HE TOUCHED ME John M. Buchanan
Mark 1:40-45 Broad Street Presbyterian Church

February Li, 1979 Columbus, Ohio

I attended a four day convocation on Theology and Preaching Last fall at
Riverside Church, New York City. That Church, made famous by its first minister,
Harry Emerson Fosdick, is the spiritual home of theological liberalism in America,
Fosdick started the Church because he was too liberal for the Presbyterians, From
its magnificent and influential pulpit he preached the social gospel, fought with
theological conservatives and Biblical literalists and, during World War II, became
a pacifist. The current Senior Minister is William Sloan Coffin, Jr., former
Chaplain at Yale, known for his Civil Rights Activism, and - with Father Berrigan
and Benjamin Spock, his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War Movement, His current
social, commitment is to Disarmament, All of which is to say that Riverside Church
is not the place you would choose to go if you want to hear about the personal
Gospel and personal salvation. The convocation I attended was led by some of the
brightest Christian academics, among them Professor Hans Kung, German Roman Catholic
theologian from the University of Tubingen, People went to that meeting not so much
to have their hearts warmed and spirits stoked up, as to have their minds challenged,
intellects stimulated,

And so it was very much of a surprise to me, coming in late for the opening
worship service on the second day, to hear a marvelous baritone voice filling that
grand, Gothic Nave with a song I heretofore thought belonged to Barbra Streisand,
the slightly mushy love ballad - "He Touched Me", I checked my program and noted
his very impressive academic and ecclesiastical credentials, I had not heard what
he said in his opening remarks, But the song he was singing contained in that con-
text a powerful testimony about the dynamics of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. You
could have heard a pin drop!

Forget about Barbra Streisand: try to imagine the magnificence of that gothic
Church, filled with clergy, who were generally more concerned about minimum wage,
unemployment, and multinational cerporations, than about getting individuals into
heaven ~ mesmerized, as one man sang...

"He touched me

He put his hand near mine and then He touched me,.,.
He's real and the world is alive and shining

He touched me,

And suddanly nothing is the samei"™

Well, I haven't been able to forget that experience, It was an excellant con-
ference - but one of the more vivid memories will be this one, It was a necessary
reminder to me, and to every person present, that what the Christian religion is
ahout essentially is a very personal matter between God and the individual: that
it is good and healthy to stretch our minds and consider the Gospel in light of the
intellectual challenges coming from psychology, science, philosophy, that the Gospel
is indeed about the corporate redemption of the whole creation: that justice and
peace are political realities the Church corporate is called to establich, but that
ultimately Christianity is about the individual man or woman and what God has done
for the individual in Jesus Christ, His Son,

[ft was a suggestion, appropriately made ta that assembly, that the professional
ministry wants God to remain abstract and religion academic because it's safer that

~2-

way, and that sometimes the large and respectable religious institutions we work for
gerve simply to tone down and make impersonal that which is, essentially, very
intimate,

Zt was reminded of all of that by the New Testament Lesson this week, the story
of Jesus and the man who had leprosy, The story, by the way, is found in Matthew,
Mark and Luke. A man with leprosy approached Jesus, fell on his knees and said, "If
you will, you can make me clean,” And Jesus, moved with pity, stretched out His
hand and touched him,'’ The man was healed. Jesus instructed him not to tell what
had happened but to report to the priest, as the law prescribed, to be certified as
healed ~clean. But the man promptly told everybody he knew and so many people came
looking for Jesus that He could not move about freely,

fo understand the significance of that little story we have to back up a bit
and think about the disease the man had, Leprosy was the scourge of the ancient
world, When the Bible used the word it refers to what we know as Hansen's Disease,
or classical Leprosy, . but also any skin disease, rash, discoloration, even
mildew on clothing or the walls of buildings, If a fungus grew on a water jug, for
instance, people believed that the jug had leprosy,

Diagnostic medicine was not exactly precise, A person had leprosy when a priest
said he did, ‘The religious Law prescribed treatment and - if this failed - the im-
posing of a complete taboo: the person was declared "unclean", He was simply ban~
ished from society, Physical contact was out of the question ~ even his shadow was
regarded as infectious, He was required to live outside the village, to identify
himself by wearing loose, baggy clothing and to give adequate warning by calling out
‘Nanclean, unclean!" whenever another person approached, A person with leprosy sur-
vived by foraging and begging,

I was interested to learn that the taboo continued into the Middle Ages, that a
person who had leprosy was led into church where the priest read the burial service
over him, and that churches had a leper squint ~ a small opening in the wall for
lepers to peek through and see the service,

The important thing here is that people with Leprosy were not only very sick
physically, they were victims of a cruel and total isolation - which, inevitably,
made them sick emotionally, spiritually, mentally, Enforced isolation is very power-
ful, Sociologists think that the judicious use of, and the threat of isolation, is
one of the reasons Amish culture maintains itseif. It is called Meidung - “Shunning" -
or the Bann, Listen to one writer describe it _ “When the pull of the world is too
strong for some and they are drawn toward its wicked ways.,,the leaders of the church
visit the errant member, Either he gives in and mends his ways or the ‘Bann’ is in-
voked - excommunication - and the social pressure of the Meidung is brought to bear
against him, No one, not even members of his own family, including his wife, may
have anything to do with him, may conduct business with him, or eat with him or
speak to him, The Meidung remains in foree, until the sinner makes the required
changes in his 1ife,.,[t can, and sometimes does, remain in force for a Life time,
But few individuals can resist such pressure for long, There are two ways cut: to
yield, or to leave the district..." (Amish People, Carolyn Meyer, p.78),

In any event, Amish culture demonstrates the power of isolation. That was the
case with lepers in Jesus’ day. ‘They were cut off totally from the human family.
In addition they were not pretty to look at: the religious Law called them taboo -

- 3 -

unclean, The result of ail of that must have been the worst case of self-loathing,
self-disgust, self-hatred ~ in all of history, How possibly can you feel good about
yourself when you can't bear to look at your own image, when others are revolted by
your appearance, when the only people with whom you have contact are those who look
and feel like you do? It is no surprise that the end of leprosy was often suicide,

That's what this little story is getting at when it says - "He stretched out
his hand and touched him," Jesus touched a leper, Nobody did that, Nobody wanted
to, Nobody had the stomach to, The miracle here is not that the man was healed of
leprosy: the real miracle is the love of Jesus Christ, the personal, physical con-
tact that healed a sick and broken heart, and turned a man who was so full of guilt
and self-hatred that he must have been insane, into one so joyfully grateful that he
couldn't contain himself,

This is a significant story for many reasons, It shows a Christ who cares more
about people than religious rules, It suggests that religion can insulate and
separate us from God at times, It suggests that perhaps the business of religion is
to identify the untouchables in our society and, in the name of Jesus Christ, to
reach out in love and acceptance, But where this story speaks to me is when J] con-
template this man Jesus, reaching across that awful gap of isolation to put His
hand on the man with Leprosy,

That story is powerful because isolation is very real, We may no longer believe
in ritual uncleanness, but we do operate with some taboos against intimacy and in~
volvement and touching - figuratively and Literally,

The Denver Bronchos football team surprised the athletic world in 1975 by hold~
ing hands, When their defensive unit, known affectionately as "the Orange Crushes",
took the field and huddled, the players held hands. They liked it, they said: it
helped them feel like a team, a unit, a group of individuals who had to depend on
and help one another, That gesture went a Long way toward ending the slightly
neurotic taboo in our culture against men touching men, Athletes embrace in joyful
abandon: and there is a lot of patting which would be startling if it took place, say
in the board room or at a sales mecting,

The touching taboo in our culture really signifies deeper taboo; against intimacy
and involvement, "Bon't get too close," “Don't get involved - stay away." The
result is personal isolation,,Think for a minute about the forms isolation can take
in our lives,

Emotional isolation, for instance, Our cuiture is strongly individualistic,
One of its goals is to cultivate self-reliance, self-sufficiency, There is a sense
in which that is very admirable, But there is also a sense in which it is sick and
painful and isolating, Men, particularly, are taught to be strong which means ad-
mitting to needing no one or nothing; never crying, never feeling deeply, sometimes
never saying, ‘I love you and need you,”

Or social isolation: Paul Tournier suggests that social rituals are really
devices designed to help us get what we want without becoming involved with other
people, Linguists suggest that cocktail party conversation is for the distinct
purpose of preserving distance while pretending to be communicative, Our culture
teaches us that other people are competitors, threats to our own autonomy or pride
or ego; and thus objects to be bettered or used, or at least dismissed with as
little involvement as possible,

-4-

Or the isolation of pain, Each of us has been to the hospital, or will be some
day, The bad thing about physical pain is the sense of loneliness and isolation
which seem inevitably to accompany it, Our children are very wise when they say,
"Kiss it and make it better," because human contact is an antidote to pain, That
is documented fact, But adults don't know how to say that, and try to cope with
real hurt by bearing it quietly, alone, without telling anyone,

Or moral isolation, I think this is more a reality than most of us would Like
to admit, Can you remember doing something for which you were truly sorry, something
which made you feel ashamed, something very wrong? Can you remember feeling cut off:
like you broke something important between yourself and your own conscience, your-
self and your family, yourself and the whole human race, yourself and God? One of
the enduring strengths of Roman Catholicism is that when a Catholic feels like that
he or she goes to confession and makes contact with the human race again. Protest-
ants, on the other hand, simply internalize it and continue to suffer from self-
imposed moral isolation,

I think iselation is so real that for many of us the physician becomes our
savior because he's the only person with whom we can talk about ourselves, openly,
honestly, intimately. I think one of the reasons doctors are so busy is that we
have learned that they are the only ones who really mean the words “How are you?"
and consequently they are the only ones to whom we are allowed to say "I hurt", Tf
had a close friend who was a general practitioner in another community who used to
say that at least half the patients he saw needed to talk to someone, and shouid
have seen a clergyman before coming to him,

This is what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about. Jesus "stretched out His
hand and touched" a man with leprosy,

The psychologists are giving us a new vocabulary to describe a reality theology
has always understood, John Calvin saw salvation as justification by faith and
justification as, essentially, acceptance, The miracle of the Gospel,the Reformation
shouted, is that Ged accepts us as we are,even when we feel unacceptable, To know
that is to be saved,

And so psychologists tell us that in order to be an accepting, open person, we
have to accept ourselves; and in order to accept ourselves we have to be accepted
by someone else, We can love others, only as we love ourselves, And we can love
ourselves only as we sense ourscives loved by others,

I have always found Reuel Howe very helpful in this area, He wrote -

' yethe deepest want of all is the desire to be at one with
someone, to have someone who can be at one with us, and
through whom we can find at-oneness with all." (Man's Need

and God's Action, p.9)}.

One of the truly sacred responsibilities of parenting is here, Our children
will love no one until they sense that they are loved. They will be incapable of
accepting others - of accepting Life - until they know the security of our acceptance,
Wise parents know the difference between demanding enough from children, and demand-
ing so much that they no longer feel accepted, Psychiatrists’ offices are full of
people spending theix lives trying to win the acceptance they did not receive from
their parents,

- 5 «=

As parents we mediate the very love of G children through our love,
And as members of one another in the church,|baptism/symbolizes our commitment to
one another to help ~ to love ~ to support all the-mothers and fathers among us
in this sacred task,

Again, it is Revel Howe who keeps me from being academic about it, He wrote,
“We cannot experience (the love of God) solely by reading about it: we cannot
experience his love apart from an encounter with him, And so He first revealed
His love to men in His incarnate Son living in person-to-person relationship, Now
we may experience His Love through person-to-person encounter with those who are
born into the relationship of His Spirit," (Ibid, p, 94-5).

That, it seems to me, is the privilege and responsibility of being the Church,
We do not Live in 33 A,D,: the love of God in Jesus Christ is not the same for us as
His contemporaries, In fact, it is a corporate memory for us - something we hear
about ~ secondhand ~ no more intimate than George Washington's courage, Nor are we
the kind of fellowship which focuses on personal religious experience in conversion.
We don’t structure experiences in which we expect to feel God's love intensely, The
love of God in Jesus Christ remains an idea, an abstraction for us, Until someone
conveys it to us: until it becomes incarnate in the life and caring and compassion
of another person, That's what this church is ~ at its best, And at its very best
it becomes that love incarnate in the world, reaching ouk, as He did, across ail the
gaps that isolate people ~ to touch them and heal them and give them new life,

The story is for us - not just people with leprosy, We are the ones who have
needs, We feel unclean at times, untouchable, unacceptable, There are things about
ourselves we don't like, things we don't understand: there are times when we can't
stand ourselves,

This little story makes a remarkable assertion about us - and about God, It
suggests that God himself is not abstract and remote and distant, That He does not
wait in some corner of the universe for us to decide to approach Him, Rather, the
God described in the story is one who takes the initiative and reaches out acroas
time and space to touch us, precisely when and where we feel untouchable, unacceptable,

Tt is about a Lord who took on himself the uncleanness of the man in order to
give him life and health and wholeness, We are that man, The Gospel of Jesus Christ
is the Cood News that God has stretched out His hand toward us: that there is healing
in that for us: acceptance and forgiveness and love and joy and wholeness and

salvation,
Amen,

God, our Father, for your grace, we give thanks, We try to stay at arm's
length, to keep our religion safely abstract, Break through our defenses, our
Father, Touch us - heal us - love us - in Jesus Christ our Lord,

Amen,