I lay there, wide awake, suddenly aware of any sound that dare pierce the darkness. The breath of my wife was barely audible; she inhaled, exhaled, inhaled again. The creak of heating ducts, circulating warmth into the night air. The quiet night breeze, meandering through trees right outside. The gentle whisper of bed linens rustling, ever-so-slightly, under the vibration of anything that moved.

I wondered what it was, this time, that had roused me. Was it one of the kids, in the room, also unable to sleep? Usually they went to Kathi first. Was it a deer outside our window, newly discovered by the family dog, excitedly barking her alarm?

Slowly realizing there was no external source to point to, my thoughts shifted inward. Normally a deep sleeper, usually it takes a mountain of noise to rouse me. And yet here I lay, in an otherwise near-silent home, now wide awake.

Insomnia.

I hate it when this happens. Fully conscious when I should be deep in slumber. REM cycle now interrupted for who knows how long. There would be no dream state forthcoming anytime soon.

Now to figure out what to do.
In the past I’d tried all sorts of possible cures.

Counting sheep.
Melatonin.
Reading.

Sometimes they work, sometimes not.

Prayer.
Scripture.
Prescription pills.

Each had been attempted, to varying degrees of success.

Facebook.
Candy Crush.
The New York Times.

My cell phone’s blue LED light blinked on the nightstand.
Reminding me that these were options too.

Once, a decade ago, insomnia had been a near-constant companion for months. Fortunately, those days have passed.

But still, I was reminded what was at stake. Insomnia, left unaddressed, had been rough.

I’d beat myself up over it before.
I was determined not to do that again.

Lent
We look to improve what lies deep within in myriads of ways. This time of year especially. The Lenten season we find ourselves in is a time for introspection, reflection, sacrifice. In these forty days we walk, symbolically, alongside Christ, perhaps more intentionally than usual. Hoping to change our ways, to be more like him.

The kickoff to Lent reminds me of New Year’s Day. We love to make deals with ourselves to improve. So we commit to doing more of something, or less, or doing it differently. In the hopes of bettering ourselves, helping others, enhancing the world.

They are high ideals we strive for.

And let’s be honest, you’ve got better odds of making a meaningful life change over 40 days then you do over 365 ?

Culturally we’ve engaged in these sacrificial acts over Lent for centuries. Often we give up chocolate. It’s a reminder that living in the wilderness, awash in temptation, for 40 days, is anything but sweet.

A 2019 study reported on in The Atlantic found that, among those giving something up, the most common sacrifices for Lent are social media (21%), alcohol (18%), chocolate or sweets (13%), and soda or coffee (11%).

It’s fair to say that each of those, in excess, just aren’t good for us.

In modernity Lenten sacrificial practices can be just about anything. I asked Facebook friends what they’re doing to commemorate the season, and each response was different from the next. Of course anyone that’s given up social media wouldn’t have been able to reply to the query, so there’s that ?

Among people that shared their stories some are spending their Lent listening, reading, reflecting. Steph started listening to the Bible in a Year podcast. Jo is reading the Poetry of Lent by Mary Oliver. Ryan – that’s a seminary friend, not me – is watching The Good Place tv series, while contemplating his mortality.

Others observe the season with improving themselves by doing. Lindsay gave up take-out food, adding oatmeal for breakfast. Carolynn is looking to live more simply, sorting one box of papers per day, with the hopes of rising to new levels of simply living by Easter. Kathy is encouraging her congregation to add one thing to their lives that brings them joy – the fasting this year is from isolation itself.

Maryanne remembers as a child her mother would always give up smoking for Lent. But just at work. Every day she’d come home and fire one up.

Others observe the season by doing for others. Kate started donating blood. Laura is walking 40 miles in 40 days, and getting rid of 40 items, with proceeds benefiting the ELCA World Hunger program.

The Weber family is adding in a practice by using a Lenten Kindness calendar. Each night they gather together for the provided reading and plan out how to complete the next day’s kindness challenge. I absolutely love that.

Jonathan is doing a bit of everything, including:
• Giving up drinking alone (to enjoy, not need)
• Giving up watching The Office (to not get addicted to escapism)
• Donating to charity
• Taking the Confirmation kids on a service project to the food pantry
• Nixing fast food on Fridays (to remember Christ’s sacrifice), and
• Being more intentional with prayer and meditation
That’s a long list Jon! Make sure you spend some time sleeping too. It really is important. ?

During our Ash Wednesday service a few days ago Pastor Bryan mentioned it seemed like we’ve been in Lent for the past year.

Dude, I hear you.
Couldn’t agree more.

So if you’re not doing much of anything different for Lent this year, because of the extended season of sacrifice we find ourselves in, you’ve got company.

And that is 100% entirely A-OK.

Claimed
Today’s text from Mark 1 is a familiar one. In it we have water, baptism, heavens torn apart. We have wilderness, temptation, wild beasts. We have a dove, Satan himself, angels. We have good news, beginning to be proclaimed.

This passage seemingly has it all.

Yet this year I found myself drawn to one part of it more than any other.

The voice from heaven.
The voice of God.
Calling down.

Making a bold claim.

You are mine, God tells Jesus.
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With you I am well pleased.

And with that affirmation from Dad, Jesus enters the wilderness. Ready to face temptation. With the Holy Spirit by his side, guiding him though. All the way thorough Christ’s ministry, life, death, resurrection, ascent.

Making it possible that we, too, can be called children of the most high God. Beloved by our Creator. No matter what our backstory of successes and failures may or may not be.

Backstory
Often in Lent there’s this seeming subtext of self-loathing. Or at least the possibility of it. With our commitments to do differently we admit that what we’ve done, to date, isn’t always that great.

Giving up social media suggests how we use it has a downside.
Drinking less suggests perhaps we’re drinking more than we should.
Eating differently means we may not be currently eating well.
Organizing more an indication we’ve been organized less than is ideal.
Trying to solve sleep problems a confession there’s a problem to solve.

In those admissions we run the risk of feeling bad about our current reality. To the point of beating ourselves up, about where we find ourselves, more than we should.

And in even trying, we run the risk of not succeeding, as thoroughly or as well as we’d hoped. Which could lead to beating ourselves up, over the next failure, once again. So before getting too far down that particular rabbit hole, consider this:

That voice from the heavens still calls down.
Remember your baptism, the voice whispers.
In that moment I made a claim, the voice reminds.

Just as Jesus is –

You too are mine, God tells us.
You too are beloved.
From the very beginning to the very end.

You have been grafted into my family, God continues.

One with the Designer of all that is,
One with a Son who loves without limit.
One with a Spirit present, nudging, guiding you –

Every step of the way.

Sure, I want more for you, God shares.
Any good parent always does.

But my love for you isn’t in your doing, or not doing.
It’s in your being, simply being;
Being a part of me, a part of it all.

And nothing –
No ifs ands or buts,
Can separate you from that love.

So keep up with your doing,
Or not doing,
This pandemic has been hard.

Keep on trying to find balance with what you consume,
So ultimately you don’t become consumed with it yourself.

Keep on seeking joy in what you already have,
Realizing, through me, what you have is enough.

Keep on hoping for that full night of sleep,
Knowing in me you’ll find rest for the rest.

Keep on with your reading, meditating, prayer,
For you’ll find me there as well.

There’s going to be wilderness,
And that wilderness can be hard,
Yet it’s an essential part of what makes us alive.

We exist to help realize that part of your prayer, Lord,
that life on earth,
better mirror life in heaven.

Until then –
Just as Jesus wasn’t alone in the wilderness, neither are we.

Just look around.
And remember.
You are God’s own.

We share this reality.
We share this wilderness.
We share in it, together.

Each of us a unique part of the whole,
Each of us impossible to replace.

Most importantly remember this.
You are loved. As you are. In this very moment.
By the source of all that is.

And nothing can separate you,
now and forever more,
from that.
Amen.

The benefits of human touch are many.

Human touch sustains us from the moment we are born. One study found preterm newborns receiving three 15-minute sessions of touch therapy each day, for just a few days, gained 47% more weight than premature infants who got standard medical care.

Human touch helps us learn. Another study found when teachers pat students in a friendly way, they are three times more likely to speak up in class. Similarly, when librarians pat the hand of a student checking out a book, the student says they like the library more. And are more likely to come back.

Human touch helps us understand feelings in others. To quantify this, researchers used a barrier to keep two strangers apart, with only a small hole between them for an arm to fit through. With arm extended, one person tried to convey an emotion, through a one-second touch of the other’s forearm. The odds of guessing the right emotion, by chance, based on the number of emotions available to select, were low: only eight percent.

So when participants correctly identified the emotion of compassion over 60% of the time, accurately IDing feelings of gratitude, anger, love, and fear all over half the time, researchers knew they were on to something.

The study found two notable exceptions, both related to gender, these are kinda fun. When a female tried to communicate anger to a man, via one-second touch, the man had no idea what she was doing. Similarly, when a man tried to communicate compassion to a woman, she had no clue what was going on.

Make of those findings what you will ?

Human touch benefits us all the way to the end. As clergy we get asked to be present bedside with people nearing death, often giving communion, speaking with family, friends, sharing in prayer. But many times, it is the physical touch – the holding of a hand, or shoulder, the touching a cheek, that people appreciate most.

To better understand this from a medical perspective I spoke to Dr. Larry Otteman. Larry is a member here, and oncologist who spent a career working with cancer patients.

Larry told me when someone is dying of cancer, people stop coming to visit. And when working with hospice volunteers initially they don’t know what to do. His advice: Be present. Just touch them. Even if they can’t interact in any other way. It says to them you are touchable. You matter.

During his mother’s impending death Larry recalls being there, in the room. To be out of other people’s way he held her foot, maintaining contact as she neared her end. Physically she knew he was there. Even though she couldn’t see her son, she could feel him there, with her.

Healing Touch
Between the beginning and end of life, perhaps most importantly, human touch has the power to heal.

Human touch is used in massage therapy to reduce pain in pregnant women and alleviate prenatal depression. It does that in both the woman and their spouses. Which is fairly amazing if you think about it.

Human touch is often used by doctors, integrated right alongside their more technical skills. Eye contact and a brief pat on the back, from a doctor, can boost survival rates of patients with all sorts of disease.

This notion, that physical touch has healing properties is, as you might imagine, nothing new. And it is a central theme of our gospel today from Mark 1.

Here we find Peter, one of the disciples traveling with Jesus. Peter’s mother-in-law was in bed. She was sick with fever. Confined to where she lay. Unable to get up. Peter was worried about his relative, of course. So Peter told Jesus of her ailment.

Jesus then went to her,
took her hand,
lifted her up,
and the fever left.

The woman then rose.
The woman then went about her day.

The woman had experienced the touch of Christ.
And in that touch, she had been healed.

It’s worth mentioning what Jesus didn’t do.

He says no words;
Offers no prayers;
Performs no command.

There is no phone call,
No press release expressing thoughts and prayers,
He didn’t even wish the woman well.

Instead, Christ was simply present in another’s pain.
And in that presence? The woman was healed.

Scripture is filled with examples of the power of healing touch.

Jesus used physical touch to –
Give sight to the blind,
Cause the mute to speak,
Make the leper clean,
Raise the dead to life.

“If only I can touch his garment,” says another woman, seeking healing from Jesus, “I will be healed.”

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And she was.

Now
Today, for the first time in eleven months, we are able to worship, albeit with some limits, in person. Our local metrics have improved to a point where that is now possible. To which I can only give a hearty, Hallelujah!

I see people here I haven’t seen in person, in a year. So exciting!

And I’d love, really love, to give each and every one of you a great big hug.

Would that be ok?
We’re all friends here, right?

No?

Hugging probably wouldn’t be too wise, pandemically speaking.

No hugs.
No handshakes.
No high fives.

At least not yet.

Keeping our distance, for now, is a matter of public health.
It is, for now, a best practice to keep each other safe.
It is, for now, how we care for our neighbors near and far.

The last time I accepted a hug from someone outside our immediate family was a few months ago. After presiding over a funeral. One of the daughters of the deceased came over, gave her thanks, held out her arms. Instinctively I reciprocated, and we embraced. It was an entirely natural thing to do.

For we are hard-wired to seek solace in others, by way of human touch. It builds connection, it deepens relationship. Human touch can heal, after all.

Immediately I regretted that hug.
Immediately I regretted that regret.

Such is the complexity of the times we find ourselves in.

We are so much less connected, physically, than we were last winter. And for good reason. Yet we’re worse off, in so many ways, for it.

Mental health diagnoses are on the rise.
Physical health, for many, in decline.

Perhaps our deficit in contact with others helps explains a pandemic phenomenon: pet adoptions this past year are way up. In some cases double what they were before. With many shelters unable to keep pace with demand. All so we can cuddle up with a beloved pooch, or feline, to relieve our feelings of isolation, and loss of human interaction. If even just for a bit.

While not all touch is good – boundaries matter, the #MeToo movement an important reminder of that – physical touch is an important part of what makes us tick.

Michelangelo, the artist that painted The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling, where God and Adam, famously reach out, index fingers extended towards each other, famously said, “to touch is to give life.”

Indeed.

Close
As we begin, ever so slowly, to come out of pandemic, and return, ever so slowly, to our ways of being together, let us take a moment to celebrate.

Let us celebrate the divine gift of touch. A gift bestowed on us by our Creator, from the first moments the universe began.

Let us celebrate the healing properties of touch. Healing touch as modeled by Christ, who wants nothing more than for us to be made whole.

And let us look to a time, where we can once again, be more in touch, with each other, than we currently are.

More connected,
more in relationship,
more complete.

More able to heal others, as we ourselves seek to be healed. As we ourselves seek to be more fully alive.

Lots of love, and a big virtual hug, for now, to you all.  Amen.