It’s truly amazing how much we know about the humanity of Jesus.  Born like us, he grew up like us, faced temptation like us, got hungry, had fun at parties and yet, when his friends died or when he was deeply concerned about their spiritual welfare, he cried.  He even got lonely and hungry and thirsty.  He bled.  He died. 

However, it’s important to note that we only know those things about Jesus’ humanity because he wasn’t hiding it from us or hiding behind it.  For anyone willing to look, it was always there to see.  It was like there was something about God we couldn’t know except through the full humanity of Jesus, all of it, the hunger and thirst, the crying, the loneliness, the bleeding and the dying.  What do you think Jesus wanted us to see about God by looking at how human he was?

We always close our eyes when we pray, as though we’re talking to someone we can’t see, like a ghost.  Do you know why we do that?  This morning, let’s open our eyes and look at Jesus.  If you need some physical help, look at this table (referring to the Lord’s Supper table).  It’s a reminder that we’re dealing with a flesh and bones Jesus.  A Jesus who was born flesh and bones, suffered in the flesh, died in the flesh and, according to the gospel, stood up again, in the flesh.  That’s the actual meaning of the original word for resurrection, to stand up again.  Jesus physically died and then physically stood up again. 

But, the first time his disciples saw him after the resurrection, they thought they were seeing a ghost.  So, Jesus, again, showed them how human he was, how he’d come back not just in spirit, like a ghost, but in the flesh and bones of his full humanity.  I really like the way Jesus said it, “‘Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.  Touch me and see.’”  “You can touch me,” Jesus said.  Whatever else Jesus’ humanity reveals to us about God, it reveals that he was willing to get close enough to touch and be touched.

It must have been very comforting to the disciples when Jesus stood among them and said, “‘Peace be with you.’”  A nickel a minute long-distance calls only make you feel so good when someone you love is away, not standing in the same room.  Eventually, you need to be close enough to touch them.  There’s just something irreplaceable about the power of touch. 

Blue Grass artist Iris Dement sings, “An arm’s just an arm till it’s wrapped ‘round a shoulder.”  I’ve seen it often at funerals.  We’ve just finished celebrating how this dear one is now in heaven with Jesus.  Then, just before the casket is closed for the last time, the family files by and, very often, someone reaches in to touch, one last time.  An arm’s just an arm.

Nancy’s been in Colorado this week.  She goes there once a year to see a dear friend she’s known for twenty something years.  She and Linda go shopping, hang out, stay up way too late and, most of all, talk.  She’s been gone since Wednesday and I won’t see her again until late tomorrow evening.  She knew how much I’d miss her so she left me a stack of cards, one for each day, until she gets back.  They’re dated and I can only open each card on its appropriate day.  They’re really nice cards, “cute,” she would say, with wonderful love notes inside that only make me miss her all the more.  It’s like, while she’s in Colorado sipping coffee every morning with a spectacular view of Pike’s Peak out Linda’s bay window and having all this fun, at least I know she misses me!  I really appreciate the cards, and the cheap long-distance, but eventually, I’m going to need to hold her again and kiss her.  There’s something irreplaceable about a kiss or a hug.  An arm’s just an arm till it’s wrapped round a shoulder. 

You can touch me, Jesus said.  This is a flesh and bones Jesus.  God, close enough to touch.  Physically standing there to remind us that he and he alone has overcome the sin and the death it brings that separates us from God and us from each other.  That he and he alone can die and then stand up again.  And, that only by getting personally connected to that power do we have any hope of ever standing up again ourselves, after we die.  As one of his disciples later wrote of Jesus, “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God (John 1:12).”

Have you received Jesus?  Have you believed in his name?  If not, what are you counting on to deal with your sin and the death it brings that keeps you separated from those you love, even while you’re still alive, or to help you stand up again, after you fall down in death?  How long will you keep trying to stand up on your own?

Aron Ralston did.  A week ago yesterday this 27 year-old Aspen, Colorado outdoorsman was climbing near Moab, Utah when a half-ton boulder fell on his right arm.  By Tuesday of this week, still pinned there, he ran out of water.  On Thursday, he decided that his only hope was to save himself.  Taking a pocketknife, he amputated his right arm below the elbow, applied a tourniquet, rigged some gear and rappelled 60 feet to the canyon floor and then walked five miles before being found.  Incredible story.  Sure to be made into a movie – how this man saved himself.

It’s a great story.  And, I guess the moral of it is that we can’t always count on other humans to rescue us.  Sometimes we have to want to be free so badly that we’re willing to risk dying rather than staying stuck.  An arm just an arm till it’s trapped neath a boulder.  Then, it’s a death anchor.

But, when they rolled the boulder in front of Jesus’ grave, only God his Father could roll it away for him.  In one of the first recorded Christian sermons, Peter told the Jews, “‘you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead (Acts 3:15).’”

Who are you counting on to roll away the boulder death lays on your tomb?  Who are you counting on to get you out of the trap you’re in?  Do you have what it takes and do you think that, when you die, you’ll need God to be so close you could touch him?

This flesh and bones Jesus got close enough to touch, to eat a piece of fish, if nothing else, to show us that God has gotten under this boulder-load of humanity with us, so that it can’t keep us trapped in death forever.  You can touch me, Jesus said.  Then, he said something more.  That he had come to empower us so that a message of “‘repentance and forgiveness of sins’” could be shared with all humanity. 

He came close enough to touch us so that we could then get close enough to touch others, to press our full flesh and bones humanity into service so that, even through its frailty and inadequacy, others might see the flesh and bones Jesus who came to save.  The old gospel hymn said it well, “Let others see Jesus in you.”

Our own Robyn Byrd will graduate this month with her Master of Divinity degree from Wake Forest School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  She and I have been doing some theology via email of late.  Just this week she wrote me these flesh and bones words.  “Emphasis on personal piety to the exclusion of concern for social justice and action neglects the very idea that Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us.  Christians in general (myself certainly included) neglect the very real ministry of the flesh: of working to overcome oppressive power structures and of working in our neighborhoods for change.”  A good way to be a redemptive flesh and bones presence in our culture right now would be to get involved in speaking out against the proliferation of gambling being proposed in the Texas legislature.  A proliferation that will sell false hope to people who are already beaten down by addiction.  A proliferation that will take advantage of those who can least afford it, even five miles from our church building.

You see, that word “‘repentance’” gets a bad rap.  Always painted in terms of personal loss or painful sacrifice, we make the thought of repenting sound about as appealing as the first day of a really bad diet.  Truth is, repentance is one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  It’s his gift of the opportunity to change our minds about God and our relationship to him and the world, too.  It’s our way of saying to him, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up, I’m trapped and I can’t cut myself free.  It’s also our way of showing our flesh and bones world what trust in Jesus looks like, in the flesh.  But, we can’t do that if we’re hiding our humanity, or hiding behind it, as we Christians are wont to do. 

This past week I was reminded of one of my favorite Pearl Price stories.  It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two years since we buried Pearl, at 101.  About a year before she died, she caught me one Sunday right before church and asked, “Pastor, have I ever told you why I thank God for your receding hairline?”  I said, “No, Pearl.  And, to tell you the truth, I can’t think of anyone else who has ever thanked God for my receding hairline.”  Pearl went on to say, “Well, as you know, I’m almost totally blind now.  But, when you are standing at the pulpit and that light shines on your bald scalp, it’s easier for me to find you.”

Did I hear her saying, “I’m able to see the light because of something lacking in you”?  We’re so afraid that if people knew how human we were they wouldn’t believe us if we told them about Jesus.  The truth is, it is through our humanity, fully revealed, that faith more often becomes more believable for those who don’t yet believe.  Jesus let us see him hungry and thirsty, lonely and sad, playing and crying because it was through his full humanity that we were more able to see God.  If we would be willing to say to this world, as Jesus did, “‘look at my hands and feet, touch me and see,’” we might be surprised to learn that people are able to see a Jesus through us they might not ever have any other way.

When Christian writer Madeleine L’Engle’s daughter was a little girl, she had the kind of experience of fear we all have as children, the kind we all have with our own children.  The child cried out in the middle of the night darkness and mama went running.  She tried to comfort her with good theology.  Don’t be afraid, dear, God will be with you. Her daughter looked back at her and firmly said, I know that Mommy, but I want somebody with some skin on.  (George Mason, Where Are You Taking Me, Jesus?   “The Wilshire Pulpit,” Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, May 7, 2000).  What the world needs now is love, sweet love, in the flesh, not just good theology about how God came, but how he still comes through you and me.  In some ways, we’re God’s skin in this world for now, until he comes again.

Jesus has come close enough, in flesh and bones, to say, “You can touch me.”  Jesus has sent us to get close enough to others, flesh and bones, to say to them, “you can touch me.”  More than we can know or even believe, we may be the closest thing to God with some skin on some people will have ever known.