Monthly Archives: July 2012

29

Jul. ’12

Action!: The Precious Present

James 4:13-5:6

Where is your head right now?

I’m asking you to think about what you’ve been thinking about. How many of you are absolutely, perfectly focused on worship? That is, when we sang, all you thought about was the song; when you prayed, all you thought about was the prayer; when I started preaching, you were rooted in the giddy excitement you always feel when a sermon begins.

Conversely, how many of you know that in the last half-hour or so your minds have wandered off into the past or the future? Maybe you saw a friend and started thinking about the warm words you exchanged a few days ago. (Or maybe the opposite happened.) Maybe your stomach rumbled and you started wondering where you’ll go for lunch.

The human mind is a time-traveler. Our bodies are always in the present, but our minds jump into the future or the past at will. In fact, it is very difficult to keep our minds perfectly in the present.

That’s not necessarily a problem. I’m simply describing a fact regarding how our minds work. Both the past and our vision of the future help us to make critical decisions. I mentioned last week, however, that James tells us our words sometimes betray our failure to keep God central in our lives. That idea is the core of our Scripture reading today, in particular when we consider how we talk about the future.

Again, a little context helps. Last week, I mentioned James wrote his letter at a time when the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. It helps to know exactly who the rich were; basically there were two classes of rich.

The first class was the landed gentry, people who did little work but profited from vast tracts of land they had inherited. Like plantation owners in the Old South, they had very high status in society. They also were sometimes criticized for cheating the laborers who worked their fields.

The second class was made up of merchants, who in James’ day were often richer than the landed gentry, but of very low status.

James was not being critical of wealth, just as Jesus was never critical of wealth. Both warned, however, of the incredible distraction wealth or the pursuit of wealth can become. James took particular note of the merchants, running from city to city and planning years in advance, with no acknowledgment of their own mortality or need to rely on God.

Jesus told a parable found in Luke 12:13-21 along these lines, although his story was aimed more at the landed gentry. A rich landowner, pleased with his abundant crops, begins talking about the future as if he is in control. He’ll tear down his barns and build bigger ones, he thinks, store the excess, and then take it easy. Little does he know that death will come for him that night, and he will face the maker his riches were intended to serve.

An interesting side note: When the Jews rebelled and the Roman army responded by destroying Jerusalem in the year 70, the Jewish landed gentry were for all practical purposes wiped off the face of the earth. Both Jesus and James were being prophetic in their teachings.

There’s a simple, very true cliché that Jesus or James could have used: “You can’t take it with you.” And if you can’t take it with you, why would anyone who believes in God pursue wealth with disregard to God? As one Christian commentary notes, such an attitude is the “sin of arrogant presumption.”

Learn to think about the future in the right frame of mind—with the right attitude toward God— and your relationship with wealth and possessions can become much more healthy.

James helps us to achieve the right attitude by giving us another simple phrase to keep in mind, “If the Lord wishes,” as in, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” In the South, we might say, “Lord willin’, I’m gonna do that.”

Similar phrases serve almost as a mantra in other parts of the world. You may have heard that devout Muslims will use the phrase “Insha’Allah” before making plans or beginning events with an uncertain future. Translated, they are saying, “God willing.” Interestingly, it’s not just Muslims who use that phrase. Middle Eastern Christians, for example, Coptic Orthodox Christians, use the exact same phrase, taking James’ advice as they look to the future.

Using such a phrase doesn’t mean they or we are simply surrendering to fate, succumbing to the weak theological notion that God causes every tiny event, good or bad. What they and we are doing is remaining mindful that as followers of Christ, we should make all of our decisions conform with God’s will for this world.

This is where James’ lesson becomes freeing rather than restricting. First, we put our minds in the present, that place I call the precious present because it’s the one place everything is very clear and real. If you’re uncertain about God’s will, you can go to Scripture now to seek God’s truth. You can pray now, staying with God fully until you hear from God. We encounter God in the here and now, when we allow ourselves to do so.

Understanding God, we then can look to the future with a big-picture understanding of what we know God will do. That’s what James is doing when he talks about riches rotting and gold and silver rusting. It’s a metaphor for a time when riches are useless, when there is nothing left but the loving relationship we have with God through Jesus Christ. We may reach it at death; we may reach it when Christ returns. Regardless, the time is coming, and no form of wealth or material possession has a role to play.

When we get our heads around these ideas, it’s not hard to understand how we should handle possessions and wealth. Certainly, God sustains us in this life, giving us what we need. And where we find abundance, we’re called to ask ourselves how God is leading us to use those riches to grow his kingdom.

The concept of tithing, giving 10 percent of our income toward the church’s work to expand Christ’s kingdom, fits into all of this, of course. Tithing has nothing to do with church budgets. As I’ve said before, if Cassidy UMC had a million dollars in the bank, I would still encourage you to tithe because you need to maintain that connection between your financial resources and God’s work.

The same goes for how we allot our time. In particular, I become concerned when I see Christians delaying their involvement in Christ’s work, waiting for the day when the education is out of the way, when the career is where it’s supposed to be, when all is settled and the future seems clear. That day never really comes—one of my regrets is the time I wasted thinking in such ways.

If you’re an investment-oriented person, think of James’ teaching this way: What better return is there than the eternal reward we gain from faith in Christ? And even better, it’s a return we begin to see right away in the changes Christ makes in our hearts.

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22

Jul. ’12

Action!: A Battle-Scarred Tongue

James 3:1-12

First of all, I want to be sure we remember the primary lesson from last week. We can do nothing to earn salvation; all we can do is believe that Christ’s work on the cross is effective, and then receive salvation as a gift from God.

Christians talk a lot about works and deeds because we expect them as a result of a vibrant faith. The Holy Spirit works inside us, changing us, making us more able to love as Christ has first loved us. These changes should be visible to people around us, serving as a testimony to the new life we’ve taken on.

Our reading from James today asks us to consider how we speak to others. As James notes, “all of us make many mistakes,” and we’re all familiar with what we sometimes call a slip of the lip. For the preacher, the advantage of these verses lies in their ability to make everyone squirm. The disadvantage is the preacher has reason to squirm, too. The problem is universal.

Our tongues reveal much about where we are in our walk with Christ. Unless we have reached a state of true holiness, our words will reveal our flaws. And yet, James isn’t saying, “Oh, well, nobody’s perfect.” Instead, he’s making it clear that we need to do better, that we need to develop a Christian way of speaking to each other and to a hurting world in good times and in bad times.

The Book of James was written in what most people would call bad times, less than 30 years after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Not every scholar would agree with me, but I side with the view that the Book of James was written by none other than James the half-brother of Jesus, who was the first leader of the Christian church in Jerusalem.

James wrote this letter during a tumultuous time in Jerusalem. Jewish revolutionaries were fomenting rebellion against the Roman Empire. Class distinctions had become much too evident—the rich had gotten richer and the poor had gotten poorer—and there was a lot of angry talk in the streets, in the temple, and in people’s homes. At the same time, the Jewish religious leaders were becoming increasingly concerned about the Christians among them, a group they considered a heretical sect.

Some time around A.D. 62, Jerusalem was between Roman procurators. (A procurator was a kind of governor, sent by the empire to keep the peace.) The Jewish high priest used this gap in oversight to arrange to have James tried by a Jewish court and executed. Some ancient records indicate James was thrown from the highest point of the temple and then finished off by stoning after the fall did not immediately kill him.

By A.D. 70, the Jews were in full revolt and the Roman army came to crush the rebellion. In the process, the temple and most of Jerusalem were destroyed.

This history is important because it gives us some context for James’ teachings about how we speak to one another. This wasn’t some vague theory James espoused. He was trying to show angry people a better way, a way that he must have hoped would help the people of Jerusalem avoid the disasters that eventually did consume them.

A lot of what James says about speech is very practical. Earlier, in the first chapter of James, we are advised to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, “for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” In many ways, James is simply repeating advice that had been circulating for centuries and still is valid today.

When I worked for a corporation, I had a boss who taught me this principle in regard to e-mail. Thanks to e-mail, text messaging, Facebook, and such, we can now quickly lash out at someone while typing. A short-tempered project manager had used e-mail to attack me for something I had not done. I was furious, of course. My wise boss’s advice: Ignore it for 24 hours. “Write the response if you want,” he said, “but don’t hit ‘send’ until you’ve waited a day and considered it.”

I wrote it, and the next day I read my words again. In a calmer frame of mind, I actually deleted my response rather than hitting ‘send.’ I suppose it was the Christian thing to do. It also was a lot of fun because the project manager figured out on his own he had made a mistake, and for months I could see he was very nervous every time he was around me. I wondered what he was thinking: “Did Chuck get the e-mail? Does he know something I don’t? Is he friends with someone higher up the company ladder? WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN TO ME?”

Okay, maybe I enjoyed that last part in ways that weren’t so Christian. But the calm approach did have practical results, for angry words, whether they come from our tongue or our fingertips, can be a very dangerous thing. Don’t ever let anyone tell you there’s not practical wisdom in the Bible.

A lot of this really is about self-control, isn’t it? Be the calm one. Be the one who speaks softly when others are angry. Control yourself, and you’ll control the situation. Bite your tongue. I preached on the marks of a Christian a few months ago—perhaps we’ve found another mark, a battle-scarred tongue, one that’s been bitten so often you can see the teeth marks.

There’s more to all of this, however, than just practical lessons. James raises the issue of how we speak, and other issues of behavior, so that we can look at ourselves critically and move toward holiness. Our tongue can act like a litmus strip, telling us if we’re out of balance with Christ.

James is saying we’ve got a problem when anything angry or vile comes out of our mouths. We are revealed as being “double-minded,” a term James uses to describe someone who claims to believe one thing but thinks and lives another way.

Here’s a roundup of kinds of problem speech mentioned by James throughout his letter:

1. Bad theology. In particular, in verse 1:13, he says you shouldn’t blame evils like temptation to sin on God. This ties to his admonition that one shouldn’t choose to teach unless he or she is clear about biblical truths.

2. Making distinctions based on worldly criteria. Christ came for all, regardless of where they were born or how much money they have.

3. Speaking empty words. James reminds us that it’s not enough to say kind words to people in need. Words of grace require acts of grace.

4. Speaking negatively of others, particularly of brothers and sisters in the Christian community. (It’s hard, I know. We spend a lot of time with each other.)

5. Speaking of the future as if we’re in control. We don’t think about this one much, but it’s a powerful indicator of whether we’ve really turned our lives over to God.

If you’re feeling convicted about how you’ve used your tongue—I know I am—you may be asking that question the Jews asked after hearing Peter’s sermon at Pentecost: “What should we do?”

Biting your tongue does help, but it’s not a long-term solution. Remember, we cannot work our way into salvation. You could gnaw your tongue off trying to achieve holiness through your own strength. We begin with faith that Jesus saves us, and works proceed from there.

Do those things that grow your faith. Pray. Study your Bible. Be a true disciple of Christ, and not just someone who walks through the door on Sunday morning on a pretty regular basis.

As we open ourselves to God, the Holy Spirit takes greater control of our lives, as we let him. At some point, he finally gets hold of our tongues, and we then have taken great steps toward holiness. Over time, our words even can bring holiness to places where discouragement and despair once ruled.

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15

Jul. ’12

Action!: Faith in Motion

James 1:19-27 and 2:14-17

One of the great tensions for me as a preacher is figuring out how to talk about the importance of doing—of taking action in the name of Christ—while at the same time emphasizing we can do nothing to save ourselves.

Having faith that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins is central to becoming a Christian. Scripturally, there is no other way to re-establish the relationship with God that was broken by sin. We cannot do enough good deeds to overcome our evil; without faith in Christ’s work, we cannot even love God or others passionately enough to impress God into taking us back. We might as well claim we can jump high enough to get into heaven.

And yet, Christianity is a very deed-oriented religion. For example, in Matthew 25, Jesus describes the final judgment as being based on how we treat the hungry and thirsty, the poor, and marginalized people such as prisoners, the sick, and friendless strangers among us.

Counting today, we’re going to spend five weeks in the Book of James. With some help Aug. 5 from our new discipleship director, Melissa, I’m going to be spending a lot of time talking about our actions. You’ll hear me talk about how we speak to one another, how we use our resources, and how we reach out to each other in life-changing ways. But I don’t for a minute want you to think I’m telling you that good works will save you—salvation simply is a matter of believing in what Christ has done on the cross.

If this sounds a little confusing, at least we’re not alone. Because the Book of James talks so much about Christian behavior, early church leaders struggled with whether it should even be a part of the Christian Bible. As late as the 16th century, Martin Luther, the man who triggered the Protestant Reformation, was questioning the value of the Book of James.

His ambivalence was rooted in his times. He had watched the Roman Catholic Church enrich itself by selling something called indulgences. We Protestants sometime oversimplify what the Roman Catholic Church was doing, saying they were selling forgiveness for sins, which is not exactly true. The Roman Catholic priests were selling relief from what they called “temporal punishments” associated with sins that cause attachment to this world. I’ll not go into all of that in great detail, but suffice it to say that the selling of indulgences and other abuses by the Roman Catholic Church caused Luther to begin to emphasize very strongly the idea that we are saved “by faith alone.” Luther cited the writings of the Apostle Paul, particularly Romans 3:28: “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.”

Therefore, language like we’ve heard in our Scripture reading this morning, and in other verses in James, gave Luther heartburn that he could not attribute to his German beer and sausages. Verse 2:24 really bothered him: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Tossing the whole Book of James, or at least dramatically de-emphasizing it, probably did seem easier to Luther and others.

And yet, God has given us the Book of James, if you believe the Holy Spirit has guided church leaders through the centuries to an understanding of what Scriptures should be in the Bible. Christians are called to listen to these very works-oriented words and understand them in the context of other biblical words that emphasize faith.

I personally don’t find James’ words as confusing as Luther found them. I find them challenging, but they don’t trouble me. For me, understanding faith and works is largely a matter of understanding the order in which they arrive and which is dependent on the other.

Let’s try a few metaphors:

Which lives first, the vine, or the grapes? The vine, of course. In John 15:5, Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.” Our faith in Christ makes us branches. But what is the purpose of being branches unless we’re going to bear fruit? Our fruit is our works, those behaviors and actions that make the world a more holy place.

Which would you prefer, a dead body or a living body? That one’s pretty easy, too. Without life in your body, you cannot get much done. Faith brings new life to the Christian body. Naturally, you’re going to do something with that new life. James is trying to tell us that if that new life doesn’t result in new, holy works, we may be mistaken about the relationship we think we’re in with Christ.

Consider the role of grits. As the story goes, a Yankee—excuse me, a person from a more northerly state—stopped to eat breakfast at a diner in the South. He ordered eggs, bacon and toast. (People from more northerly states don’t always appreciate biscuits.) When his eggs, bacon and toast arrived, however, alongside them was a white, mealy, gloppy substance, a little lake of butter pooling in a spoon-indented crater.

“Waitress,” he asked, “what is this? I didn’t order this.”

“Honey, those are grits,” she replied. “You don’t order grits. Grits just come.”

Faith is trusting God enough to ask, knowing you will receive. Forgiveness of sins and eternal life are what we were expecting on the plate. Our ability to do works, given to us by the Holy Spirit, just comes, and is evidence we have been served in full.

This understanding of faith and works is very Methodist, by the way. Luther may have struggled with the Book of James, but John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, loved it. Wesley emphasized our need to grow in faith, a process we call sanctification, and show evidence of our faith after we are saved. In 1742, Wesley wrote an essay called “The Character of a Methodist.” I’m going to rephrase Point 14 in modern English:

Whatever a Methodist does, it is done to the glory of God. A Methodist not only aims to do this, a Methodist actually accomplishes this, be it in business, at play or in prayer. It doesn’t matter whether the Methodist is at home or in public; this business of glorifying God goes on. A Methodist could be glorifying God while getting dressed, working, eating and drinking, or taking other diversions, and God is glorified because peace and goodwill are spread through every act to others. Here is the Methodist’s one invariable rule: Whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God.

I think the next few weeks will be challenging for us. Let’s ready ourselves not by the works we do, but by opening ourselves to a deeper faith. Let’s remind ourselves of what we already believe; let’s ask that God strengthen our belief.

It is my prayer that by August 12, we will be better Christians, with works that prove a living faith.

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08

Jul. ’12

Blinded by a Presumed Past

Mark 6:1-6

I suppose it should be of some comfort that even Jesus struggled when near the people who had known him the longest.

Outside of his hometown of Nazareth, he was Jesus the miracle worker, Jesus the prophet, Jesus who could be messiah and king. Just before returning to Nazareth, he had raised a little girl from the dead. But in Nazareth―well, it’s hard to impress the home folks, particularly when you’ve grown up in a little place where people think they know everything about you.

Jesus’ teachings and actions were the same in Nazareth as they had been elsewhere; the Nazarenes even acknowledged his wisdom and his deeds of power. They simply could not accept that such remarkable signs were coming from this particular man, whom they had seen grow from a boy.

When you get right down to it, their prejudice against Jesus likely stemmed from bad theology. The people of Nazareth had certain expectations about how God should work, and they could not match their expectations with some facts I think they had long assumed about Jesus and his family.

It’s hard to piece together what the problem was simply by reading Mark, primarily because Mark contains no account of Jesus’ conception and birth. For those events, we have to rely on the early chapters of Matthew and Luke and make a few reasonable assumptions about how those events would have been perceived in Nazareth.

As any good Christian knows, Jesus’ conception was not normal. While his mother, Mary, was engaged to Joseph, but before they were married, an angel told Mary she would conceive the Savior of the world through the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit, with no man involved. She accepted the task and became pregnant.

It took another angelic visitation for Joseph to accept what had happened. That leads me to think that a lot of people in Nazareth would have struggled with whether Mary’s pregnancy was appropriate.

Compounding the problem is that right after conceiving Jesus, Mary left the village to visit her cousin Elizabeth. She did not return for three months, Luke tells us. Even if she wasn’t “showing” at three months, it wouldn’t have taken long for her pregnancy to become obvious, and some simple math as she neared her due date would have become the basis for a significant scandal.

Maybe the rumor was that Jesus’ father was a man other than Joseph. Certainly, this rumor went on for some time. The Greek philosopher Celsus, who was a second-century opponent of Christianity, promoted the idea that Jesus’ father actually was a Roman soldier stationed in the area. Early church fathers had to spend a significant amount of time showing that Celsus had no evidence for his claim.

Maybe the rumor was that Joseph was the kind of man who could not control himself until the wedding night, impregnating Mary early. Most likely, both rumors floated about, and if Nazarene gossips were like most other gossips I’ve known, they took great delight in repeating both.

It’s notable that in Mark 6:3, the Nazarenes are quoted as calling Jesus the “son of Mary” rather than the son of Joseph, an odd variation in a culture that emphasized a man’s paternal lineage. (There are variants in some manuscripts of Mark where the verse reads “son of the carpenter and of Mary,” but even then, Joseph’s name is avoided.)

Whatever the precise details of the rumor or rumors, it’s not a stretch to think that when Jesus went home to Nazareth, he still was considered “illegitimate,” a product of sin rather than a product of the most holy conception in the history of the world. And that problem of perception, that undeserved stain on Jesus’ reputation, was enough to keep the Nazarenes from accepting the astounding wisdom and evidence before them.

It’s also possible that as residents of an insignificant village in what most people considered a backwater province of the Roman Empire, the Nazarenes simply couldn’t accept the idea of someone homegrown being that important. I see some of that at work when they point to Jesus’ family and essentially say, “Wait a minute, he’s with them, and they’re like us, nobodies.”

I saw this attitude in my previous job, when I worked for a company that spent a lot of money on reforestation efforts in Central and South America. It was hard to get people in those areas to accept the idea that native trees were the best trees to plant. Many of these very poor people in tiny villages on the edges of the rain forests believed they needed North American trees―everything north of them was better, they reasoned, so the trees must be better, too.

The Nazarenes’ lack of acceptance―more precisely, their lack of faith―astounded Jesus, even with his divine understanding of how sin and salvation work. The effect of their unbelief was so powerful as to prevent him from doing great works, although he still was able to heal some of the sick.

All this causes me to wonder: How do our own prejudices interfere with Christ’s work in the world today?

Is it possible we miss the Holy Spirit at work because we expected him to come some other way? For example, will an inspired word from a homeless person mean as much to you as the everyday words of a prominent member of society?

Do we even go where we might hear holy words and see great signs in lowly places?

We need to be mindful that Jesus entered the world in a way so humble that his circumstances likely were misunderstood as shameful. He also grew up among a people with no sense of pride or place.

Don’t be surprised if Jesus is still most visible among such people and places today.

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02

Jul. ’12

A Powerful Touch

Mark 5:21-43

When Michelangelo depicted “The Creation of Adam” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he chose to focus on the hand of God and the hand of humanity reaching toward each other. God’s hand is active, offering life with the extension of one finger; Adam’s hand seems to willingly accept.

A split second before or after the moment shown, there is touch, and life flows from the Creator to the created.

Touch is a powerful concept throughout the Bible, just as it is a powerful part of our lives. Sometimes God speaks creation into existence, but other times God takes a very hands-on approach, forming man from the dust of the ground, planting a garden in Eden, and taking a rib from the man’s side to fashion a woman. These stories imply intimacy and close, careful attention to detail.

Touch also has been corrupted by sin, however. You see evidence in the Bible; you see it in the news today. I simply have to say “Jerry Sandusky” or “pedophile priests” for you to know what I mean.

The idea of touch is at the core of our text from Mark today. It contains two interwoven stories of healing, and in both cases, healing is dependent on touch. One healing comes from a desperate reach for the Son of God; the other comes as Jesus breaks down barriers erected by sin.

The story begins with the leader of a synagogue—the kind of powerful Jew least likely to seek Jesus—going to the miracle worker in a moment of fear and need. Jairus’ 12-year-old daughter is dying, and Jesus, surrounded by a crowd, is willing to help.

Jesus has healed in other ways, sometimes from a distance. But in this case, the request is specific. “Come and lay your hands on her,” Jairus says, “so that she may be made well, and live.” Life, he desperately hopes, is in Jesus’ touch.

Along the way, the crowd jostles Jesus. A woman makes her way through the crowd, and she is as desperate as the leader of her synagogue. She has been bleeding as most younger women occasionally do, except her menstrual bleeding has gone on nonstop for 12 years—the entire lifespan of the little girl Jesus is going to help—rather than a few days.

That is a bad condition to have in our time. It was terrible in Jesus’ day. Under the Jewish purity codes, her condition made her untouchable. Even the things she sat on or slept on could not be touched. Brushing against her meant a person had to ritually bathe and be unclean until evening. Her effort to slip into the crowd and get near Jesus was in itself dangerous; if her neighbors recognized her, they might not be happy about her presence.

But she is that desperate. “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well,” she believes. And she is correct. She touches Jesus’ cloak, and knows she has been made well.

Jesus knows something has happened, too. As the disciples note, people are pressing in everywhere, bumping him and his followers. But in one of those touches, the power of life has been transferred, and Jesus senses it.

There’s a lesson here: When a real connection is made—when God’s grace transfers through one to another—it’s going to affect the conduit, too. As a pastor, I sense it when I preach and someone is moved, or when communion changes people, or when I baptize someone. For me, I’m left with what feels like a mixture of exhaustion and elation.

Any of you who work with the poor or the sick in any way will know what I mean, too. Something seems to go out, but you’re left with something new, and you’re happy to have it.

Jesus commends the woman’s faith, expressed in simple touch, and lets her know that her faith is why she has been healed.

The story continues, and it seems to take a sad turn. The daughter has died; the professional paid mourners, sensing a payday, are already at the prominent Jairus’ house, wailing away.

Jesus is cryptic, saying she is only sleeping, an assertion that moves these obnoxious opportunists from weeping to derisive laughing. And oh, how they have missed the opportunity for a deeper understanding of God’s plan for the world.

She is dead, of course, but the one who will go to the cross—the one who will be the first fruits of the resurrection—knows that even death will be undone. And he’ll give them a taste of what is to come, again using holy touch to heal.

In fact, Jesus seems defiant of the rules sin and death have imposed on human behavior. Again, in an attempt to keep separate what is pure and impure, the Jews have rules about contact with a dead body. Any such contact required a seven-day purification ritual.

But just as he made no issue of the bleeding woman’s touch, he makes no issue of touching the dead girl, taking her by the hand. “Little girl, get up!” he says in Aramaic, the everyday language of his people. And she arises, restored to life.

As people who follow Christ, we know the world remains corrupted. We know touch can be used in terrible, wrong ways.

We also know, however, that God’s power is in us. We are, after all, the body of Christ on earth today, reliant on the Holy Spirit for power. Therefore, we can touch rightly, helping God bring healing to a broken world. There are hands reaching out to us, seeking wholeness, healing and comfort.

It is the primary task of the church to reach for those hands, offering the lost and hurting life.

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