Monday, July 27, 2009

Is the Church Really Healthy?

Last week, I was listening to a Christian radio station when some news clips came on. One in particular caught my attention. Apparently, churches around Europe and America are no longer encouraging their attendants to shake hands as a means of greeting during gathering times. Instead, they are being encouraged to find other means of salutation that don’t involve such direct contact with one of our bodies’ most frequently touched appendages. Of course this makes sense in a world where health has become such a popular topic and personal health even more so. But something about the concept just didn’t sit right with me.

Maybe it’s because we’ve been in Africa for the past year, I thought. Maybe that’s why eliminating hand-to-hand contact in the church seems so strange to me. Maybe. But after hearing the sermon at our church this past Sunday, I decided that wasn’t it. The theme of our study was “outstretched arms.” The pastor was finishing up a series on different ways that our lives are affected when we become followers of Christ. This Sunday he focused on compassion (looking at Luke 10) and encouraged us to think about the term in a realistic way instead of as another abstract emotion that we check off our “to do” list after sending a check to the local homeless shelter. He challenged us to think about the people in our daily lives—the living, breathing, hurting, hoping people that we live our lives beside every day—and to stretch out our arms to care for others the way that Jesus did when he walked the same earth beside the same kinds of people. Not long after the sermon ended, I found myself thinking back to that news clip from the radio. And I found myself wondering: Is that what Christ wants his church to look like to the world around us? A bunch of people afraid to touch each other’s hands because we might get contaminated? Is that what a healthy church is?

I don’t think so. Most of us are familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. We know the general moral of the story and how it ends. But do you remember what comes at the beginning? In a nutshell, the man Jesus told the parable to was correct in reciting God’s command to love the Lord first and then love our neighbors. But the man, seeking to justify himself, wanted to know exactly who his neighbors were. Surely Jesus didn’t mean going to people in another social class or those who were unclean! (Or perhaps today: Surely Jesus doesn’t mean for me to actually touch people.) Yet to him, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, the story of a man who put aside his own plans and fears, had compassion on a sick man he had never before met, and showed to that man the mercy of Christ. Jesus’s instruction? “…go, and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37). Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 10:8, “ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers….” In order to heal the sick, they must have had to go near them. And in order to raise the dead, they must have touched them. In order to cleanse the lepers, they had to have visited them, right? So what, in the twenty-first century when we’ve had hundreds and thousands of years to practice this teaching of Jesus, is our problem? We don’t even want to touch each other for fear of our own health. What then will be our reaction to the world around us? I fear that it won’t be a godly one if we fail to renew our minds by meditating on God’s Word and submitting to what He says is good and true—and healthy.

So am I overreacting due to a year spent outside of the Western world and less exposed to the increasing paranoia over health issues that is hovering like a cloud over the American populace? Maybe. I hope so. But just in case I’m not, I hope you’ll take seriously with me the task of stretching our arms out to the people around us in a way that reflects God’s glory and Christ’s example. And do something counter-cultural: touch somebody.

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