he touched me,
reached out
breaking
all boundaries
and conventions,
he touched me,
he touched me
and with the shock
of life against life
healing began
to flow
and I was clean…
his touch healed me
body,
heart and soul,
he could have
spoken healing,
but
he touched me,
he took
my outstretched hand
and in that touch
affirmed
my hopes and dreams,
the possibilities of life
for me…
he touched me
and I am whole again…
As I pondered this week Gospel reading the power of touch, and the simple action of reaching out to another has really struck me, especially when the "other" one is one we would normally shun or stay away from. Although we may not like to admit it if we are honest, really honest we all do that to some folk to some extent!
Jesus broke down boundaries when he reached out and touched the leper, he broke through convention and showed not only love but grace and mercy, generosity and kindness. There was a school of thinking that declared that lepers and folk with other diseases must have brought this sickness upon themselves, and therefore they were looked down upon and excluded for more than their outward condition. As I have been pondering this I am aware that there is a tendency for this to happen today with those who find themselves marginalised by unemployment, disability, poverty, and in some cases just by being different from ourselves....
I wonder if we are aware that our exclsivity actually marginalises us from God's grace, if we refuse to give and to share then how can we receive? If we refuse to reach out do we close ourselves off? In a week when the Anglican Synod debate the place for women as Bishops, and the Methodist Church is still hard at work on it's Equalities and Diversity Project, this should give us uch food for thought!
Or how about something more insidious than that, how about the times when we have felt good about reaching out, but have done so only to draw others in that they might be like us! If we are really to be those who dare to reach out and to touch we must be aware that we will find ourselves enlarged and even shocked by grace meeting grace, therefore changed in the process.
On another level I wonder if some of our tendency to be closed off stems from the fact that e we are closed off from ourselves in part. There are parts of our lives that we deem untouchable, and even unreachable, and while we know that this is nonsense the pain of reaching out to those parts of our lives is too much for us to bear. The truth is that the same Jesus who reached out and touched the leper invites us to cry out to him today; "If you want to, you can make me clean!" And he wants to, are we brave enough to be healed?
