Gentle and Strong Hands

Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut.

The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

This can be found on page 995 of your Pew Bible.

In today's reading, Jesus' compassion for our brokenness prompts him to reach out and touch a leper, restoring him to wholeness.

A reading from Mark chapter 1, beginning with the 40th verse.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling, said to him, If you will, you can make me clean.

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will be clean.

And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.

May God add his blessing to the reading of his holy word.

Communication theory will tell you that 55% of what we communicate is through nonverbals.

Other studies suggest that up to 37% is communicated through tone, and only 8% gets communicated through words.

I've been thinking about hands and how they communicate this week and how they can actually have tone.

So interpret for me.

It's interesting.

There are different ones.

Oh, don't do that in Mali.

That's lewd.

You do this in Mali.

So you need a lexicon, whatever culture you go into.

So let's add some fingers.

It's amazing how much we communicate with our hands.

I was thinking about this at a coffee shop as I was thinking about this message, and I started going through them, and people around the coffee shop were looking at me like I was having this odd conversation in my head.

It reminded me of the time we were in Italy in Coca de Marina, and there was a man on the phone, and in good Italian fashion, his hand was going like this all over the place.

You knew it was a spirited conversation.

We're walking with Jesus this fall, and we're diving in particularly to his body parts.

God gets explained through human images throughout the Old Testament because he's spirit.

How do you imagine God apart from the metaphors and the images that we have?

And then God took the step of coming to earth so that we would get a clearer picture.

And as the writer of Hebrews says, Jesus is the exact imprint of God.

And today we're going to look at his strong and gentle hands, because they communicate to us the power and the love of God that's waiting to meet us.

So Mark chapter 1, very short account.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

It's one of multiple times when Jesus is touching someone.

It's interesting that sometimes he just speaks the word and people are healed.

But other times he touches, he's doing something significant in that moment.

In this account, we get it recorded in all three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And when there's one in each of the Gospels, especially where a person isn't named, you pay special attention.

You see, you recognize that leprosy was a frightening thing in Jesus' day.

Leviticus 13 and 14 have a lot of prescriptions of what you need to do in the case of a skin disease.

There were 72 different kinds of skin diseases that are listed in the Mishnah, the Torah.

And rabbis were particularly afraid.

They had a rule that they had to be at least six feet away from someone.

If they were walking down a street and there was a leper on that street, they wouldn't buy anything from the shops.

And they actually assigned that a person who had leprosy was a deep sinner.

Interestingly, in the Hebrew scriptures, there's only two healings of leprosy.

There is Miriam, Moses' sister, and you have Naheman, the Gentile, who comes, and Elisha heals him.

So the healing of leprosy becomes a symbol of the breaking in of the messianic age.

This is what they were waiting for.

It's interesting that in a lot of the general declarations of Jesus healing, it will say things like, He healed the sick, he cast out demons, and he healed lepers.

Why would you throw that one in there?

It shows the nature of struggle.

And it wasn't just the physical disease, it was the ostracism socially that came with it.

In the Hebrew scriptures, when the people are wandering, the prescription was if you have leprosy, if you have one of these skin diseases, you need to be outside the camp.

And that's really hard in a relational culture.

For those of us who are individualists, it can be almost a blessing that you get outside the camp.

But in that culture, it was very severe.

In fact, when you walk down the road, if you had leprosy, you had to cry out, leper, leper.

And it's so significant that this man is introduced as a leper.

Not that he has leprosy, it's become part of his identity.

But it's that ostracism of being in shame that would have moved Jesus the most.

And it's interesting when the man comes to him, he doesn't ask to be cured or healed.

He says, make me clean.

Make me clean.

So that I can be back in the community.

There are three things about this man that are very impressive.

There's a desperation.

It says that he implores Jesus.

He falls on his knees.

This is begging.

He comes to Jesus.

Now remember, he knew the social order of the day.

He knew what to expect if he got near a rabbi, but he takes the risk of bringing his problem to Jesus, and he has faith.

He says, if you are willing, you can.

And he puts all of his confidence in Jesus in this moment.

Jesus' response, moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will be clean.

The literal text says he was moved in his bowels.

This is really the word compassion.

Every culture has ways of expressing things.

You know, there's cultures that say, I love you with all my kidneys.

I don't recommend using that, men.

That will get you in trouble.

But the bowels were the idea of this inner struggle that was in you.

And it's better translated compassion than pity.

I don't like the way they translated it here.

We have this phrase sometimes in English, we'll say something like, It made me sick to my stomach.

When?

When we saw some form of disaster or somebody in pain.

See, pity, I can have pity on you but walk away.

But compassion means I need to sit with you.

I need to be part of the solution of what God is doing.

And Jesus stretched out his hands and he touched them.

There's two powerful things happening here.

To stretch out is an expression of the power of God.

It reminds us of Exodus chapter 3 when it says that the Lord stretched out his hand for the liberation of the people.

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

Jesus at one point will say, If I cast out demons by the finger of God, the strong arm of the God, the hand of God, the finger of God is what brings things into existence.

And so the people, in hearing this account in that time, would have thought of all of the strength of God being poured out towards him.

But then Jesus touches him.

He breaks every ritualistic code of his day to show compassion.

And this is what Jesus is doing all of the time.

He gathers children up into his arms.

He shows people that are fallen a hand to lift them up.

Peter, when he's sinking, walking on the water, it says he stretched out his hand.

Regularly, Jesus is touching that which you weren't allowed to touch, the untouchables, death, and brokenness.

He's willing, because for Jesus, contagion never comes from the source to him.

He is the power and the love to overcome that contagion.

And he touches with all compassion and humility.

And then finally, in a typical Mark way, he summarizes it this way: and immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean.

Immediately is one of Mark's favorite words.

Immediately.

We can hear Peter dictating to Mark.

Immediately, immediately, immediately.

I want to remind you from our healing series last January that there's five ways that God is healing us as the people of God.

I love when it's immediate.

I pray for that all the time.

When I see brokenness, I pray that God would come in and do that.

It's called divine healing.

I wish it happened more often, but I'm glad the times that it does happen.

But there's other ways that God heals.

He uses the medical community.

People who have studied hard and have learned in wisdom and are gaining insights that cooperate with the healing touch in our body.

There's healing properties in how we were even created.

That's the third way God heals.

I've used this illustration before, but it's the best one.

I'm always smacking my head on something.

I have a feeling you do it as well, but you have hair, so you don't see it.

So there are regular divots out of my head.

If I wait long enough, it will heal.

It's just part of the body's process.

There's a healing where it says His grace is sufficient.

We don't get the physical healing that we wanted, but there's the presence of God that becomes sometimes even more precious than the potential physical healing.

And then those of us in Christ, there is resurrection coming.

We will all be healed in resurrection.

This is God in the process.

If you are in Christ here this morning, you are being healed.

You are in the process of being healed.

Isn't that good news?

So what's the so what of this message?

Where do you need the touch of Jesus?

What's physically broken?

What's emotionally broken?

What is causing you to have shame that makes you think possibly you're not welcome to God?

What anxiety out of your desire control is overtaking your life?

Jesus wants to touch those places.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And not only does he reach out with the power in his hand to do it, but he reaches out in love to say, I want you to know that I'm with you in the midst of this.

But you have to cooperate with his healing.

You have to surrender to what he wants to do.

We experienced something like this a number of years ago.

I'm going to invite Ingrid up to give testimony of surrender and finding God's better way.

Hi.

Good to see you again.

I asked her between services, did you remember to DVR the Manchester United match?

And she did, so we're still married.

Yes.

It reminds me there's one hand gesture I forgot.

It's this one.

That's what I do when Manchester United gives up a goal in the 90th minute.

What on earth?

Where were you going?

It's your turn to talk.

Go ahead.

So it was 1988.

Chuck had gone on a missions trip to Mali, West Africa with a group of our men from our church.

And being the godly woman that I am, I'm back in New Jersey with nine-month-old twins saying if he comes back and tells me I'm going to Africa, he can forget it because I am not going to Africa.

So he came home and I knew something was different about him.

I knew there was a change.

But he never said we're going to Africa.

So God and I did battle for a few months.

And one Sunday there was a missionary at our church, and he was talking about being true disciples, that if we are true disciples of Christ, then we are crucified with Christ, then we take up our cross daily and follow him.

So I'm sitting in the pew thinking, I am a true disciple.

I'm crucified with Christ every day.

I'm a pastor's wife.

And it's my turn.

Okay.

But that's a whole different thing here.

So sitting there in the pew, and I'm thinking, I am a true disciple, and I teach new believers Bible classes, and I teach vacation Bible school, and I was a Christian school teacher, and I'm married to a pastor.

So I'm thinking of all these things in my mind.

And then he stopped the speaker for just a moment and he said these words.

He said, if you are truly crucified with Christ, if you are a true disciple, then he said, nail-pierced hands can't grasp anything too tightly.

Nail-pierced hands can't grasp anything too tightly.

And that Sunday morning, I realized that I was holding on to a whole lot of things.

I wasn't really surrendered.

I wasn't really that trusting that God could actually take care of us and our little ones in West Africa.

And so that Sunday morning, when the missionary had a call, he said, Whoever feels called, I walk, the pastor's wife gets up and walks to the front.

And Chuck met me at the altar because we knew what was going to happen.

And it changed the trajectory of my life, our life.

Nail-pierced hands can't grasp anything too tightly.

If you want to experience the best that God has for you, it's going to require surrender.

You can live a good, quiet, comfortable life.

And I'm not saying God's calling you all to go to Mali.

I don't plan to go back.

But He's calling all of us to surrender.

It's when we surrender, when we take the risk of coming to Jesus, that He then touches the broken space.

And we come fully alive.

Here's the cool thing.

When we have nail-pierced hands, the very hands that He extends towards us in intercession from heaven, we then get to be the hands and the feet of Jesus in this world.

He releases his love and his power through us.

And the best thing is that the places of the scarring in our life are the places that he'll use most significantly.

Because it will touch people in their most broken place and where they're waiting for God to meet.

I want to give you three gestures for this week.

The first one is this.

Now I'm not saying that everybody has to raise their hands in worship.

It's amazing how such a simple thing of glorifying God can become a mark of spiritual superiority.

It has nothing to do with that, but when I lift my hands in worship to praise God, I'm saying, Lord, I recognize your glory.

It's usually when we speak the name of Jesus.

And so this week, whatever you do that is the fruitfulness of God through your life and every success that you get, lift your hands to God and acknowledge that it's Him doing it.

You don't have to deny the fruitfulness in your life.

You don't have to play a false humble.

But when God does something, just give Him glory.

The other place is simply like this.

This is the posture of surrender.

This is what we especially do when things aren't going well.

It's an abandonment to God to say, unless you fill my hands with what you have, unless you come, Lord, there's not going to be a way out of this.

Don't wait to the moment of trial to do that, but even in the moments of good, say, Lord, it all belongs to you.

And I'm waiting for you to do it.

And then finally, there's this one, which is the hand of reach.

Find the pieces of this world and the people of this world who are broken and be God's presence to them.

It will transform life.

Some of you have heard me talk about this multiple times, but we came back from Africa, our second term there, only in the country for three days.

I was out jogging.

It was six in the morning.

A driver fell asleep going 50 miles an hour and he hit me.

I was flipped into the windshield.

I was flipped 30 feet up and 70 feet out.

The fact that I'm here today and that I walk is a miracle in itself.

But I was pretty mangled.

I look at pictures of me for the three weeks after that.

I look like I'm in loopy land somewhere.

My whole head was peeled back.

I only stayed in the hospital one night because we'd been in Africa for four years and I didn't have ESPN, and they didn't have ESPN in the hospital.

So I checked myself out, made Ingrid care for me and the rental that we were at.

The next day, after I came home, the extended family came in to see me, and with all situations of outward disability or struggle, most people stood at a distance.

They were afraid to get close.

There was one person who just simply walked up to me and she just put her hand on me.

Her name was Kelsey.

That was our niece.

I can't remember how old she was, maybe five or six.

Why would Kelsey do that?

Well, Kelsey was born without kidneys.

Kelsey had gone through two operations to get one good kidney that would work.

She knew what it was to be in pain and to be in a difficult place.

The great thing about this is where you've been hurt and broken and scarred, those are testimonies to the healing of Jesus.

And those become the places you get to minister to others.

Stan, which let's be his outstretched arm and his touch to a world that's in need.

Amen.

To learn more about the mission and vision of Stanwich Church and how you can get involved, please visit Stanwichchurch.org.