The idea for this sermon, “There is Healing in the Touch,” comes from two sources. In the Gospel Jesus makes a house call at the home of Jairus, President of the Synagogue Council. We would call him Senior Warden. “My little girl is dying,” he said. “Will you come and put your hands on her?” When Jesus entered the room, he took the little girl’s hand and said to her in his own native language, “Wake up, little girl!” At once she jumped to her feet and walked around the room. The other source is a book my wife and I read to each other, published in 1988, Love, Medicine and Miracles, by Bernie S. Siegel, M.D., a surgeon in New Haven, Connecticut, and teacher at Yale University. Dr. Siegel declares that “miracles happen to exceptional patients every day.”
Listen how he defines an exceptional patient. “Do you want to live to be a hundred?” If you can answer that by an immediate visceral “Yes!” with no ifs, ands or buts, you are exceptional. That doesn’t mean that you expect to have all your pains relieved, your crooked bones made straight, and all your warts made smooth. It means you are willing to accept the risks and challenges to live life to the fullest where God has you right now. Dr. Siegel says that when he asks that question, fifteen to twenty percent from an average audience show their hands. However, he says, “it is a tragedy” that only five percent show their hands in a roomful of doctors. Dr. Siegel thinks all doctors should be required to attend healing services as a part of their training. They should not be allowed to prescribe medications or consider operations during those training sessions. He is convinced that doctors need to “learn that they can help by touching, praying, or simply sharing on an emotional level.”
I want to make three points about finding healing in the touch. First of all, every baby comes into this world needing to be touched. That need persists until death. As far as I am concerned, that need persists beyond death. The Disney movie, Three Men and a Baby, dramatized the hunger for touch with a unique style and humor. Our daughter-in-law gave us the unique experience of the value of touch when she privileged us to observe the delivery of our eighth and last grandchild. As the baby came through the birth canal, her total body was being touched. We saw the baby’s response to the doctor’s touch, the nurse touch, the mother touch, the father touch. Eventually we, the grandparents, touched. Now when I visit her house, I put out my hands to receive this child. She reaches her hands and she comes into my arms. She may stay only an instant until she returns to her mother, but she has learned the feel of touching grandpa again.
Second, being touched in tender, caring ways can be healing. In many homes children are fortunate to have their need for touching or what some professionals call skin hunger satisfied. There are other homes where touching only takes the form of spanking or abuse. Some of us believe that children who are denied tender touch in infancy will deliberately misbehave simply to establish skin contact even though it might be painful.
Think about it. You walk into a home where touching is a regular and normal thing, where the need for touch is satisfied in a loving, tender way, what do you find? You experience a warm, open, relaxed atmosphere. You see the children extending themselves to each other and to visitors. You see the adults being generous. They adapt their schedule, they open a wine or a coke or make coffee to entertain. They make space just so their guests will feel welcomed and wanted.
Yes, you also find them coping with the stresses of life. George F. Regas tells of a young husband whose wife died and left him with a small son. Back home after the funeral, they went to bed as soon as it was dark, because there was nothing else the father could think of that he could bear to do. As they lay in the darkness, numb with sorrow, the little boy broke the stillness from his bed with disturbing questions. “Daddy, where is mommy?” The father tried to get the boy to sleep, but the question kept coming from his sad, childish mind. After a time the father got up and brought the little boy to bed with him. But the child was still disturbed and restless and would occasionally ask probing, heart-breaking questions. Finally, the youngster reached a hand through the darkness, placed it on his daddy’s face, and asked, “Daddy, is your face toward me?” Given assurance, verbally and by his own touch, that his father’s face was toward him, the boy said, “If your face is toward me, daddy, I think I can go to sleep.”1
Then again, walk into a home where the members rarely touch each other and what do you find? You experience an atmosphere that is withdrawn, prone to fantasy, sometimes hostile. It is cold. Even though the words are there, you’re not sure the welcome is for real. You get the feeling that their emotions are being poured out of a medicine dropper, carefully measured. They are barely above the surface. I will never forget a long-time communicant. She had at least a dozen cats. I knew no one who was allowed to enter her house. When she came to church, she acted as if she didn’t want to be visible. She went through the liturgy, made her way to the altar rail in a kind of sneaking manner, and then escaped.
What does all this have to do with healing? After all, you and I are not reading X-rays or EKGs or blood profiles. You may work with people having these tests. You may work in a nursing home or on a hospital ward. Most of us have had some of these tests done ourselves. I had some outpatient tests done recently. My mother-in-law had surgery not long ago. Most of us have had treatment for one medical problem or another. What I am interested in, at the moment, is those characteristics that give you and me the ability to cope, the ability to say, “Yes!” when asked if we want to live to be a hundred, the ability to accept the risk and challenge of living a rich and full life right now. And going beyond the ability to cope for myself comes that other quality that encourages the other person to want to live and accept the risk and challenge for himself and herself.
The great missionary physician, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, said it simply and realistically, “Each patient carries his own doctor inside himself. They come to us [physicians] not knowing that truth. We are best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to work.” Are you giving the “doctor who resides” within you the chance to work? Are you giving the “doctor who resides” within your spouse, your child, your significant other, the chance to work? Here is a little self-administered test from a study by Dr. Carl Simonton.
Answer these questions, yes or no. Do you have a tendency to hold resentment? Yes or no. Would you rather carry a grudge than forgive? Yes or no. Would you rather cry in self-pity than invite a friend out for dinner? Yes or no. Do you have a problem developing and maintaining long-term relationships? Yes or no. Do you have a low self image? Yes or no. If you answer with more “yeses,” by Dr. Simonton’s test study, you are not giving the “doctor who resides within” you the best chance to work. A “yes” means you are most vulnerable to illness.2
In a Charlie Brown comic strip, Linus is eating a sandwich. He makes this observation: “Hands are fascinating things. I like hands! I think I have nice hands! My hands seem to have a lot of character. These are hands which may someday accomplish great things .... These are hands which may someday do marvelous works. They may build mighty bridges or heal the sick, or hit home-runs, or write soul-stirring novels! These are hands which may someday change the course of human destiny!” Looking at Linus’ hands, Lucy says, “They’ve got jelly on them.” But Linus is proud of his jelly-covered hands.
The third thing about the touch is that in the church touch is sacramental. We touch with the hand when we baptize, when we confirm, when we administer a blessing, when we pray and intercede for the sick. The sacramental touch goes further than the hand. Some of you will like this: it includes hugging. Scientists are saying that hugging is more than just a friendly act. It is therapeutic. Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles Medical Center; Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas; and Scott and White Clinic, Temple, Texas, have shown that hugging communicates tenderness, gentleness, caring-ness all those characteristics that are essential for healing both body and soul. Hugging, they say, relieves many physical and emotional problems, helps people live longer, maintains health, relieves stress and promotes sleep. The studies also show that hemoglobin, the portion of blood that carries oxygen, increases significantly when people are touched. There’s your answer for those who say the Peace Exchange is artificial! And it certainly gives husbands and wives, parents and children, and significant others good reason to hug and hug and hug!
Jesus believed in the touch. Jesus practiced the sacrament of touching with his hands. He even says that when someone touched him, believing, he knew power and virtue went out of him. Let’s remember that. It’s a good reason to keep human touch on a high level. Keep in touch with Jesus by faith and you’ll feel power and newness flowing into and through you. There is healing in the touch!
1. George F. Regas, Kiss Yourself and Hug the World, Waco Word Books, 1987.
2. Adapted from Bruce Larson, There is a Lot More to Health Than Not Being Sick, pp. 138-139.