The first chapter of the Gospel of Mark tells a literally touching story. A leper came to Jesus begging to be healed. He knelt before Jesus, saying, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him and the leper was made clean.
What is so touching about this happening is that in Jesus’ day, Jewish law stated that lepers were unclean and forbidden to be touched. Consequently, lepers were often banished from society. Whoever touched a leper was considered unclean; so Jesus’ action in healing is quite shocking, not to mention unorthodox.
How long had it been since this aff licted man had been touched? Months, years? How long had he been isolated from his community? He could not enter a synagogue or go near the Temple. He was physically separated from his wife, children, family, his friends, his job. We all had a relatively similar experience during the height of the COVID pandemic. You remember, “Stay at least six feet away!” And so, in another Gospel healing story, ten lepers call out to Jesus “keeping their distance.”
We still react in a similar way to AIDS patients or even to persons with cancer. Some of the boomers among you will remember the image from 1987—Princess Diana of Wales visiting AIDS patients at a London hospital—the famous photograph showing her shaking a patient's hand without wearing gloves. Many persons battling such illnesses report that their family and friends become timid about touching them. When they need most the human contact of a hug, a hand to hold, or a pat on the back, they find others drawing back. Dying persons suffer even more acute forms of isolation. When they begin to look too ill, even their closest friends stop visiting them.
The Lord could have easily cured the leper from a distance. Once, a Roman centurion said of Jesus, “Just say the word and my servant will be healed.” Jesus could have merely said the word, but he stretched out his hand and touched the leper.
I am well aware of the litigious culture that Americans have fostered. A friend of mine, a professional photographer, was shooting an elementary class. As he seated one little girl, he knelt down in front of her, put his left index finger on her right knee, his right index finger on her left knee, and pushed her knees slightly to one side so as to produce scale in the photograph.
The little girl went home and claimed she had been touched inappropriately. Do we dare counter such a culture with genuine care, concern and touch?
Can we even imagine what it would be like without human touch? Jim Landes, a professor at Claremont School of Theology, was required to undergo heart surgery to insert a balloon in his LAD artery. The surgery seemed to take forever. Jim watched from a cold table, the monitor above his head, as the physician worked and worked, trying to expand the small balloon.
The loneliness, the coldness, the mechanical process going on gave him no assurance, no comfort, no counsel. It seemed as if it were taking forever. Finally, Jim cried out, “Will someone, anyone, please come and touch me!”
Jim put it like this, “I felt a hand on my shoulder. I could not see who it was that touched me and stood beside for the rest of the procedure, but it became for me the warmth of God. And I learned that day how even a stranger can manifest God’s presence, can be God’s touch, for another.”
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