Touche!

Jesus reached out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately his leprosy was cleansed. - Matthew 8.3

Leper-touching, of course, was hardly the done thing.

The law forbade it. Common human fastidiousness shrank from it. And Jesus didn’t have to do it; he could heal lepers at a distance - ten at a time if the situation required it. But the Lord was always touching people he shouldn’t have: lepers, dead guys, tax collectors. I do choose.

In these days of inappropriate touching, scientists are big on the benefits of non-sexual physical contact. Reduced stress, a calmer heart rate, lower blood-pressure, even the reduction of the stress hormone cortisol: skin-on-skin contact can accomplish it all, boosting, along the way, working memory and the immune system. It even delivers a hit of oxytocin, the chemical equivalent of easing one’s feet into a pair of comfy slippers. Don’t know what to say to someone in a crisis? Touch communicates more viscerally than words without the risk of saying the wrong thing.  Indeed, cultures that cuddle their children less have higher rates of adult violence.

But we don’t do it much. Not men, anyway; at least, not American men, and this leads to boozing, drugging, hypertension, and what what Dr. Kory Floyd of the University of Arizona calls “skin hunger.” By this avoidance of contact, we turn one another into an entire society of voluntary lepers.

I do choose.

I cannot choose to heal leprosy; I can choose to touch. And that choice might heal a number of less-obvious maladies.

Of course the real miracle here predates Matthew 8. It occurs, instead, in 1.18: She was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Jesus could touch that leper because they both had bodies. But touch is risky: Herod could seek to kill the infant Christ because they both had bodies.

The Advent season takes us back to the time when the entire human race, suffering from “skin hunger,” found itself satisfied by a God with fingerprints. We should follow that example. One of the signal moments in St. Francis’ conversion came when, instead of lobbing a purse full of gold at a passing leper, he dismounted and embraced the man. At this Advent season, let us remember that Christ calls us to get in touch with one another - literally.

I do choose.

For more information, see: "Hug It Out, Man," by Andrew Reiner