Jesus touched her hand

Colonel David Guy continues his four-part series entitled Touched By God’s Hand

IN common with other Christian creeds, The Salvation Army’s Articles of Faith declare that ‘in the person of Jesus Christ the divine and human natures are united so that he is truly and properly God and truly and properly man’.

Therefore I make no apology for continuing this series of reflections on the human experience of being touched by the hand of God. The hand that touched them was human – it was later to bleed when impaled on a cross – but it was also the hand of God.

Looking for the earliest example of Jesus touching a person in need and regarding Mark as probably the earliest Gospel, I turned to his first chapter to read again how Jesus touched a leper. But then I realised that there is another example of his healing touch earlier in the same chapter. Jesus had gone to the synagogue in Capernaum and there healed a disturbed personality simply by speaking with authority (vv25 and 26). God’s power was channelled through the spoken word – not through touch, as usually understood. But after the service Jesus did what many preachers do – he went to a friend’s house for dinner.

There he found Simon Peter’s mother-in-law suffering from a very different kind of disorder. There was nothing mental or personality-based about her problem, she had a fever. In his account, Matthew says that Jesus ‘touched her hand’ (8:15 all quotations from New International Version).

Mark (1:30 and 31) also says that Jesus ‘took her hand and helped her up’. They agree that Jesus touched one who was in need – and ‘the fever left her’, although Luke describes it slightly differently (4:38 and 39).

This is not the only incident in which Jesus takes someone’s hand. He caught Peter’s hand when he was beginning to sink (Matthew 14:31). He took the hand of Jairus’ daughter when he raised her to new life (Mark 5:41 and 42). So it is no surprise that after the Resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, his followers act likewise. When the lame man asked Peter and John for money, Peter caught the astonished beggar by the hand and lifted him up (Acts 3:7).

We need to note two things about these examples of physical contact. Only in the case of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law – as narrated by Mark and Matthew – do we find Jesus taking someone’s hand without speaking. As a general rule, the word always accompanies the action.

Perhaps there is a lesson here that we need to relearn in the 21st century. In recent days there has been a tremendous emphasis on showing compassion by service and, sometimes, a caution against trying to bring the gospel in at the same time.

People who talk like this have a point. A person in need who feels that a Christian is offering help only so he or she may preach a sermon or say: ‘Come to worship’, may understandably resent this. The motive should always be compassion. But if we would see the healing touch of Christ upon human personality we must not rest content with action. We may be asked: ‘Why do you care? Why are you doing this?’ Then the word may accompany – and crown – the work.

The second thing we might notice is that none of the Gospels mention any request for help from the sick woman. It comes from family members. Luke tells us that they asked Jesus to help her, but Mark and Matthew simply say they told him about her. They had seen him cast out a demon, but dealing with a purely physical ailment was something else. So they do not ask for a miracle, but bring the woman’s need to Jesus’ attention. Then he touched her and the fever left her.

We may know people who have grown up in such a secular environment.They would not think of asking God for help or spiritual health. They will not bring their own needs to Jesus. But we can bring their needs to God in prayer – as the first disciples told Jesus of the sick woman, without apparently suggesting what he should do – believing he can get through to them, touch their lives and impart new wholeness and strength.

And when those first disciples brought the plight of Peter’s mother-in-law to Jesus, as Dr Donald English writes: ‘They then became partners in his ministry.’ Incredible as it seems, we may exercise the same privilege.

• Colonel Guy lives in retirement in West Wickham