TOUCH!
Genesis 12:1-9, Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
[Since spoken communication differs from written, some of the grammar and syntax of this transcript may seem awkward in written form. To keep integrity with the spirit of the original delivery, the transcript seeks to stay close to the exact words spoken.]
There's the nameless crowd in front of you, following the Nazarene. He walks into town and they follow. You hear he's going to visit a dead girl, the daughter of Menachem--the leader of our synagogue. Everyone wonders why. Everyone wants to see what's going to happen. The whole town is following the Nazarene--the Rabbi.
You see the backs of their heads. You're walking fast--faster than they are. You and they have come to see the Rabbi--to follow the Rabbi from Nazareth, of all places, to see what's going to happen. So you see them all up ahead--the Pharisees in their flowing white robes, snapping in the wind; and the clean people, the rich people, the respectable people. And behind them, the lepers, some of them dragging behind them the lame in carts. There are the cursed and the unclean following behind.
You are one of them--the unclean. You are unclean because you bleed, making you impure. There is nothing you can do to stop the bleeding. You've spent your life savings on it, to try. Doctors. Spiritualists. Nothing helps. You are a sinner. You're dirty.
One of the lepers, Rachel, touches you as you go past--two untouchables, touching. Before the days of blood, when you were respectable, you never would have gotten near to her. But now she gives you a couple weak pats on the arm as you go past. Grins and shows her one last tooth, as if to say, "Go ahead, find him. Touch him." But the respectable people--the Pharisees, and the rich and the good people--they're following right behind him. No one in that crowd touches you because it is against the law. People know who you are. People know you are dirty. And the sea of respectable people following in Jesus' wake parts for you, like it did for Moses at the Red Sea. They part for the dirty woman.
And suddenly you're right behind him, the Rabbi. And you see the blue tassels of his garment blowing in the wind. You figure he won't mind if you could just reach out. He doesn't see you. Everyone else has gotten out of your way. It's windy--he won't notice. You touch it--you touch him, the holy man, and he stops. He notices you. You tell him who you are and what you did--why you touched him. You who are unclean touching one who is pure and unblemished. You're charged with fear as you cast off your self-hatred just for a moment, and you're aware that the bleeding stops--it stops. You know it somehow. As you bow down to kiss his feet, he pulls you up--he touches you, and he tells you to look at him. "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace." And you know as you walk away that the world has already been saved, because of this one act of kindness. And as you go by, you kiss the leper; you bend down to the lame man on his cart; you give all that's in your pocket to the beggar; and you seek out all those who have cursed you, each one, to bless them. Your faith has saved you.
* * *
That's Part I of the sermon. Here's a brief version of Part II, which I have cut this morning, on account of the heat. I want to just say one or two things about this story. As hopefully you take it with you this week, and ponder what God is saying to you through it. What I want to say this morning is that the real hero in this story, as I'm sure you've already surmised, is not Jesus. It's this woman, this unnamed woman, who has been bleeding menstrual blood for 12 years. I want to say what she does has to do with the nature of faith.
The story is all about the politics of touch, and the rules around whom you could touch, and whom you couldn't touch. Who is clean, and who is unclean. The whole scandal about this text is around the fact that Jesus is hanging out with people who are unclean and impure. But the person who transgresses a huge boundary for that social system, for that culture, is not Jesus, but this woman--by touching him, a well-recognized holy man. And Jesus turns around, and he doesn't castigate her for making him ritually unclean; and on the other hand, he also doesn't say, "You're welcome. I'm glad I could help you out today." No, he says, "Your faith has saved you."
I just want to make one simple point today about this story. This story, as I said, I think says something about the nature of faith...that faith is not simply some abstract inner conviction--it is perhaps that too--but faith is nothing if it is not something that moves us to act. Faith is action. Faith happens when this woman was bold enough to reach out and touch the holy man, bold enough transgress a boundary that kept people from each other.
Faith is what we do. Frederick Buechner once said, "Faith is the word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we realize we are loved." For Abraham, faith wasn't some abstract proposition within his heart--it's what made his feet move in the direction of the Promised Land, based on nothing but a vision of what God would do for him and his future descendents.
So I want to leave us with just one simple exhortation from this story, and that's this: to touch someone this week. In the original version of my sermon I was going to say a lot about the politics of touch in our own culture, and how ambivalent our culture teaches us to feel about touching each other. Even that exortation--to touch someone this week--seems a bit creepy, doesn't it? Go and touch someone--when we have so much ambivalence about touching one another. And it is, indeed, one of the most intimate things we can do as human beings: to touch one another.
But we're afraid of touching each other, even though we might be so hungry, so yearning to be touched. We're afraid of the intimacy to which that might expose us. My exhortation is to touch someone--maybe not literally, but perhaps. The person that you touch might even be the person with whom you share a bed. It might be the person that you would never notice, going to work. But touch someone this week. Find a way to go past the boundary that keeps you comfortable, and someone else unloved. Be bold enough to insist on being touched, and being loved, because it is in that bold and beautiful and faithful and loving intimacy that we know the power of Christ, and Christ's healing.
So this week, touch someone. Touch someone's life, even if it's uncomfortable. Amen.
June 8, 2008
The Reverend Jeffrey A. Vamos
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