Grace and Peace to you from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Bishop Stephen Bowman, Bishop of the Metro New York synod, tells the beautiful story of ministering to a woman named Ramona who was dying of AIDS. They’d met at a Stephen’s Ministers training program some years before and had become friends. Her husband was a drug addict and she contracted HIV from him. Her struggle with her illness was also a struggle of faith. She was angry at her husband for what he had done to her – yet she loved him, needed him and knew his weakness. She wanted to forgive him but it was an off-again, on-again forgiveness. At times she was overcome by sadness and that gave way to depression. She struggled for life; fought for it, but the disease took its toll.
Toward the end of her life, Bishop Steve visited her. They prayed, laughed, cried together. She was so weak; he did most of the talking. When she could barely stay awake, she nodded at his communion set which he had set up by her bedside and she moved her finger to her forehead, indicating her desire to be anointed, a practice that had been re-instituted in their church in these last years.
Our lesson form St. James read: “Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of the faithful will save the sick and the Lord will raise them up…”
One of the most beautiful aspects of Christian theology is God’s obsession with creation. God loves the world so much and us, God’s creature, so much, that finding us irresistible; God meets us in the flesh, our flesh. We are flesh, blood and bone beings. We have a skeleton – or a chassie, if I can use a mechanical model, and we belong to the world of decay. Have you ever accidentally left some ground beef or some fish unrefrigerated? It stinks! It’s filled with bacteria. Literally the flesh is breaking down and return to dust – decomposing. Yet God finds us creatures so intriguing and irresistible, God becomes human. God loves bodies. God is an embodied God in Jesus.
We are whole people. While we talk about being a spiritual being and an emotional being and a physical being, it is largely impossible to separate our whole being into these constituents. I point to my heart and talk about my spirit, but isn’t my brain involved? How about the hymns of the church that I’ve long ago memorized? Where do they exist only in my brain? I literally dance to some of them.
When we are terribly depressed, we lose our appetite. When excited our face flushes and colors. When we are very sad we need to be hugged. We need to feel the pressure of arms around us. Maybe it is because we began life in a womb of love in our Mother’s bodies. When we feel really threatened we need to feel that loving pressure of being contained and surrounded by love again. Touch, the sense of touch, more than any other when we feel broken, makes us feel whole again.
The gospels are full of stories about Jesus touching people and their becoming whole. Father Divine, the great evangelist from the last century called this phenomenon the “tangibillification of God”. God makes the Divine Self tangible- solid so that we can literally feel God’s presence.
When I was in seminary in the early 1980’s the green hymnal had just come into being. Hymnals are the means whereby the church introduces changes to its life. One of the early changes was the introduction of a shaking of hands during the peace. Lots of people reacted negatively to being asked to shake hands during worship. There were many reasons behind their objections, but mostly it had to do with the practice of being too intimate. Yet, if the truth is known, this handshake is a mild form of what used to go on in the early church. St. Paul calls on the church to “greet one another with a holy kiss”. Exchanged as we do it, right before the Lord’s upper, the peace is a sign, a physical sign, that the body of Christ assembled on that particular Sunday is both a holy community and a whole w-h-o-l-e community. There is no division or factions or brokenness or any other form of sin in it. It is also a sign that in the resurrection we will be embodied eternally to share the blessed peace and joy that has been won for us by Christ’s resurrection. God so loves bodies that we get one forever.
At the same time that the peace was re-introduced, services for laying on of hands and anointing were also included and encouraged. Lutherans are hearing and seeing people, but this kind of intimate touch was looked on with a bit of skepticism. Yet, what could be more in keeping with our doctrine of incarnation. God becomes tangible in Christ. God is still able to unite, “in, with and under” the elements of bread and wine. Should not God also be able to use the sense of touch to re-connect to us? After all, isn’t connection with God, union with God, what worship is all about?
I first tried being anointed at seminary. The oil was scented with cinnamon and it lingered on my senses several days. I found myself touching my forehead where the Pastor, my Professor, had traced the sign of the cross on my forehead like we are now doing in baptism. I felt comforted. I felt peace in a new way.
This need for connection is innate in us. I visited John’s Hopkins this week; Lee Corbin is being treated there. Mae was telling me about an enormous statue of Christ that’s under the rotunda of the main building. It is a marble statue and one of the feet of Jesus is dull, but the other shines and gleams. People touch the one and leave the oil from their skin on Jesus' feet. I thought to myself, how fitting. The woman in Luke’s gospel crashed Simon the Pharisee's dinner party, just so that she could anoint the feet of Jesus with her tears of faith and the expensive oil of tribute she brought with her. Needy believers reach out to Christ in the same faith with their prayers and supplications and the same desire to be healed.
The Lord is near to all who call upon him. Tangibillifying himself in bread, wine, water, and oil to heal, to cure and to save. Reach out to him; let him touch you.
In Jesus’ name. Amen
Pastor John