not in the manner nor on the timetable that we expect it.

 

 

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

July 1, 2018 – Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 5:21-43

“Healing Hands”

How many of you have ever held a newborn baby in your arms?

How many of you have ever reached out your finger to touch a newborn’s hand and marveled at how the infant instinctively wrapped its tiny fingers around yours and squeezed with all its might, as if it were holding on for dear life?

If you’ve had such an experience it may be difficult to fathom that there was ever a time when we human beings did not understand how important the touch of another is in our earliest years of life.

In the 1920’s, John B. Watson, one of the originators of the behaviorist school of psychology, actually urged parents to maintain a physical boundary between themselves and their young children.

He warned, “Never hug and kiss your children, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead at bedtime, and shake hands with them in the morning.”

A pat on the head when a good dead was done was more than enough to show one’s approval.

Watson believed that excessive touching would make children overly clingy and create “mawkish” or sickly adults.

Sadly, it took a large-scale human experiment to demonstrate that the opposite is actually true.

In the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s, the government of Romania sought to increase its industrial workforce by increasing its population.

It restricted the use of contraceptives, banned abortions for woman who had less than five children, and levied a 35% income tax on any man or woman who remained childless between the ages of 25 and 45. 

The result was a population explosion in which hundreds of thousands of children from birth to age 3 were abandoned and left in the care of woefully understaffed institutions.

Most of these children would be left alone in their cribs all day long,

never being picked up, or held, with only the most incidental touching if a diaper needed to be changed.

Over time, the children in these institutions were shown to have impaired cognitive abilities, lower IQs, stunted growth, flat affects, an inability to read social cues, and a reduced sense of empathy for the suffering of others.

Thankfully, once the plight of Romanian orphans became known in the early 1990’s, thousands of children were rescued from these institutions,

and we now know that some of the negative effects of the lack of human touch and attention in those early years can be reversed, gradually, over time, once the child has been placed in an environment where love and affection are given freely and abundantly.

The power we all possess, literally at our fingertips is truly amazing.

In 2009, an Indiana University psychologist named Matthew Hertenstein, demonstrated that we human beings have an innate ability to read and respond to emotions via touch alone.

In a series of studies, Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate specific emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch.

Initially, he found that many of the volunteers were naturally apprehensive about participating in the experiment.

We live in a “touch-phobic society," Hertenstein concluded,

"We're not used to touching strangers, or even our friends, necessarily."

In colder climates and more reserved cultures, such as here in New England, a discomfort with touching is even more evident.

If you ask your average Congregationalist to name their least favorite part of the Christian worship service, they will inevitably say, the Passing of the Peace.

All that hand-shaking and moving in and out of the pews is just too uncivilized for some.

But the results of Hertenstein’s experiments suggest that for all our reservations about touching, we human beings come equipped with an innate ability to send and receive emotional signals solely by skin-to-skin contact.  

Participants in the University study were able to communicate eight distinct emotions through touch alone — anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness - with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent.

Hertenstein admitted that the results surprised even him.

He expected the accuracy level would be about 25 percent, the same as chance or taking a wild guess.

We might think cultural influences would play a role in our ability to perceive emotions through touch, with those with fewer inhibitions possessing greater abilities, but Hertenstein was able to duplicate these results in multiple countries and multiple cultures,

demonstrating that we humans are more alike than we often think.

For those who don’t require a University study or social experiment to comprehend that God created us to crave and need human contact, it comes as no surprise that we find evidence of the power of human touch in the ancient stories of our Bible.

In our Gospels, we see Jesus repeatedly reaching out and touching those who were deemed untouchable by the prevailing culture.

Lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors.

Those who were considered ritually unclean under Temple law,

those who suffered from all manners of physical, mental, and spiritual illnesses and deformities that pushed them to the fringes of society –

often leaving them on the outside looking in.

In our gospel reading today – Mark’s story within a story –

we find Jesus touching two very different daughters of Abraham,

connecting them through his healing presence.

A 12-year-old girl born into privilege with access to the best physicians of the time who still could not save her,

and a woman with a 12-year-old hemorrhage who had lost her footing on the social ladder long ago, if she ever had it to begin with.

One was perpetually bleeding and the other no longer had blood flowing through her.

One actively and urgently reached out to touch this man of great power,

and the other was a passive and peaceful recipient of his touch.

And in that moment of contact both were made well.

In both, Jesus brings forth healing – hope - life - where previously none of the above seemed possible.

That’s all we really need to know.

When we try to pick apart these intertwined stories we often get lost in the details.

We get caught up in calling Jesus a revolutionary and a radical in his time for stepping outside religious rules that rendered a man ritually unclean if he touched a bleeding woman or a dead little girl. 

We rally around the audacity of the marginalized woman for her "stealing of a healing," for taking something that she did not properly ask for –

and most in the crowd would agree she did not deserve – but nevertheless she persisted because she knew that Jesus offered himself freely and fully to all.

We attempt to explain away the resurrection of the dead little girl – because we know that can’t be literally true - by calling it a resuscitation or a reawakening, or a metaphorical rebirth made possible by faith.

Because in these two stories that weave in and out of one another we keep looking for an entry point to embed our own story.

The time we felt like we were dying and no one came to save us.

The time we felt like we were hemorrhaging and no one reached out to heal us.

The time we felt like we were untouchable and the world was conspiring to label us as unclean – unworthy – unredeemable.

While reaching into these stories and finding a radical rabbi, a persistent woman, and a little girl given a new lease on life gives us many entry points into making this story our own, I suggest we simply focus on the healing.

The healing that is given and received through the very human act of touch.

When Jesus was moving through the crowd being jostled from every angle, we’re told he was aware that power had gone forth from him, and he said,

“Who touched me?”

And his disciples looked at him incredulously saying,

“What do you mean who touched you? Everyone here is touching you!”

But Jesus knew this particular touch was different.

Like the experiments that demonstrate our very human ability to read emotions through touch, Jesus noticed the difference between the desperation of this woman’s touch and those who reached out to him because they were curious,

or those who pushed through the crowd because they didn’t want to miss out on what they’d heard others had experienced,

or those who simply wanted to be able to say “I touched him” in much the same way people reach out to shake the hands of celebrities and politicians, to have a good story to tell, or to raise their own status in the eyes of others.

Jesus publicly acknowledges the woman’s touch and her healing,

not to shame her, but to bring awareness of the healing that has taken place before the community.

Those in need of healing are often isolated.

Illness, grief, addiction, abuse, despair – can cause us to want to keep our distance from others, while at the same time others fall into a pattern of keeping their distance from us, because we remind them of the ways that they need healing as well.

But Jesus invites us all back into community.

Community that is meant to heal – to restore – to redeem. 

That is when we know it is of God.

If we as a community find ourselves doing the opposite –

harming – isolating – separating –

then we know we are not following in the footsteps of Jesus.  

We human beings have been given so many gifts by God,

some of which we’re not even aware of.

From the instinct that causes us to reach out as an infant and grasp the finger of another, holding on for dear life,

to the compulsion we feel to reach out to another when we sense they’re in pain, or feeling isolated, or in need of comfort or healing.

Jesus isn’t the only one who has the power to heal with just a touch.

The good news of the gospels tells us so.

Thanks be to God, and Amen.