The Touch of Life

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     "The company that Jesus chose to keep was the company of ordinary men. He was more at home with fishermen, farmers, shopkeepers and tax gatherers than with the religious leaders and the priests. His talk was of seedtime and harvest, of buying fields and building houses, of boats and nets. The neighborhood he chose was secular life, the world of ordinary men and women." --God's Frozen People.

     It is generally believed that the religious establishment of our day exists to further and promote the ideals of Jesus upon the earth. It is unfortunate, but true, that the exact opposite is often the case. The truth is hardly ever spoken about it for the simple reason that it is inimical to one's status or hope of gain. The tendrils of men's hearts are entwined in the traditions they have inherited and cultivated and one who challenges them is regarded as a dangerous usurper who would tear up religion from its roots. Our Lord found this out and Calvary was the result.

     In spite of this I am willing to risk my reputation and future in presenting my honest sentiment about some reforms which are long overdue and which must be effected if we are to be workers together with God. I believe that it is demonstrable that certain cherished concepts and practices in which we indulge are actually defeating the will of God in spite of the good intentions of those who promote them.

     It will seem startling at first to my readers when I say that Jesus did not come to establish a new religion in the earth. He actually came to put an end to "religion" as a means of serving God. Religion is involved in holy places and sacred days, in rituals and sacrifices, and in written codes and priestly cults. Until the world was considered mature enough, God placed mankind under the governing hand and tutorship of religion. It was a faithful slave entrusted with the task of leading us to faith. Now that faith has come we are no longer under a custodian. We have been set free by the grace of God.

     The only "religion" which is acceptable unto God and the Father is life itself. It is not related to acts performed as rites at all. It consists of going personally to ascertain the needs of widows and orphans with a view to relieving them, and of guarding against contamination in daily contact with the world. There is no intimation of anything done in a sanctuary or chapel made with hands. It involves worship in spirit and in truth. It is expressed in concern for the helpless and with the life of integrity. It is pure and undefiled.

     Jesus came that we might have life and that we might possess it more abundantly. He is the bread of life. He said, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give

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for the life of the world." Immediately the Jews who first heard this became involved in a heated argument as to how this could be done. It did not fit into their theological concepts.

     They thought that eternal life was contained in the scriptures, and that it could be secured by searching, debating and disputing until one could quote "book, chapter and verse" for every minute act he performed, regardless of how mechanical it might be. They could not grasp the fact that life came through a vital personal relationship. Jesus said, "You search the scriptures because you think eternal life is found in them, when their real purpose is to point you to me. And you will not come to me, that you might have life" (John 5:39, 40).

     In the same breath he put his finger on their trouble. "How can you believe which receive praise from one another, and are not interested in seeking the praise which God bestows?" Praise accorded by men is always based upon externals, upon things which may be seen. It often seeks a return and is part of a barter system. Praise from God is not based upon the things that are seen, but upon things which are not seen. "Man looketh on the outward appearance but the Lord looketh upon the heart." It is important as a prelude to faith that we decide whose praise we prefer to receive.

     This brings us to the question of how we should employ the scriptures. It is a vital question because upon the answer we make to it depends whether we shall seek to develop the kingdom of heaven into a police state with certain of the citizens riding high in the saddle, or whether it will be a realm of understanding and mutual concern inhabited by sinners whose only claim to recognition is grace which originated outside themselves and leaves no ground for boasting.

     If we turn back the pages of history and convert the love letters growing out of the new covenant into a legalistic code in which we assume that life is contained, we nullify the purpose of the cross. We also doom ourselves to a life of fruitless searching for something which is not there. It seems almost elemental to say any use of the written word to defeat the very design of the Living Word is misuse and a cruel hoax practiced upon the weary pilgrims dying from thirst. One who cannot distinguish between a road map and an oasis, or between a directional sign and a fountain is hardly to be regarded as a safe guide to the water of life.

     The scriptures are to take us by the hand and lead us to Jesus, and when we arrive his message is always, "Follow me!" Jesus established no institutions, erected no buildings, put on no drives, and established no headquarters. He simply invited men to live in a world where death was all around. He said, "Whoever lives and believes in me will never die." He also said, "Whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies." If that sounds paradoxical it is because life and death are always paradoxical to men in the flesh.

     It is possible for us to get so wrapped up in religion with its boards and bureaus, its modes and methods, that we actually forget about the life that Jesus came to bestow. Even worse than forgetting, we may confuse all of the activity and bustle which is necessary to keep the machinery running with that life. This is the greatest tragedy of all. Life is the gift of the Great Physician, and we may employ vehicles in which to get to Him, but we never want to confuse an automobile with the doctor.

     The life of Jesus touched all of life about him. It was free and outgoing as real life always is. The body is merely an earthen vessel for conveying the life from place to place. But life is not material. It can never be contained and bottled up in an earthen vessel. So wherever Jesus went life reached out and touched and changed and transformed men and women. Some of them were sinners, social outcasts, and down-and-outers. But when the life touched them they became kingdom material.

     It is one of the fallacies of "religion" that it tends to think of people, not as whole persons, but as fragmented and

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compartmentalized. Jesus came to save men, and men are beings who bear the image of the earthy, and can bear the image of the heavenly. Jesus was interested in anything which contributed to manhood, whether physical, intellectual, moral or spiritual. He was touched by all of our infirmities. And he was no less God's Son when dealing with the physical than when dealing with the spiritual.

     The word for salvation is soteria. The word for save is sozo. It means deliverance from any peril, danger or abnormal condition. It is rendered save 92 times, heal 3, and make whole 9. It has to do with the restoration of one to a state of normalcy. Sin did not affect one part of man, but man as a whole, as a person. It was sin which caused sickness, pain and death. For this reason one actively opposes sin in the world when he overcomes its effect upon the body, mind or heart. Thus the word used to describe what happened to the sick who touched the garment of Jesus (Matthew 14:36) is identical with that used for the effect wrought upon those who hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn to God (Acts 28:27).

     Jesus did not turn his divine Sonship on when he started preaching to the multitudes and turn it off when he began passing out bread and fish. He declared that he came to do the work of Him by whom he was sent, and whatever he did was the work of God. We must assume that it was the work of God to relieve the embarrassment of a host by providing wine at a wedding, feeding the hungry, washing the feet of the disciples, and healing the sick. In other words, to exercise compassion and to share with men in their need was a part of the work of God. "My Father works always, and I must also work" (John 5:17).

     On the one occasion when Jesus described the final judgment scene he depicted a separation of humanity, based not upon doctrinal correctness or aptitude, but upon active concern for the needy. "I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me." Jesus identifies with the needy rather than with those who are intellectually correct. "I tell you indeed, whenever you did this for the least important of these brethren of mine, you did it for me!"

     It is vital to remember that the Father blessed those who had compassion and did something about it. It was for these the kingdom had actually been prepared since the creation of the world. The "least important" are those who cannot return our favors. Our help for them cannot produce any personal gain. They cannot reciprocate economically or politically.

     I am quite convinced that selfish men who wish to project an image of following Jesus will resort to every form of subterfuge to keep from really doing so. Following Jesus is a costly, time-consuming business which brings no earthly profit that can be rung up on a cash register. One of the cleverest dodges of the institutional church is to brand compassionate sharing as "the social gospel." This shibboleth, mouthed by partisan preachers is enough to shut up the bowels of mercy and close off the feeblest attempt at sharing.

     Thus, well-dressed, perfumed, jewelry-wearing men and women can sit in air-conditioned temples and worship God without giving a thought to the fact that less than a mile away, human beings arise from troubled sleep in rat-infested, stinking ghettoes where an air of hopelessness and despair broods like an evil spirit over their grimy tenements. Those who profess to love him who allowed the decaying flesh of lepers to touch his own, contrary to the law which branded these unfortunates unclean, shrink away from the contamination of their hands and garments through contact with those whom they regard as social pariahs.

     To take the money heaped up on collection plates carried by immaculate ushers and use it to relieve the stark tragedy of the forgotten masses would dishonor the Lord. There are those who actually teach

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that the funds deposited in huge bank accounts as a part of the institutional treasury cannot be dispensed to any of the poor except those whose names have been safely enrolled on the church roster. It is not according to "the pattern" as interpreted by these ecclesiastical lawyers. But they start with an institution, a weekly collection, a treasury, and a bank account, without once remembering that these have all been dreamed up in the fertile brains of a clerical caste. Jesus and the early disciples knew nothing about any of them.

     In the thinking of these men there is nothing wrong with "the social gospel" if it is limited to members of our exclusive society. We may even help those outside if there is a good possibility that our charity may get them to come in with us. Our hand-outs must be regarded as bait to increase our attendance statistics and to pad our membership rolls. Such manipulation of human misery to pamper our own selfishness is a sin of the deepest dye. The only reason that Jesus relieved human suffering was because of the deep feeling of compassion which welled up within him when confronted with pain and misery.

     The sharing of means with the less fortunate is not a social gospel. The true disciple knows there is no such thing as "another gospel." Men may pervert the gospel of Christ and many do. But to act as Jesus did in the world will not pervert it. Jesus moved on earth in a body. He still does so, but we are that body now, and when we minister to the sick, the feeble, the hungry, and the distressed, we are ministering to Jesus. And Jesus is ministering through us.

     Jesus said of his disciples, "I sent them into the world just as you sent me into the world." The disciples are not bringing another gospel when they act as Jesus did in the world. They are prolonging and extending his mission. When they set captives free, bind up the brokenhearted, and set at liberty the bruised and downtrodden, they are fulfilling God's purpose as they do when they proclaim glad tidings to the poor.

     We are always confronted with priority ratings by legalistic minds. "Which is the more important," we are asked, "the bodies or the souls of men?" Jesus never allowed himself to be caught on that hook. Once he was walking through the wheat fields on a sabbath day, and his hungry disciples began to pick the grain and to eat it. The Pharisees immediately said, "Look, it is against the Law for your disciples to do this on the sabbath."

     The reply of Jesus was a classic. All modern Pharisees ought to read it. Our Lord plainly showed that human need always takes precedence over law. He cited the case of David and his men who were hungry, and who went into the holy place and ate the consecrated bread in direct contravention of the law which strictly forbade any but the priests to eat it. He mentioned the fact that the priests actually broke the law every sabbath in preparation of the offerings, yet it was not held against them.

     He said, "There is something here I tell you greater than the temple." That something was the principle enunciated by God, "I require mercy and not sacrifices." Jesus said that those who learn this will not condemn the innocent. The thing which takes precedence is the need at the time. If your enemy hunger, do not preach him a sermon, but feed him; if he thirst, do not hand him a tract, but give him drink. It is not true now, and it never has been true, that preaching sermons will solve all of the needs of men, either in the body of Christ or out of it.

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     "Suppose a brother or a sister is in rags with not enough food for the day, and one of you says, 'Good luck to you, keep yourselves warm, and have plenty to eat,' but does nothing to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So with faith; if it does not lead to action, it is in itself a lifeless thing."

     We are again forced to examine the quality of our faith in this day. We live in a different world than the one which most of us entered at birth. It is no longer a quiet, placid rural culture in which we exist. Secularization and urbanization have married and brought forth technopolis. We are in a world of ferment and torment. Roots have been jerked up. People have been shunted from their places of security. Many have been forced to migrate to large centers of population which have a way of life for which they are not adjusted and to which they cannot readily adapt.

     The result is that city centers decay and rot, and human beings for whom Jesus died are forced to live like animals. Our social fabric is best described in the prophetic words, "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole even unto the head there is no soundness in it." What has the institutional church done? Has it closed the wounds, bound up the bruises, or mollified the stripes with oil? Candor forces us to admit that generally it has fled the scene to protect and preserve its image. It has sought refuge in the suburbs where it can pretend that the noise and the stink and the putridity are not there, that it is all a bad dream from which we will awaken to laugh at our fright.

     There are those who have not retreated. In bold new approaches they have attacked the problem. They have recognized "religious" buildings and structures for what they are--mere tools to get the job done. They know that these tools will not always fit the task in our day. "Church buildings" are useless when people will not enter them, and it is people for whom Jesus died. Abandoned store buildings, private homes, remodeled garages, these have been pressed into service as oases in a desert of despair, where men can secure food, clothing, counselling, and see Jesus at work in His members.

     But all too often even such meager attempts have been attacked and condemned by the church now safely ensconced in the shiny new edifice on Greenacres Drive. The converted slum building in which ghetto children are shown how to cook and sew, where Bible classes are taught and subsistence meals are served, is casually dismissed as a part of "the social gospel." The old store building with the broken whiskey bottles at its side, which has been made into a center where dope addicts can receive help and strength is scoffed at. The coffee house maintained by young people as a bridge between the world of the "ups and ins" and the frightful world of the "down and outs" is sneered at as a project of starry-eyed do-gooders.

     But Jesus may be nearer to the slum dwelling, the ramshackle store building, and the coffee house, than he is to the modernistic suburban cathedral with its plush aisle rugs and its stained glass windows. This is so utterly unthinkable to most of us that it appears as heresy. We are hooked by the fact that we "dedicated" the churchly structure to God, with a welcome speech by the mayor.

     Of course the word heresy is simply another escape hatch which we have developed. All we need to do is to label a thing "heresy" and we can file it in the "limbo file" and forget it. We overlook the fact that every reformer whom we now honor was branded as a heretic during his lifetime. A hero is merely a heretic who has been dead for a century.

     Our plea is that we cease to trust in our rites and rituals as means by which we seek to purchase God's approval; and move into the world in meaningful encounter, grappling with all of those sinister forces which destroy the dignity of man, and reduce him to a mere animal level. There is not one degrading aspect of life that is not traceable to sin. Sickness, filth, squalor, pestilence, poverty and immorality are the spawn of sin in

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the world. If sin had not entered as a result of man's decision, none of these would have troubled us.

     And all of us, without exception, have the taint of sin clinging to us. Not one of us can escape its effects. We are sinners seeking to mitigate the consequences of sin because grace has burst upon us in its shining splendor. We could have been the drunk sprawled in the doorway with the sour odor of our own vomit sickening the passerby. We could have been the dope addict puncturing a vein to inject the substance which would temporarily halt the demon tearing and clawing with fiery talons at brain and flesh. We could even yet become either, for temptation, like God, is never far from any one of us.

     Can it be that God is fed up with our psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, our pious recital of cliche-laden prayers, and our empty, vacuous, pointless sermons, which are carefully slanted so as to detour around our real sins, and which are filled with innocuous generalities? We seem to forget that God can get enough, even of the stuff which he has asked us to bring. "I have had enough of the burnt offerings, of rams, and the fat of fed beasts." We can drag ourselves reluctantly to meetings and bring things which we think will make God happy, but He may say, "I do not delight in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats." What is the twentieth century substitute for a bullock or a he-goat?

     The prophet represents God as saying that a great deal of what goes for ritual is mere trampling of his courts. This means a milling around aimlessly in so-called holy places, with a sanctimonious expression and a frozen smile. It means going through a performance automatically and mechanically, without ever really involving the heart or inner man. Stilted programs may make God as weary as they do some of the earthly participants, and He may be as bored by some of our midweek prayer meetings as a lot of the members are. "And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; when ye make many prayers, I will not hear."

     What is the liturgy in which God delights? The answer is unequivocal. It is the sharing of life and love. "Seek Justice, relieve the oppressed, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow." The prophet Jeremiah states it thus, "Execute justice and righteousness, and deliver him that is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence, to the sojourner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed innocent blood in this place."

     On the face of this clear declaration, the real service to God may be rendered in the civil courts where Christian attorneys plead without charge the cause of the poor. It may be in statesmanlike conduct of legislators who pass laws against unjust discrimination. It may be in the board of aldermen where men of deep conviction take steps to deliver the depressed ghetto dwellers from the oppression of tyrannical landlords or venial storekeepers who exploit the poor and the ignorant for gain. The treading of sacred courts by cold, indifferent, and unconcerned men and women, who use their votes and ballots to further selfish interests, will not impress God. The Father of all mankind will not be deceived by vain oblations or the noise of solemn assemblies.

     All too often the religious establishment has crushed the people of God and ground the faces of the poor. It has not existed to help widows but to take from them. It has equated itself with God and taught stewardship to the institution as the equivalent of faithfulness to God. It has threatened men with hell and perdition if their money was not poured into the coffers. Perhaps the time has come for an impartial investigation of what constitutes service to God and how it differs from the treading of the courts in our generation.

     Once the voice of God spoke through the prophet, "Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everlasting stream." Is this not the God whom we serve?