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Reflection for July 2 2006

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He felt power had gone out from him

"Who touched me?" That's what God says when we pray to him. And yet we sometimes doubt he's even aware of us. I mean, the very multitude of God's admirers (and despisers) down through time seems to make him inaccessible to you and me, standing as we do at the edge of so vast a crowd, straining to catch a glimpse of this divine celebrity. Indeed, we may justly feel like the woman in today's Gospel story, elbowed out of the way by the parade of people pursuing Jesus, or like Zacchaeus in Jericho who was so small he had to climb a tree to get a glimpse of him, or like that blind beggar seated on a curbstone in that same Jericho who had to shout to catch Jesus' attention. Don't you feel like that sometimes? There you are in Pew # twenty elbow to elbow with other parishioners or approaching communion as just another face in the line - in touch with the celebrant for a brief second and then it's back to anonymity.

Emily Dickinson often felt far away from God's attention, living as a spinster in a remote New England town in the 19th century. Sometimes she would feel her distance sadly. At other times she would deal with it playfully as when she wrote: What would I give to see his face? And then she goes on to add up her resources: she'd give her life and her biggest bobolink, the beautiful month of June and roses from Zanzibar and lily tubes like wells and bees by the furlong and butterflies and dappled cowslip dells. To this she would add her "shares" in primrose "banks" and daffodil dowries and golden honey and purple from Peru. And having laid out all this wealth, she would say to God - as if he were a hard bargainer: Now - have I bought it - / "Shylock"? Say! Then she'd demand that he guarantee her permission to see his face - with a receipt.

She played with another such poem which, directed at a God likely to overlook tiny Amherst, went: I Came to buy a smile - today - / But just a single smile - The smallest one upon your face / Will suit me just as well - / The one that no one else would miss / It shone so very small - / I'm pleading at the "counter" - sir - / Could you afford to sell - Playful approaches to a remote God lost in a crowd of angels and saints and worshippers and galaxies!

And yet does not today's Gospel reading show that, far from being remote, God is quite proximate to us no matter how lost we may feel in a crowd? "Who touched me?" says Jesus and the disciples wonder that - given his preoccupation with Jairus' daughter - he can be so sensitive as to detect the personal touch of another hidden "daughter" and respond to her need. Which raises the question: is God really that remote and impersonal regarding you and me or is it you and I who, feeling like nobody in a world of statistics and death, live remotely and impersonally - keep our distance - to spare ourselves the uncertainties of engagement? Perhaps when we stop doing that and get personal; reach out even tentatively like the woman in today's story, we shall discover God to be personally touchable in so many ways - God's being much more aware of you than you think.

Emily had that experience one day and felt compelled to write; He touched me, so I live to know / That such a day, permitted so, / I groped upon his breast - / It was a boundless space to me / And silenced, as the awful sea / Puts minor streams to rest. // And now, I'm different from before, / As if I breathed superior air - / Or brushed a Royal Gown - / My feet, too, that had wandered so - / My Gypsy face - transfigured now - / To tenderer Renown.

-- Geoff Wood