July 1, 2012 "Touching"

2 Samuel 1 Mark 5: 21-43 Four weeks ago a daughter of the Church was married and insofar as the Groom's family were Chilean, I officiated at the marriage, while our Parish Associate translated the entire ceremony into Spanish. A difficult enough task, but there are certain idioms in any language that do not have an immediate equal. The most difficult became description of the wedding band, because what we tried to emphasize was a pun, in that what is worn as a gift of love also wears upon the receiver. Erosion did not seem right, nor dressing up, and we had quite a search for what is related to the feeling of touch and being touched. Increasingly, we are becoming a sensory stimulated society, lighting and colors are made brighter, music and sound louder, I have a brother in the dairy business who tells me that they are having to make stronger and stronger flavors and smells of cheeses because our taste buds are becoming dull. Yet, as stimulated as we are in sight, smell, taste and sound, we are becoming ever increasingly isolated and sterile. We have sanitary lotions everywhere to wipe away the germs of one another. What happens if we become a society afraid to touch, afraid of being touched. For hundreds of years, anthropologists had speculated what might happen to a person if denied human touch. Would we revert to something primordial and vicious? Would we find ways to touch and soothe and satisfy ourselves? Would we withdraw into our own thoughts and a world of our imagination? Tragically in the 1980s, with the Fall of Romania, we witnessed first-hand the effect of not touching, President Ceausescu had enforced bizarre laws about social interaction. The result were thousands of children warehoused from birth in grossly overcrowded institutions, never having been held, touched, soothed, tickled or pinched, or embraced. As adults, we would have difficulty describing them as human creatures; they fully grown, fully mature beings, but incapable of emotion, incapable of interaction, incapable of speech, unable to relate to anything outside themselves. This is the importance and power of human touch. Is it any wonder that in order to be our Messiah, to be the Savior, God became human, a vulnerable baby to be touched and to experience life? Who then as an adult, as the Rabbi, healed and touched. So many describe the difference between the Old and New Testaments, as the one being filled with love and forgiveness, while the other has such brutal violence.Yet, in all human history, over and above any other religion, Christianity in the four gospels narrates a story of human suffering and death more brutal than any other. If we heard this morning's readings as “How David became King” and “Jesus Healed Two People” we miss each of the stories, for these are stories of faith in human intimacy, human interaction, trust and touch. Last Sunday we shared the epic tale of David and Goliath, which provided numerous changes. David the Shepherd boy became a Mighty Warrior. Little David was brought into the household of King Saul, raised as if a brother to Saul's son Jonathan. But also, recall the vow of Goliath, that as one Warrior competing against another, the winner would take the losers head, and the army of the loser became the personal army of the winner. Unfortunately, in preaching, we skip over whole sections of the Bible, dozens of years in a person's life, decades of human history. When the Tribes of Israel had escaped from slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt, there ere other tribes as well. In addition to the Canaanite tribes of the Hittites, the Hivites, the Jebusites, etc, there were the Amalekites. Different from the Egyptians who were Masters, and the Israelites who had been slaves, the Amalekites preyed upon the weak. Like Wolves or Coyotes, the Amalekites followed after the Israelites through their journeys from Egypt to the Promised Land, enslaving and killing anyone who fell behind, anyone weaker than themselves. Their stories, their reputations, their hostility was fearsome. So it was, in the passages we skipped between the people wanting a king and Samuel being told to anoint Saul, and the following week where Samuel mourning that Saul had not been a good king, so out of all the sons of Jesse God chooses David, what happened was that God had told King Saul to eliminate the Amalekites. It is a hard passage, one which makes little sense to a Post-Modern world. Yet, the point of the story is that King Saul decides he knows better than God, and he chooses to not listen to God, to allow the Amalekites to go free. After last week's passage, David comes to live in the Palace with Saul and Jonathan, until one day in a rage, Saul throws a spear and narrowly misses David. SO David runs away to save his life. When suddenly he remembers the vow of Goliath, and claims the Philistine Army as belonging to him. But now David has a problem, because while David has been anointed by Samuel to be King of Israel, and while David is commander of the Philistine Army which had proven they could beat the army of Israel, still David did not want to destroy Israel! Despite Saul trying to have David killed, David revered the King and loved Jonathan as a brother. Repeatedly, when given opportunity David spares Saul's life, for Saul is the Anointed Installed King of Israel and no one not even David has the right or power to lay hands upon and kill God's Anointed. All of which sets up this morning's reading, as news comes to David from the front lines. If you were David, how would you respond: Did this man provide mercy to Saul, killing him to spare suffering? As an Amalekite, whom God had ordered Saul to kill and he had not, this one who preyed upon the weak, dared to lay hands upon and kill God's Anointed, and take the Crown and Armlet, was this treason? The distinction that is present in the Bible, is that the Old Testament is about The Law, The Amalekite had preyed upon the dying king, he was of a tribe that was to be exterminated, and he dared kill the anointed one of God. Whereas the New Testament emphasizes the fulfillment of the Law, is not always black and white, sometimes humanity, forgiveness, faith, intimacy, touch make all the difference. To understand these stories from Mark, we need to recall this as a Caste Society, where those who have power are esteemed and revered, and those who are unclean according to the Law, cannot socialize, cannot speak or touch those who are clean. Jesus had been preaching and teaching and healing, had gotten into the boat of fishermen to cross the Galilean Sea and awakened from sleep Jesus calmed the wind and sea. Their boat arrived on the otherside, where they were greeted by what was left of a man possessed by a legion of Demons, casting the demons out of this man into a herd of pigs, the swine ran off a cliff, for which Jesus was chased back into their boat and out of the region. Arriving back on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, before their boat is even on shore, the most esteemed and respected leader of the Synagogue named Jairus comes running to Jesus. Middle-eastern Men, leaders of the Synagogue do not ordinarily run. He bows down and humbles himself before Jesus begging for Jesus to come immediately to save his 12 year old daughter. Throughout the Gospel of Mark , the most common word, used over and over to emphasize that this is a Crisis Moment a Chiros moment, is the word “IMMEDIATELY.” Yet, Jesus has to go through the marketplace to get from the shore to Jairus' home, and a woman who had had bleeding for 12 years, a woman who was ritually unclean, reached out and touched the robe of the Anointed one of God. Here the leaders of the Synagogue had just bowed down and humbled himself before Jesus, and this un-named, unclean ostracized woman dared to try to touch Jesus! Is that the way we think faith works? Touch the magic hem of the robe and be healed? In a crowded busy marketplace, Jesus who had touched 10 people with Leprosy, Jesus who had been accused of eating with hands defiled, Jesus who himself would strip and kneel before the disciples to wash their feet, Jesus who held babies and children, do you imagine would be upset by this woman touching him? Yet, instead of rushing to Jairus' 12 year old daughter, Jesus stops to acknowledge that this unclean, unacceptable woman has been made well by her wanting to touch him. When they arrive at Jairus' home, the father and the anointed one are told that the 12 year old is dead. Oddly, what is described is that paid mourners, are in chaos what to do, and when Jesus responds we must pray to bring the dead to life, the paid mourners laugh. If I were Jairus I would want my money refunded. These are people paid to grieve and display mourning, and instead they are talking and gossiping and laughing! Jesus instead goes into the house, into the child's room and treats her, not as unclean, not as a dead corpse, but as child, he takes her hand and lifts her up, to sit up and stand and eat. The point of these passages about touching and being touched, are that we question, whether we allow ourselves to feel and experience faith? Whether like Saul we become so caught up in our being right, that we defy God? Or like the Amalekite we risk killing God's anointed one for us in order that we might gain? Or whether we are desperate enough to cross boundaries and risk to touch, whether we really want to be made well? Whether we treat a child as a child, and death as prelude to everlasting life, or whether we are in chaos uncertain if we are to laugh or weep, or gossip, and are only motivated by who is paying us? David's response to the Death of King Saul and Jonathan is one of the classics of literature. As experienced at the Memorial of President Kennedy. As experienced at the Assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As experienced on September 11th. We as a Nation, as a people of God, stop in Sabbath to recognize that life will never again be the same. Over and over again, with the Foreign policy, with the Economy, there have been assumptions that we would get back to normal... to life as we are comfortable with it... The point of the raising of Jairus' daughter, the healing of the unclean woman, and mourning the deaths of Saul and Jonathan are that we allow ourselves permission to feel, to touch and be touched , and experience life wearing upon us. The Scottish Philosopher John MacMurray has described “I need you, in order to be myself.” We each need one another to wear upon.