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Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
Sunday August 21 2022
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Touch”
There is an interactive computer game called “Please, Don’t Touch Anything”, described as a cryptic, brain-racking button-pushing simulation. In brief, “Covering for a colleague who is taking a bathroom break, you find yourself in front of a mysterious panel which only component is a red button. And since you have clearly been instructed not to touch anything, the only thing you want to do now is push that button. Push it and expect to be held liable for any unintended aftermath. And there will be many.”
The game is based on what I believe to be a very human dynamic… as I walked to church in Philadelphia, there were often park benches carrying the sign “Wet Paint… Do not Touch”. All I wanted to do was… to stop and touch!
And then I find myself thinking of those comedic situations when children are in a car and one complains, “Johnny keeps touching me”. And when all else fails, the adult hears these words, “I do not want you ever to touch one another again.”
Sadly, but justifiably, in today’s world “touch” has taken on a whole different meaning for we live in a world appropriately ultra-sensitive to improper and abusive touching.
I see the importance, the necessity of touch in all our readings for today.
The reading from Hebrews 12 summarizes for us the theology, the image of God, that was carried by the Hebrews. In Hebrews 12:18 an uncommon, rare word is used for “touch”, it means not touch as tangible but also touch as exploring, discovering. There was to be no such “touching” at Mount Sinai. Listen to these words from the Message Translation: “18-21 (They came) to Mount Sinai—all that volcanic blaze and earthshaking rumble—to hear God speak. The earsplitting words and soul-shaking message terrified them and they begged him to stop.
When they heard the words—“If an animal touches the Mountain, it’s as good as dead”—they were afraid to move. Even Moses was terrified.” Imagine that dread fear paralyzing movement!
BUT, says the writer, “22-24 No, that’s not your experience at all. You’ve come to Mount Zion, the city where the living God resides. The invisible Jerusalem is populated by throngs of festive angels and Christian citizens. You’ve come to Jesus…” Here, at Zion (!), is the God who is living and welcoming, energized by grace; here, at Zion (!) is Jesus… and we know how constantly Jesus reached out and touched the untouchables.
In our Gospel from Luke 13, Jesus observes a woman crippled for eighteen years. No doubt from her everyone kept their distance… no touching for who knows… her sickness and sadness might be contagious. But Jesus… oh, Jesus calls her to himself, speaks words of healing and deliverance and then… “laid his hands on her, touched her” and she stood up straight and began praising God. The religious people could not contain themselves… what had happened was (to quote a young friend from years ago) “impolite, rude, crude and socially unacceptable”. These religious people used the law, manipulated the Scriptures in order to keep the needy, the poor, the destitute at a distance. These religious people were determined to build a barrier to prevent any touching of the holy, the spiritual, the divine. And when Jesus counters the defensive attitude of the religious people, we read “17 When he put it that way, his critics were left looking quite silly and red-faced. The congregation was delighted and cheered him on.”
When we come to the prophet Jeremiah, we find this whole dynamic of “reaching out, touching” in reverse. It is not so much that Jeremiah hesitates to reach out and touch his Creator God, but rather the prophet hesitates to be touched by his Lord. In C.S. Lewis’s “The Chronicle of Narnia” the lion Aslan is a kind of Jesus figure. One of the children asks if Aslan is safe. He is told, “Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” Yes, we can sing “What a friend we have in Jesus” and mean it, but true encounters with the Holy will often invoke reverence and awe. The Lord yearns to endow Jeremiah with a mission, a purpose but Jeremiah shrinks from the call as he wallows in doubt and flounders in inadequacy.
There is many a person sitting regularly (if not comfortably) in church pews whose inclination is to shrink, to hide from those moments when the Lord is trying to touch them… with healing, with forgiveness, with renewal. Friends, may we not be like Jeremiah but rather have a confidence to stand before our Creator God and to welcome and embrace all that He/She is wanting to bestow upon us.
Our Collect/Our prayer for today prays that “the Church gathered together in unity by the Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples”.
But friends, the Church cannot do this if she presents the newcomer, the visitor, the stranger, the alien with large and bold notices proclaiming “DO NOT TOUCH… at least for a year or two or more”.
The Church cannot “show forth God’s power” if she uses traditions, habits, established practices to ward off the stranger with large and bold notices proclaiming “DO NOT TOUCH…”
Yesterday Carolyn Simons came to church to prepare the altar for our worship. I had already opened the door and she said, “Good, I didn’t have to remember the code”. Friends, can we sometimes give the impression that there’s a code to be used before new friends can come close… yes, we know the code. Are we making it readily known?
Hebrews 12:22 reads with such relief and gratitude, such joy and delight “BUT you have come to Mount Zion, you have come to Jesus…”
We pray, don’t we, that similar relief, gratitude, joy and delight will belong not only to those who come to that Zion, that Mount, but also to this Zion, this church of God.
AMEN