During this season where we are physically removed, many of us are keenly aware of the lack of touch in our lives. This morning I watched a video with my daughter where YouTubers had the challenge of NOT touching 5 objects put in front of them … the first was one of those candy necklaces, another was a gift card of an unknown value and the last was a gorgeous large dog who got all up in their face, licking them. All of them struggled with each stage of the challenge.
During a global pandemic, all of us have had our ability to touch restricted. We can’t touch our own faces. We wear gloves. We cannot hug … I’ve already been warned by several friends that when all of this is over to expect the biggest, longest hugs ever.
You get a hug. The delivery man gets a hug. The green grocer gets a hug. The barista gets a hug.
This lack of touch has profoundly affected our lives.
When we look through the Bible we are reminded how powerful touch is.
The imagery in Genesis when God created humans is so tactile.
Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
Genesis 2:7
Both Isaiah and Jeremiah have similar imagery painting a picture of God as potter and his people as clay as he kneads and fashions and molds them.
Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Isaiah 64:8
He did the same for animals and birds of the air forming them from the earth and is said to have planted a garden for them all to live in and thrive.
But shortly after we read of God forming men and women, we read of the woman adding to God’s words. She responds to the one in the garden questioning God’s goodness by saying that TOUCHING the fruit would lead to death. The woman had set a boundary further from God’s actual command not to eat. But her boundary proved pointless as both man and woman touched, took and ate. Believing a lie that God was not in fact good and they could find their own way to know goodness.
The lying serpent was cursed by God but a promise of hope was given. A prophecy so early in God’s story of God’s people. The serpent will strike or bruise the heel of one of the woman’s offspring. But that offspring will ultimately crush his head. (Genesis 3:15)
Touch also led to deceit, when Jacob fooled his father Isaac into touching him and giving him a blessing instead of his twin brother.
Touch was forbidden over and over again in the law given to God’s people Israel. Do not touch the unclean thing.
David, a man after God’s own heart, touched and took and declared ownership over a woman’s body. A woman made in the image of God. Formed to be like him. Formed to be good and do good.
Touch is powerful for both good and evil.
There is something magnificent and awesome in being confronted with a Holy God through touch. Moses was commanded to remove his shoes and stand barefoot when in the presence of God’s spirit at the burning bush. A priest was instantly killed when he put his hand out and touched the ark of the covenant. Isaiah’s lips were touched in a vision by a burning coal, that emptied him of his uncleanness and filled him with the holiness of God.
“See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”
Isaiah 6:7
And then God becomes man and he in full humanity he touches those who were untouchable and atones for their sin. He touches the blind and they can see. On his way to tenderly touch and heal a young dying girl, a woman touches the hem of his coat and Jesus stops in the crowd and says “Who touched me?!” The power of this touch, this touch done in faith and hope for healing, flowed from his body into her unclean body and made her whole.
While he was in a home with the sort of people who added to God’s command and said that you must wash your hands a particular way, a woman who’s soul had been healed, her sins forgiven, approached him in gratitude and worship:
As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
The Pharisees in the house sneered:
“If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Luke 7:39
Oh, he knew. He came to touch and be touched by people like her.
A man, a foreigner, healed by Jesus flung himself at this feet loudly glorifying God, physically touching and clinging to Jesus as the source of his very life.
Jesus, the king of heaven, God become man, lowered himself and served his friends, washing their feet.
Even in his final hours, when confronted with his enemies, Jesus touched and restored a man’s ear when one of his closest friends had injured him.
The same liar in the garden, who questioned the goodness of God, was about to strike his heel but in Jesus’ suffering, the sensation of being spat on, beard plucked, thorns smashed into his scalp, flesh ripped from his back, forced to carry the weight of a tree, nails hammered through his hands and feet, body struggling with every breath, it was in fact he who was crushing the head of the enemy when on the third day he rose from the dead, victorious.
On this third day, his friend and faithful follower, Mary clung to his resurrected body.
“Do not cling to me,” he told her. Instead, he had a task for her to do.
Go and tell my friends that I am alive.
In his life, death and resurrection, Jesus redeemed touch by redeeming a people, making a way for them to be good and do good. To love God fully and love others fully. To use our touch not to deceive or selfishly take, but to love. Filling them with his spirit to be agents of his goodness in the world.
At this moment, not touching is the most loving thing we can do. Touching can kill. Not touching and being with each other in person can save lives. But that doesn’t stop us from loving God and others and the task given to Mary in the garden of his resurrection, the garden of a new creation, is ours, too, go and tell them that he is alive and our sin is atoned for and we are alive in him, new creations, to be good and do good for the glory of God, in our bodies, our touch, our words and our actions.
And when this is all over … by all means … touch, hug, high five, fist bump, physically hold the hand of someone others view as “untouchable. Give each other a holy kiss like the first followers of Jesus used to do. Let touch be redeemed. Let touch be good. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t view every single touch through the lens of a sexual invitation to sin. We are brothers and sisters after all. Part of God’s family, agents of his goodness.
Do you know God intimately? Have you been touched by his story of restoring a people to his goodness?
David, the man who touched and took what was not his, was ultimately restored. His sin atoned for after. He wrote a beautiful song. A song full of the imagery of touch and vulnerability and intimate relationship. One that can be yours, too.
Psalm 139
You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
And at the end of his song an invitation to know him intimately:
Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
At University Fellowship of Christians we are in a unique position to speak into the University realm of conversations and ideas and worldviews and point those who are questioning, confused by the world's lack of answers where authenticity becomes the ethical standard.
Christians and churches (both local and further afield) partnering with us in this important work makes a massive difference in young people's lives as staff and students are showing up and are here for these types of conversations.