The Touch of God

The movie Dead Man Walking is based on the true story of Sister Helen Prejean who becomes a spiritual advisor to a death row inmate named Matthew Poncelet.  Matthew is guilty of heinous crimes, both rape and murder.  Sister Helen works with Matthew, trying to get him to accept his guilt and culpability, while at the same time also trying to get him to see that he is still so loved by God.

At the end of the movie, as Matthew is being led to his execution, he makes one final request. 

“Can Sister Helen touch me?” he asks.

And as he is being led away, Sister Helen walks behind him, her hand on his shoulder.  “Christ is here,” she had just told Matthew and you get the sense in this scene, as Sister Helen rests her hand on Matthew, that Christ most definitely is there in that moment.

That touch is so important.

It is quite possibly, the first time he has been touched in such a way—a squeeze of the shoulder—it should be nothing, but to Matthew it is the touch of someone who loves him unconditionally.

Oh yes, Christ was most definitely there.

In 1987, the late Princess Diana visited AIDS patients at a London hospital.  There she made headlines, when she did what many people, at the time, thought unthinkable—she shook the hand of an AIDS patient—without wearing gloves.

At the time, there was such a stigma attached to people with HIV/AIDS.  There was still the thought that you could catch it with a mere touch.

But that day, Princess Diana showed the world that what people with HIV/AIDS needed was not fear and exclusion, but rather love and compassion.

Christ was most definitely there that day.

In today’s Gospel reading from Luke 4:38-44, we see examples of Jesus performing healing miracles.  Throughout the gospels, we see there are no limits to what Jesus can heal.  There are no set conditions that must be present.  Jesus doesn’t have to touch the person in need of being healed.  He heals Lazarus, raises him from the dead, all from a pretty good distance away.

Jesus doesn’t even have to speak in order to heal.  When the centurion asks him to heal his servant, he tells Jesus that he believes all Jesus has to do is speak the word and it will be done.  But Jesus simply turns to the crowd and praises the centurion’s faith.  He does not speak of the servant but when the centurion’s friends return home, they find the servant healed.

But frequently, Jesus does heal with a touch.  And when he heals with a touch, he is frequently in contact with people like Matthew Poncelet, like the AIDS patient with Princess Diana, with people who have never known unconditional love, with people who have been condemned and ostracized from their communities because of their illnesses.

Remember that Jesus was living in a time when people still believed that if you were sick, if you were blind or otherwise disabled, it was because of something sinful you had done or perhaps your parents had done.

Illness, disability, was a consequence of sin.

This was just accepted as fact.

In John 9:2, the disciples ask Jesus point blank, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

These weren’t the Pharisees showing their prejudice and ignorance—these were the disciples, people who had chosen to follow Jesus, flawed people yes, but people who wanted to do good in the world, and even they believed that such things were a direct consequence of sin.

Jesus heals this blind man and he does so in a rather unique way.  He spits in the dirt, makes mud, spreads it over the man’s eyes and sends the man out to wash his eyes.  When the man returns, he can see.

There is something so intimate and personal about this gesture from Jesus, to heal this man with his spit.  Every time I read this story, I picture a mother licking her thumb and then washing the crumbs from her child’s face before entering the store.

It’s personal.

It’s a touch.

In Matthew chapter 8, a man with leprosy approaches Jesus asking to be healed and in verse 3, it says, “Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man.”

And in today’s Gospel reading, verse 40 reads, “As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them.”

“Demons came out of many,” the next verse reads.

He touched them.

What does this mean for all of us, today?

Think back to that scene I described from Dead Man Walking.  Matthew is slumped against the guards as they lead him to his death and then Sister Helen is there.  “Christ is here,” she tells him.

And then she tells him this.  As he’s dying, she wants him to look at her and only her.  She wants her face to be the last he sees.  She tells him she wants a face of love to be the last that he sees.

Christ is here.

If Jesus can be not just with the very least of us, but the very worst of us, a murderer and rapist like Matthew Poncelet, then why would we ever doubt that he is with us, always.

Why would we ever doubt that God cares for each us so deeply and meaningfully that there is nothing in this world we could do that would cause Him to turn His back on us?

Sister Helen showed Matthew Poncelet unconditional love and in doing so showed us all that Christ was most definitely present in Matthew’s life.

Christ is here.

Amen.