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Brothers and sisters, kind of looking at all of the readings tonight as part of the text. Please be seated.
Physical touch is oftentimes more than simply a physical connection. There’s usually more behind it. An example is a handshake when agreements are made and sealed by the physical touch that joins the two people together in that agreement. And another example is comfort that’s conveyed in physical touch. Perhaps you can relate.
For me, 27 years ago when I was a youth minister at a church (this is before Marcia and I were married), I was going through a particularly difficult and dark time. At Sunday worship one morning— in fact, it was a Sunday in Advent now that I think about it—during worship, during the Lord’s Supper, I had communed and I went back to my seat, which was the end seat on the last row in the church, where I oftentimes sat. I was sitting there with my head down, praying and kind of contemplating my dark situation at that time when one of the church members—yeah, I’m gonna call him out, his name was Bob Boynton. He knows I talk about this, so it’s okay—he was returning to his seat from the Lord’s Supper.
As he walked by me, he simply put his hand on my shoulder, conveying comfort to me, as if to say, “Richard, it’ll be okay.” Maybe you’ve had something similar in your life.
I’ll admit that I’m sometimes jealous of people such as those in the Gospel reading for tonight that physically touched Jesus or that he physically touched and healed them. Wouldn’t it be great to have Jesus physically touch and heal and comfort you? Or like the woman who got to touch Him? Or to be able to say, like John in his letter tonight in the second reading, that we too have heard Him, we’ve seen Him, we’ve touched Him; we touched the Word of Life. Wouldn’t that have been great? Wouldn’t it be great to have physically experienced Jesus in this way?
I’m oftentimes jealous of those people because, of course, today followers of Jesus are people of faith. We haven’t heard, seen, or touched or experienced Jesus physically as they did almost 2,000 years ago. But we do. We do hear, see, and touch Jesus today. No, not in the same way as they did back then in the Bible, but with just as much healing and comfort today.
Jesus touches us today with means that we can relate to. And maybe you know where I’m going with this, but I’m talking about God’s Word and the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Through them, Jesus is truly present and are means of Him touching us with His grace. And it’s a means also to build up and strengthen and nourish our faith about God’s Word.
Okay, when you hear, when you read, when you sing, sign, or even remember God’s Word, Jesus touches you with healing and comfort because in that Word are the promises of eternal life, the shining light of the gospel for the forgiveness of sins. That’s all in God’s Word. And when you’re baptized, it’s Jesus who applies the water to you, washing you and cleansing you from all sin. Sure, a pastor or someone is involved in it, but it’s Jesus’s baptism—Jesus touching you.
And in the Lord’s Supper, okay, it’s here that Jesus puts the bread and the wine into our hand and mouth—His very body and blood given and shed for you. We talk about physical touch. We hold it. We drink it. We eat it. We’re receiving the very physical touch of Christ’s body and blood.
I’ll also admit that sometimes during the Lord’s Supper, whether I’m receiving it or administering it and giving it to you, it’s all I can do sometimes to keep myself together, realizing what’s happening here and that Jesus is touching us with His forgiveness, His healing, and comfort.
So although I’m sometimes jealous of those people who got to see and hear and touch Jesus, I also feel sorry for them because they don’t get to experience it the way that we do today because Jesus still does physically touch us.
And in celebrating Christ’s birth at Christmas, we celebrate what’s probably the most incredible and yet unexplainable theological event—the Incarnation of God. Jesus being both fully God and fully man. That dual nature of Christ, it’s an incredible thing that God would choose to enter our world and live with us physically and touch us and heal us and comfort us—dark and sinful people. That’s incredible that God would do that.
It’s incredible that God would come into our dark world of sin—my sin and your sin—that’s ruined His creation. He comes into it, invading it with the light of His grace and forgiveness in Jesus physically. And Jesus would physically suffer and die for us, walking in fellowship with us. It’s incredible that despite your sin, God still wants to be around you and even still physically touch you. How God could do this is beyond imagination.
But why He did it is easier—because He loves you. In your difficult, dark times of life, Jesus walks over to you, puts His hand on you as if to say, “It’ll be okay. I’m with you.” And if you’re in a difficult and dark time because somebody has hurt you, and you’re the victim and you’re really hurt by this, Jesus walks up to you, puts His hand on you, and says, “It’ll be okay. I comfort you.”
And in the difficult and dark times of your sin, when you’ve done, said, or thought things that are really dark, Jesus walks up to you, puts His hand on you, and says, “It’ll be okay. I forgive you.” Jesus says to you, “Arise, shine; your light, me,” He says, “has come and my glory is on you—the glory of my comfort and my healing and my forgiveness I give that to you.” Like John in his letter tonight, that’s the word of life and comfort and healing that I proclaim to you—the word of life of Jesus, who touched people then and touches them now.
And we do enjoy that now, we enjoy Jesus’s touch now; we have this physical touch now, but also look forward to in heaven. See, Jesus physically rose from the dead, and He physically ascended into heaven. Jesus still has a physical body and we will too in heaven. We’ll physically be in the light of Christ’s fellowship in eternal life. We’ll get to see and touch Him, and we won’t have to be jealous of those who did get to 2,000 years ago, okay?
But until then, we enjoy now the physical touch of Jesus, healing us, comforting us, lighting our lives with His loving grace in word and sacrament. May this light always shine on you, especially in your difficult and dark times. Amen.
Now may the peace of God which goes beyond all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.