Touching God

Don’t touch! That’s what the mother says to the child reaching up to the stove-top. Don’t touch! That’s the message we heard on how to protect ourselves from SARS. Avoid physical contact. Do not shake hands. Don’t touch. And wash your hands often and well. When it comes to God, we are often warned: “Don’t touch!” It is dangerous for us to approach the holy and perfect God in our sinful condition. That is the message of the Bible. No sinful person can see God as he really is and live to tell about it.

Before Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, we are told that God walked with them in the Garden, that he conversed with them, and, I would presume, that Adam and Eve could even gaze into the face of their Creator. However, once they sinned, God withdrew himself, because having lost their innocence, his holy and righteous presence would have consumed and destroyed them. God withdrew in order to spare them. He withdrew until the time was right for reconciliation to take place.

Because God had withdrawn himself, mankind has invented various religions to try to bridge the gap, to make God accessible. These have involved three basic approaches: The first is moralism, the attempt to approach God through good moral behavior. The second is intellectualism, the attempt to approach God through superior spiritual knowledge or understanding. The third is mysticism, the attempt to approach God through an emotional experience. Each of these approaches, however, fails to bring us closer to God. Moralism leads to hypocrisy. Intellectualism leads to elitism. Mysticism leads to self-deification (the notion that I can become like God).

Therefore we must beware of religion as a way to bring us closer to God, because it is always based upon the efforts of imperfect mankind that always fall short of God’s glory.

Instead, our only hope for approaching God is that God would approach us and make himself accessible. That is exactly what God did in sending us his Son. That is also what we see in our Gospel lesson. Following his resurrection, the risen and glorified Jesus appears to his disciples and tells them: “Look…Touch me and see…!” When Jesus overcame death, he did not remain just a spiritual being. He did not become unapproachable because of his new glorified state. He rose again from the dead with a glorified and incorruptible body, but it also was a physical, human body. And his body was accessible for his disciples to see and to touch. I believe the reason God did this was because he desired to continue to fellowship with his disciples as he did before his crucifixion. In his post-resurrection appearances, we often see him eating with his disciples. Beginning with the disciples in Emmaus, then in the locked room and finally by the campfire on the shore of the lake Galilee. The purpose God sent his Son was to reestablish proper, real and meaningful fellowship with mankind.

But how does God establish such fellowship with us today? In our Epistle reading, John describes three prerequisites for how God establishes such fellowship with us. First, we must belong to the fellowship of the disciples of Christ who saw Jesus with their eyes and touched him with their hands. We belong to their fellowship if we hold firm to what they taught and testified concerning what they had seen and heard about Jesus. Secondly, we must walk in the light and live by the truth. God’s word is truth and Jesus is the light of life. We no longer live our lives according to our own ideas, but we submit ourselves to Christ and his Word. Thirdly, we must not become proud or conceited, but humbly allow God’s Word to convict us of our sin and confess them. For if we claim to be without sin, the apostle John warns us, God’s word has no place in our lives. For God’s word to live within us means to allow the Holy Spirit to use God’s Word to show us our sin and then to show us our Savior. If we fail to recognize our sin, we will also fail to recognize our Savior as we ought.

The three things we need for fellowship with God are fellowship with the apostolic witness concerning Christ; this leads us to walk in the light of God’s Word and of Christ; and this, in turn, allows the Holy Spirit to do his work to convict us of our sins and lead us to a living faith in Christ in whom we have forgiveness. As you can see, our attitude to the Word of God (who is Christ) is central to having fellowship with God.

Jesus himself said: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” First, “I am the way.” So much for the path of moralism, which seeks its’ own way to righteousness. Secondly, “I am the truth.” So much for the path of intellectualism, or so-called “spiritual enlightenment.” Thirdly, “I am the life.” So much for the path of mysticism or emotional religiosity. In Christ, the Word of God, we find all these paths that were meant to lead us to God, but fall short, fulfilled. Jesus, because he was sinless, fulfilled them all, and as we cling to him in faith, we find them also fulfilled in our lives, for in him we are brought into a true fellowship with God.

I don’t know if you have noticed it, but what we have here in John’s list of prerequisites for fellowship with God, is a microcosm of what happens in Christian worship: Reading of the apostolic word, preaching on the Word of Life, confession of sins, pronouncement of forgiveness in Holy Absolution, and finally, the fellowship meal with God in the Lord’s Supper. Often I have heard Christians say, “If only I could have been there with Jesus 2000 years ago, and could have seen Jesus with my own eyes and touched him with my own hands. Oh how wonderful that would have been!” Well, I believe that in the Lord’s Supper Jesus offers us an even more intimate fellowship than we could have had even if we could have been the beloved disciple of Jesus who used to rest his head against Jesus’ chest. For what is it that Jesus offers us here? “My body given for you” and “my blood shed for you.” Here he is not just offering you a chance to see or touch him, but he gives you his own holy, sinless body to eat so that your body can be united as one with his and you become pure and blameless in body and soul. He also gives you his very life-blood by which he atoned for your sin and which now animates you spiritually as a “born-again” child of God.

Perhaps we have grown so accustomed to this sacred ritual that it is difficult for us to really grasp the full significance of what we are privileged to participate in. I remember a story told by Dr. John Kleinig who was a visiting professor from Australia in St. Catharines. He told us of a poor farmer in South Africa who farmed a miserable plot of land. His dream was that he might strike it rich if he could only find some gold on his land, just as it had been discovered around Johannesburg. So, in his spare time he would prospect for gold. One day a fellow prospector stopped by. And, as prospectors do, they chatted away all night and into the early morning about prospecting for gold. Then in the morning after breakfast, as the friend was about to leave by the back door of the farmhouse, he noticed a stone that was used to prop open the back door. He asked, “My that looks like an interesting rock you have there, do you mind if I take it?” “Sure,” the farmer said, “my field is full of such rocks. Go ahead and take it.” So the prospector took the rock to Johannesburg and had it examined. Once the grime was removed from the rock, it turned out to be a huge diamond. So the prospector staked out his claim of the land and became a millionaire. Meanwhile, the farmer who had searched all his life for gold while sitting on a field of diamonds, died poor and impoverished.

There is an important spiritual lesson for all of us here. Sometimes we look for meaningful spirituality in all the wrong places while failing to recognize the true God who is right there among us. God is among us, but perhaps not as we expect him to be. God is among us, but not in the way we have been conditioned to seek him. God is among us, but concealed from ordinary sight and inaccessible to conventional religious enquiry. God is not found in moralism, intellectualism, or mysticism. Instead, he is only found through the means he has chosen to reveal himself: Through Christ crucified and the apostolic message that bears witness to Christ (i.e., through the Bible). And even then, it is not we who “find” God, but rather God who “finds” us. For through our contact with God’s Word, the Holy Spirit produces a living faith in our hearts. The word of God is the message of the living Christ who comes to establish fellowship with those who trust his words of promise and hope.

When Jesus says, “Look at me, touch me and see,” he is not just talking to his disciples 2000 years ago. I believe he is also talking to us today. We see him when we read the Word of God, when we come to the Lord’s Table, and, very importantly, we also see him in each other, as indeed he has come to live within each one of us. For Jesus tells us that whatever we do for the least of his brethren, we have done for him. As Jesus’ word lives in us effecting repentance, faith and forgiveness, we are Christ to each other. As I am Christ to you, so you are Christ to me and to each other, and to the whole world.

Today, I hope that God has impressed upon you the importance of being in regular fellowship with him through regular contact with his Word. This is the most important thing you can do for your personal well-being besides taking part in regular worship. Following the service I will be presenting a proposal for each of you to have the opportunity to be part of a regular study of God’s Word with five or six others Christians. The goal of this fellowship is to experience a life-transforming encounter with the living Christ. An encounter that will fill you with the joy, the love, the satisfaction, and the abundant life that God desires for each of you. Now may the God who is among us, keep your hearts and minds in perfect peace through Christ our Lord. Amen.