EASTER 5-C -- May 9, 2004

One of the most effective commercials I have ever saw was Ma Bell's "Reach Out and Touch" advertisement. There are times when we all need to be touched by others, some of us more than others. It is part of our being. A phone call, a letter, a personal visit, a hug, even a e-mail, are ways which we reach out to others and others reach out to us. We love to receive phone calls and letters from friends and relatives we have not seen or heard from in a while. Yet, while we receive such calls and letters, many of us fail to send them or make them. So the phone company struck a respondent cord when it encouraged us to reach out and touch someone. Make the call and make someone else, make ourselves, feel better.

Jesus knew this better than anyone. He spent His whole life reaching out and touching others. Sometimes the touch was on the eye to give sight to the blind. Sometimes the touch was on the ear to give hearing to the deaf. Sometimes the touch was on the lips to give speech to the mute. Sometimes the touch was a word of rebuke for sickness of one kind or another to go away. Sometimes the touch was a word of forgiveness for selfishness to go away. Sometimes the touch was no more than a glance.

When Jesus told his followers that He was giving them a new commandment, it really wasn't anything new, at least to them. All they had to do was what they had seen Him doing all the time they had been with Him. It was not anything radical or extraordinary but rather down to earth and quite simple: reach out and touch with your love.

It is like the story of the young nurse in a hospital room with a priest who was attending to a dying man. She said to the priest, "If he dies, I don't know what I can say to his wife." The priest looked at her and said very simply, "Don't say anything. Make her a cup of tea." In other words, reach out and touch. In other words, wrap her in your love. In Jesus' words, love her as I love you.

That sounds very simple, perhaps too simple: pick up a phone and make a call; write a letter; send an e-mail; make a cup of tea; reach out and touch; give a hug. And it is very, very simple. And maybe because we have thought it to be so very simple, so very easy, we have thought it to be very difficult. Jesus spent His whole life making cups of tea for people who needed not words to console them, nor healing to make them well, but simply someone to be there to touch them with his presence.

That scares us, does it not? It is so much easier to mumble some words and hurry on, to hand a pill and walk away. It is so much easier to do that than to be there with them through it all. For being there with someone means being and becoming involved in their pain and grief. We don't like that. We would rather hit and run as far as our involvement is concerned, rather than stay around and help clean up the mess.

But that is really not possible for those of us who call ourselves Christians. Jesus' new commandment was that we are to be there to help clean up the mess if need be. The Old Law told people what to do all right. But it also told them how to avoid cleaning up the mess, to avoid doing what they knew in their hearts they should do.

That is why the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son and the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery are classics. The priest and the Levite passed on by the wounded man in the ditch because the Law allowed them to do so. He may have been dead and they would have been defiled if they touched him. According to the Law they had a good excuse for not reaching out and touching, for not helping the wounded man.

The brother of the Prodigal Son did not have to welcome back his younger brother because, according to the Law, he was no longer his brother. The young man had taken his share of his inheritance and left. He was no longer legally part of the family. Those who were about to stone the woman caught in adultery were merely following the Law.

Yet, all the while Jesus was saying: If you are going to be a follower of mine, simply using the Law as an excuse to avoid doing what you know deep in your heart you should be doing or to justify what you are now doing, as legitimate as that may sound and may be, simply won't wash. It is not enough and it is no excuse.

Jesus says, rather, that what we have to do is ask: Does love allow me to do this? Does love allow me to pass by an injured man? Does love allow me to disinherit my brother? Does love allow me to be unforgiving?

Of course it does not! No matter what the Law said, the priest and the Levite should have done what the Samaritan did: help the man if only out of love and concern for a fellow human being. No matter what the Law said, the older bother should have forgiven his foolish younger brother if only out of love for his own flesh and blood. No matter what the Law said, like the accusers of the woman caught in adultery, we need to forgive others if only because we need to be forgiven ourselves.

I suppose the real question is why did it take Jesus' coming among us to remind us of what we should be doing all of the time? The other real question is why have we not learned? Why do we still pass by the person in need? Why do we still refuse to forgive our brother? Why do we so easily remind others of their sins while so conveniently forgetting our own?

"Human Nature" may be an excuse, but it is a lame one. "Sin" may be an even better excuse, but it is still no excuse. But we come up with excuses everyday. And they all sound quite good and quite logical. The man in the ditch may be a set-up, faking it, trying to rob us. How will my brother learn from his mistakes if I simply forgive him? How can we deter crime if we don't have capital punishment? She knew the Law. She broke it. Stone her!

You see our problem as Christians is that same one Jesus' contemporaries had: How do we reconcile the Law with our faith, with love? The law says that we must be punished for our crimes; our faith and love says forgive. The law says that if you are disinherited, you are out of the family. Faith and love says, here, take some of mine. The law says that there is no obligation for a private citizen to help someone in need. Our faith and love says, oh yes, there is.

Would that living out our faith and solving the problems in this country and this world be as easy as Ma Bell suggests: reach out and touch, pick up a phone and make a call. Would that living out our faith be as easy as making a cup of tea. Sometime it is. And sometimes that is only a beginning. But we must begin. We simply do not have any other choice.

It’s Matthew 25…and all that jazz all over again. It means always being prepared to live out our faith by using whatever gifts God has given us to the best of our ability to love and serve others, whoever those others may be and wherever we may find them. In short and in sum, we are to love one another as Jesus loves us. Deep down we know exactly what that means, don't we?