" Hugged Back To Life"

As a Child how many of us remember the feeling of being cuddled or hugged by someone special a mom, a dad or grandparent?  What was so special about those moments?  Was that different a different kind of hug than the hugs you get from adults today?  How so. 

June 21, 201:   2 Corinthians 8: 7-15, Psalm 130, Mark 5: 21-43

A business executive had become very depressed.  Things were not going well at work, he couldn’t seem to shake the depression off and was bringing his problems home with him every night.   Every evening he would eat his dinner in silence, shutting out his wife and five-year-old daughter.   Then he would go into the den and read the paper using the newspaper to wall his family out of his life.

After several nights of this, one evening his daughter took her little hand and pushed the newspaper down.   She then jumped into her father's lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him strongly. The father said abruptly, "Honey, you are hugging me to death!" "No, Daddy," the little girl said, "I'm hugging you to life!"  

 How about it!   Anyone here in need of being hugged back to life?  Sounds good to me.

Psychologists long speculated about how children, utterly cut off from the human love touch and personal relationships might develop.  Their speculations were tragically confirmed in the late1980’s when the numerous orphanages of Communist Romania were opened to the world’s eyes after the fall of its dictatorship.  Maybe you remember seeing some of those startling images on the evening news reports or in a documentary by the BBC. Or the CBC?

The leadership had mandated bizarre social policies that had resulted in thousands of unwanted children, being left to themselves in these institutions, basically isolated from parental human love touch, and affection.  The results were more than tragic.   Many of them could not speak, nor could they relate to one another.  They were completely void of how to give or receive affection of any kind.  We though that only happens on the other side of the oceans yet as we watch the news from America today where hundreds of children are being taken away from their parents at the border crossings, or we can recall the hundreds of thousands of children that were taken from their aboriginal families in Canada and sent off to residential schools.   No country has clean hands Western, European, Middle East, African, the Pacific regions or Asia have escaped committing atrocities to its own especially children regardless of status, race or color.  

Many people today who appear healthy on the outside are dying on the inside because of the same reasons.  There is a great void in their lives, and generally it comes from a lack of feeling loved by self and accepted by those around them.  Maybe your one of them.   Maybe you too were not shown a love that hugged you into life.  Maybe the love you understood was for others but not for you, or the love you got to know had standards to be met, or conditions that had to be fulfilled.   A love that said, “you’re only loveable if.”    Well for the many who were not hugged into life early on during their childhood, they too have a harder time relating to others, they too have a more difficult time giving and receiving affection, they too cannot truly understand the love of self.     

This was the greatness of Jesus.  He took people from where they were, no standards or to do list, and by not rejecting or discriminating between them, He literally hugged them back to life with His unconditional love.   Jesus wants to do the same for you.  He stands at the door and knocks, will you let him in.  That is precisely what we see Jesus doing here in this dramatic passage in Mark 5.   Jesus is loving needy and hurting people, loving them back to life.  This passage is a fascinating one because here we have two healing stories rolled into one and the people involved could not be more different.   On one hand, the family of Jairus represented the "upper crust" of society.   He was the ruler of the synagogue.  He was a man of substance, rich and powerful and religiously prominent.    In the synagogue, he called the shots.  He decided who would preach, what scripture would be read, and what hymns would be sung.   He represented the Elite of Society, especially the religious world, but this day Jairus was troubled.  His 12-year-old daughter was dying.   On the other hand, the hemorrhaging woman in the crowd was a social outcast who was suffering because God’s judgement was upon her they thought, because of her condition.   She was considered by the “upper crust”, the religious and elite as unclean and therefore not allowed to set foot in the synagogue.   In this magnificent passage, these two vastly different people, this out cast hemorrhaging woman and the upper-crust daughter of Jairus are loved back into life by Jesus.   He sees them both as daughters of the one Father, equal in all respects and in need of Jesus’ unconditional love.  Jesus demonstrates a non-judgemental love that loves you no matter what your condition, no matter who you are, because Jesus knows whose child they really are, and he knows whose child you are.

Folks, let's look closely together at the power of Jesus’ love and the amazing, incredible things his kind of love can accomplish when it is given or when it is received.    His Love has no strings attached, no hidden if, it is full of forgiveness and it is the only love that has the power to heal guilt and brokenness.   Love and forgiveness that has standards, or conditions attached to it, no matter how cleverly disguised or packaged it may appear, can only make you feel good for a short period of time and is not forever.   In fact we all learn early in our childhood on how to test for conditional love, whether given or received.  It’s an elusive love that keeps changing and does not contain the power to overcome circumstances, heal disease or bind relationships in the way God intended.  That is precisely why we need to receive Jesus’ love personally, remembering you cannot give to another, that which you have not received for yourself.  

So where does Unconditional love and forgiveness begin?  It must begin at home, within yourself.   You have heard it before you can’t give away something that you do possess for yourself.  Like all good teachings, we must learn to do it for ourselves first, then we can offer it to others.  It only makes good sense and it is the only way to maintain the freedom you require to love others in the same way.    Love offered to others without any strings attached has the power to reconcile our differences, disqualify that which sends us into battle, and can save us from negative self-abuse.    Unconditional love keeps no record of wrongs offering full forgiveness.   This is the love of Jesus, and it is offered to all of us. This is the love that has the power to redeem us from a life of sadness, sickness, and negative darkness, into a new life, a life of joy, peace, contentment happiness and positive though.   This love offered by Jesus doesn’t bend to worldly standards of good versus evil either, nor does his love decimate because of your race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or the circumstances within your life.   Jesus wants to love all people back to life, yes even the worse scoundrel on the planet by our standards, no one is excluded from His love for he knows we are all God’s children.   Jesus is knocking on your door, are you ready, and are you willing?