26th April 2023

Reaching out 

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”  And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him.
Luke 5:12-13 (ESVUK)

Here’s a question – when had that leper last had someone touch him? The shocked disciples, and the people following Jesus must have been stopped in their tracks as they saw Jesus lean down to the leper, put his hand out and touch this deformed, diseased, and toxic man who was, as Luke tells us, full of leprosy. 

Touching the dead and the diseased was a no-no in Judaism. But the gospels record that on several occasions Jesus touched people as he healed them. He touched Peter’s mother and her fever left her. He touched the eyes of the two blind men, and gave them what they asked for – their sight. Responding to a request to heal a deaf man who could hardly talk, he put his fingers in his ear, and touched the man’s tongue and healed him. He took the little twelve-year-old girl lying dead on her bed by the hand and told her to get up. And so she did. At the transfiguration Jesus touched the three terrified apostles and told them not to be afraid. Jesus wasn’t afraid of getting his hands on us. 

Love has words and love has deeds and one of those deeds can be the touch of support, of empathy and encouragement. It’s a wordless communication. We British are woefully down towards the bottom of the list when we look at how different nations communicate generously through touch. 

And touching people nowadays can be fraught with difficulty and has become something of a no-no in our society as well, but usually for different reasons than those extant in Jesus’s day. It has been misused by people intent on harm. And because it has been misused it is so often deemed inappropriate as it can be misinterpreted, and so must be used with care.  

But, where we can, let’s follow Jesus’s example of displaying a touch of compassion, a hand that says: I am here for you. 

Prayer
Saviour, whose hands we nailed to a cross, whose hands healed the diseased and sick, may we, where we can, express your love through our touch. Amen.

Study by Hilary Buck

 

About the writer:
Hilary Buck is a minister and pastors the Lewes congregation of Grace Communion International.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion in Lewes
The House of Friendship
208 High Street
Lewes
BN7 2NS

Meeting time:
Sunday 11:00 am 

Local congregational contact:
Hilary Buck
Email:  lewes@gracecom.church
Like us on www.facebook.com/Grace Communion Lewes 

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church