Passage: This Week's Second Reading

"The Right Touch"

Picture a delivery room. A new mom has just given birth to her first child. The young son is placed in her arms. She holds the baby close. She reaches down and taps his nose, squeezes his cheek, and lets the baby curl his tiny fingers around her index finger. There’s something about just the right touch. It says "I love you." It communicates closeness and assurance, comfort and warmth. Touch tells you the other person is there, real, and so are you. We need just the right touch, to touch and be touched in just the right way.

Did you know that there’s a new invention out there? It’s hard to say if it’s a useful tool for people separated by geographic distance, an incredibly sad commentary on our society, or evidence of human sinfulness.

The gadget is the creation of robotics researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. Called the Hug, the device is a soft, squeezable pillow with two arm-like extensions. It employs sensing and wireless phone technology to send a physical touch via long distance. To use it, both the sender and the recipient need one.

Let’s say the sender is a child who wants to send a hug to her grandmother several states away. The girl squeezes the left paw of her pillow and speaks her grandmother’s name into a microphone implanted in the contraption. Voice-recognition software matches the name to a preset phone number and dials the corresponding Hug pillow at grandma’s house.

Grandma’s pillow then lights up and sounds off. To answer, grandma squeezes the left hand of her pillow and says hello. Once the voice link is established, the girl hugs her pillow as if it were her grandmother. Sensors in the other pillow pick up that sensation and, using small embedded motors, move the pillow arms to embrace granny.

There are even thermal fibers in the pillow’s middle to radiate "body" heat. When grandma has had enough, she presses the right hand of the Hug and says goodbye.

To their credit, the team who invented the Hug did so for worthy reasons, to provide emotional support for family members living beyond hearth and home.

You can see why it could be a useful tool. Nobody is suggesting that a mechanized hug from a sofa cushion is as good as a live hug from a loved one, but the inventors apparently believe that it is better than no hug at all.

At the same time, you can see why this invention is a sad commentary on our culture. That we would even think about supplying a mechanical hug as a form of emotional support suggests how much we have adjusted to being disconnected from our fellow human beings. A couch-pillow embrace has about as much in common with a live hug as planting our children in front of a TV has with actually playing with them.

Research shows that children who grow up without much touch, left alone for much of the time – grew at a slower rate, were sicker, had trouble socially, and displayed more angry and depressed emotions.

It doesn’t stop after you grow up. When you meet that special someone, you want to hold hands, put your arms around each other, sit close, touch a cheek. The front seats of cars are probably much safer now than when most of us were teenagers. Back then, your date could slide right over on that big front bench seat and sit right next to you. We need the right touch, to touch and be touched in just the right way.

We also need the right touch, to touch and be touched in just the right way by God. And we are. The Church has a special word to describe when God could touch and be touched. That word is "Incarnation." It’s when God came to earth and took on human flesh and blood.

When, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary conceived, she gave birth tot Jesus, fully divine, but also fully human. Jesus was someone she could touch. Yes, when Mary tapped his nose, squeezed his cheek, and let him wrap his fingers around hers, she was touching God and He was touching her.

God became flesh and dwelt among us. People saw him. They heard his voice. They touched him. Incarnation – because we needed to be touched in just the right way, not just by each other, but especially by God.

People brought babies to Jesus just to have him touch them. People were brought to Jesus with all kinds of sickness and it says in Luke 5 that Jesus laid his hands on each one and healed them.

In biblical times, leprosy was a devastating disease. Back then, it meant being banished from the community. No one could touch you or even come near you. While the term "leprosy" encompassed a variety of skin diseases, leprosy destroys the nerve endings so that you lose the sense of touch. On top of that, you lost the love and warmth and closeness that came with touch.

And it still happens today – this loss of touch and being touched. A child left alone for hours on end. A child who doesn’t have a lap to sit on while

listening to a book. A marriage gone bad. No touches of love. And of course the most devastating loss of touch in this life is death.

But the worst loss of touch is when we can no longer touch God. Or He no longer touches us in just the right way. We call that hell. Sure, the endless fires sound bad, but the loss of touch, the total separation from God, means no love, no warmth, no closeness, assurance or joy. What a frightening eternity that would be.

So God became incarnate. He becomes flesh and blood. And his blood purifies us from everything that would keep us from touching him now and forever. On the cross, Jesus takes on this most devastating loss of touch. He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus is no longer able to touch his Father in heaven, and our sin that is laid on Jesus makes him too ugly for the Father to touch. But Jesus is taking death and hell at their worst so that we could touch and be touched by God. Then Jesus rose from the dead. Because He lives, we too shall live.

The Gospel lesson for this Sunday is the same every year. Every year we are reminded of Thomas’ doubt and how foolish that doubt ends up being, and how foolish the doubt of all the unbelievers of this world is. Every year we hear how Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared to His disciples after he had risen from the dead. And every year we hear how Thomas refuses to believe unless he touched Jesus. A week later Thomas sees Jesus face to face. Thomas touches the nail marks in Jesus’ hands and puts his hand in Jesus’ side. Just the right touch and Thomas declares "My Lord and my God."

We, too, need to touch and be touched by Jesus. In our Baptism, the sign of the cross is made on our foreheads and on our hearts. The water touches our head. Jesus is there. Just as he welcomed the little children, he blesses anyone who comes to him in that refreshing water. At the Baptismal font, we touch and are touched by Jesus in just the right way.

Or we come up to the altar. Here we see and touch Jesus once again. He has promised to be in that piece of bread and sip of wine. His body and his blood. In that Sacrament Jesus touches us and tells us He loves us. He gives us assurance, comfort, and joy as he purifies us from our sin.

We need the water and the Word, the bread and the wine. We need to touch and be touched by Jesus, now, in this life and, just like Thomas did, in eternity. And one day we will have the joy and wonder of touching Jesus. His resurrection says our hope is that touching and being touched will not end at the grave, but will be ours once again on the Last Day and for all eternity. Amen.