By Greg Yee, Superintendent, PacNWC
I started writing this before the tragedies of last week. Stick with me.
One of the wonderful benefits of online services is my ability to be with multiple churches on Sundays. I love that I could be in Spokane, in Portland and at our home church all in one morning. I’m guessing that you yourself have visited more churches in the last three months than you’ve visited in the past 20 years!
We certainly miss seeing body language, feeling volume, negotiating space, shaking hands, hugging – all the physicality of togetherness. We’re not all touchy people, “not a hugger,” but I think we all realize as we’ve distanced, how much we miss physical contact. Creator’s imprint hardwires us to be physically connected with each other. It is the nature of the Trinity and is the image that we are created in.
I’m sure you heard the story about the 10-year old girl who created a clear plastic “hug curtain” because she missed her grandparent’s touch so much. We ache for touch. I’m taken back to Psych 1 where I first learned about Harry Harlow’s classic study with baby monkeys. They developed abnormally when they were in isolation from their siblings. They also were healthier with a furry wire-framed surrogate mother providing no milk than a bare wire frame that did provide milk. Monkeys need warm, furry, touch more than food!
Bonding and intimacy needs tactile interaction. It needs human exchange. It certainly explains why social distancing has been so life-sucking – even for introverts! It is our divine design to feel each other.
There are two Greek verbs for “knowing.” One describes cognitive knowledge, like knowing the names of colors. The other describes intimacy and experiential knowledge. It is used to describe the physical joining together of husband and wife in procreation. We can only intimately know somebody when we draw close and touch. Experiencing others only occurs when there is life to life connectedness.
Enter these last three weeks – a micro-sample of hundreds of years of the same. George Floyd in Minnesota, Ahmaud Arbery in Atlanta, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville are merely recent examples. We cannot act like this is somehow different and now we’re shocked. We’ve heard and read about these things so many times in the past, but chose to not draw closer. Don’t get it twisted, we are not just seeing this new because we have video-capable cell phones. In 1991, 7 years prior to the first iPhone, we had very clear video of Rodney King being beaten by multiple peace officers who were later not found guilty- but no. We saw LA burn and looted. What did we do? What has changed in our hearts and in our actions? We see black and brown bodies mistreated and murdered over and over again…injustices being justified and we move on…and away…
The neighborhood I grew up in Oakland, CA was developed in the 1930’s. On the plat of this exciting new community, it declared that no Orientals or Africans were allowed to live there. Fast forward through WWII, and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, my parents were able to purchase a home there. Seven years separate my oldest brother and me. It is very telling to look at our 5th grade pictures. He is the only Asian in an all Caucasian class. I am the only Asian in an all African American class. We have a long history of moving away.
We grow “out of touch.”
We lack proximity. We aren’t feeling each other’s breath…or lack there of. It makes us too uncomfortable. We categorize it away as “political.” “Oh that’s those backward folks in the South or Midwest” We hide behind religious platitudes that excuses us from the work. It costs me too much…
We need to “get in touch.” It is the way of Jesus.
Incarnation/presence
Other’s interests before ours
Willingness to die
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!
Read that again.
I also must add that the pain is heavy for other peoples: Native Peoples, Latino/as, and Asian Americans. There are similar strains of feeling unsafe, unfairly targeted, stolen from, limited, used, and kicked out. The term the Covenant uses is correct. Our ministry and commitment is for racial righteousness. The races are from God and help reflect the beauty and immensity of his image. We long for wholeness and rightness in our agonizingly racialized society. This work of the gospel can only happen when we draw closer. This pandemic has taught us to not touch anything and to stay far apart. But this racial pandemic calls us to walk closer and touch each other more than ever. It is the close and experiential knowing we need. We are not safe and right just in our own worlds. We are incomplete and will absolutely languish without each other’s touch.
Therefore, my beloved family, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Cor 15:58