Close Enough to Touch — We Come Alive

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We’re going to start a new series today, and sorry about taking you away from greeting each other. I want to remain in that moment and just remind ourselves, really, that song and so many of the songs that we sang are an expression, a prayer of what I hope is communicated: that God is not an idea.

It’s not a concept. God is a person who is made known to us and is someone to encounter. And the transformation doesn’t come from knowing more things or even behaving in certain ways. The transformation, the healing, comes from encountering a living God. And so I want to proclaim this good news to you: that

God has come close enough to touch.

And encountering Him, we become fully alive.

We come fully alive.

I spent time with a man several years ago in another state when I was pastoring, and he grew up in a really hard home. He was rarely encouraged. He was rarely, if ever, told that he was loved. He felt this, especially from his dad, that his dad did not care for him.

And this feeling was confirmed when his dad left the family for another woman, started another family, and really never returned, only sporadically. And so I met him way after this, when he already had his own family. He was married, had three kids, a daughter, two sons. He loved his wife and he loved his children, but he had a really hard time expressing it.

He felt trapped. He found himself flirting with other women. He was harsh with his kids.

And the whole time he knew, he knew that he was just reproducing the very same pain he had once received.

And ultimately he left his family, and he repeated the cycle, and he felt alone. He felt powerless. He felt full of shame.

And I still think of him, not because his story is rare, unfortunately, but because it’s not. It’s not rare.

Isolation, fear, suffering. A cycle that you didn’t choose, but you’re trapped in.

A love you want to give, but you can’t access. And I wonder, when I think of this man and I think of so many others that I know and interact with, as I think of myself, I wonder: What if there is more? What if you? What if I could encounter a love that actually breaks that cycle?

That breaks us out of that cycle. An actual encounter that would bring belonging, purpose, identity, safety, commitment, contentment?

Well, I’ll tell you:

God has come close enough to touch. And encountering Him, we come fully alive, every part of us.

Today, as we look at First John, this is a letter written in about 90 A.D. It’s one of the last letters in the New Testament written. The author is not named directly, but in Second and Third John we’re given a hint. He says he’s the elder. Tradition names the author as John, the John that walked with Jesus, the beloved disciple, the one who wrote the Gospel of John.

And this letter is written to a community of believers, likely a group of little house churches meeting at homes. And these folks are discouraged. They’re struggling with belief. They’re doubting their own salvation. They’re doubting what they learned about Jesus. They’re wondering if what they learned about Jesus and their own salvation is true.

Why are they doubting this? Because there is a small minority of their community. They began to teach a false doctrine. They began to teach that Jesus was not the Messiah, that Jesus only appeared to be God. Some taught that the material world, the flesh and bone of it, the grit and grime of it, is inherently evil, and that spiritual things are inherently good.

And so to say that God could be in a body would be to deny the supremacy and reality of who God was. So they believed that to say that God was incarnate, took on flesh, and lived and died and rose in a body, it could never be so. This is what they were teaching. And this causes the community to be discouraged.

Number one, as you all know, it’s discouraging when people leave your community, isn’t it? You start to doubt the faith. You start to doubt the goodness of God. You start to doubt, what is all this for? So they’re struggling. They’re grieving the loss of relationship, but they’re also doubting the centrality of, like, what gathers them together, like Jesus and who Jesus is.

They’re wondering, “Am I safe? Am I saved? What do I believe?”

And so John writes with this very specific purpose: to encourage a community and to encourage those who remain to have clarity and conviction and confidence that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the one who has shown us God in the flesh and through whom this God we have eternal life.

So there’s three major statements that John uses. He basically tells us why he writes. He does the same thing in the Gospel of John: “I write all these things that you might believe.” And here he gives statements. He’s very clear. He says, “I write these things that your joy may be complete. I write these things so that you might not sin,” so that anything that compromises that joy, that stands in the way of that joy and that wholeness, would be removed.

And the most general and overarching statement of purpose, the main, the kind of the overarching thing, is he wants the people to know that they have eternal life. He wants them to be sure of it. And is there anything more important than knowing this, than believing this?

There are many people that think they have eternal life and don’t, and there are many people in our day and age that don’t think, are confused and doubting whether or not they have eternal life, and they do.

We need to get clarity on this. What does it mean? And how do we know that we know that we know that we have eternal life? This is what John wants to communicate to a struggling, discouraged, doubting people.

So I have a couple prayers for us as we begin this series, throughout this series. Number one, I want you to know that you have eternal life. I want you to know that. I want you to be sure of that. And if we get clarity on that, you might discover, well, maybe I don’t. We need to get clarity on that. What is eternal life?

And second, I want you to enjoy eternal life now.

Now, that’s the beauty of it. This life with God, this eternal life, is not just a future promise. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

So in these first four verses, John starts, he introduces the letter, and he really just doesn’t pull any punches. He starts going to explain how we can experience and know eternal life. And so he begins, the very first one, two, three, four, five—is that six words? Six words. We’re going to stop there:

“That which was from the beginning.”

Now let’s think about this. What is John saying? “That which was from the beginning.” Right away, we are confronted with the most profound, beautiful, frightening, inspiring reality that we could contemplate as human beings: “That which was from the beginning.”

John takes us right back to Genesis 1:1, right? “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

So what are we talking about? What is John talking about? He’s talking about the Creator of life, the Sustainer of life, the eternal, invisible, timeless, all-powerful, all-sufficient, all-knowing One who is life, light, and love. The source of light, the source of love, the source of life. He’s talking about the ultimate reality.

I want you to keep that in mind because we’ve heard this before. Don’t let the fact that you’ve heard this passage before rob you of the power and incomprehensible beauty of what John is saying in “that which was from the beginning.” Pretend you’ve only heard this the first time.

“Which we have heard”—what?—“which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and touched, touched with our hands. This we proclaim concerning the Word of Life.”

Okay. Are you feeling it? Are you getting it? Are you hearing it?

The God of the universe, the One who spoke the world into existence, the Author, Sustainer of life, the incomprehensible, all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal Creator of space, time, and matter, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel, can be heard.

Can be seen.

That’s even more radical: can be touched.

Can be encountered.

This means God is communicating. This means God is speaking. This means God is reaching out.

And he goes on. He’s like, “What are you talking about?” And he’s like, “Yes, yes. The life appeared. The life appeared.”

We have seen it and testify to it. And we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

Here’s the incredible thing, right? All of a sudden, John turns from the abstract to the real, to the concrete, to the flesh and blood, sweat and tears, dirt and grime, concrete. That God, the eternal life, has appeared to us, and not in some weird holographic vision that you can put your hand through and not touch.

This is something that is flesh and blood and bone and pain and sweat and tears and laughter. This eternal life, this love, came and could be seen and interacted with.

Eternal life became human.

If you want to know you have eternal life, here’s the good news: you can know eternal life. Eternal life’s name is Jesus.

He walked and talked. He bled. He laughed. He cried. He died. He rose from the dead.

Eternal life is Jesus. And to know Jesus is to experience and encounter His life now and forever.

So eternal life. What is it? We got some clarity here. Eternal life is a person, right? And to know eternal life, to encounter eternal life made visible in Jesus Christ, gives us access, gives us fellowship, gives us communion with God.

“We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.”

That word fellowship is koinonia. You’ve probably heard it. Koinonia is this deep, intimate, shared life.

It’s an interdependent, shared, interwoven life, an intimate life. And so to have life with eternal life is eternal life. Okay? Is that—you know, if one plus one equals two, right? To know eternal life, to encounter eternal life, is to have eternal life and is to be in fellowship with eternal life. To be connected to eternal life is eternal life.

Let’s talk about eternal life. What we’re seeing here is not just an afterlife. Most of our brains, because of our context in the long history of American evangelism, we have been taught eternal life equals heaven when we die. Eternal life equals a pure future.

Eternal life is not heaven when you die only. Eternal life is not only a future promise. Eternal life is not only quantity of life.

If I said, “As you live now, you’re just going to live for thousands and thousands of years,” everyone’s like, “No, no.”

I talked to a woman when I was in Waco, Texas. She was almost—she was 99 years old. She’s like, “I do not want to keep living. It hurts. It hurts. Everyone I know has died, is dying. My children have died before me. My body hurts. I want to go home.”

So we don’t want quantity alone. We want quality.

Eternal life is quality of life with the bonus of quantity. Okay? It’s quality.

Eternal life starts now.

Eternal life starts when you encounter eternal life and you share life with eternal life. The quality of life begins to kick in. The quality. It’s a quality of a God life. It’s the quality of a heavenly life lived here and now.

It’s “the kingdom of God is at hand,” right? “Repent and believe.”

Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done.” Where? On earth. Not just in the future, someday. “On earth as it is in heaven.”

It’s an invasion of heaven and earth, overlapping as it was always intended to be, right? It is the Garden of Eden restored. It is the new heavens and the new earth. It is the interconnecting of dimensions, heavenly and earthly.

It is life as God designed it to be: a life of love, joy, and peace, lived in loving relationship with God, one another, and all of creation.

The Hebrew word is shalom. Shalom. Wholeness, wellness in all directions.

This is eternal life.

And so eternal life is sharing life in God’s love. And in First John, do you know how many times the word love is mentioned?

Lots? Exactly 51 times. It’s almost, by number, every other verse.

And so John wants you to know that eternal life has been made known, has appeared, and has been seen and tasted and touched and known and heard, and that to know this eternal life is to know Jesus, is to have eternal life, and that life is a life of love. Love with God, love with others, and love with all creation.

Eternal life begins when you encounter Jesus.

This is really good news.

You know what happens when eternal life touches our mortality and our woundedness and our pain and our limitedness, even our sin and our dirt and our confusion? Do you know that our brokenness doesn’t attach to God? God’s life attaches to us. We don’t make God mortal. He doesn’t get defiled by us. We get transformed by Him.

So to come into contact with eternal life is to be completely healed and transformed. So when eternal life inhabits humanity, humanity receives peace, love, and healing.

Once struggling for purpose, we find purpose when we connect with eternal life. Once longing for belonging, we find community. Once paralyzed by fear and anxiety, we find security and contentment.

Humanity is forever changed.

Humanity is forever healed.

Humanity is forever known, cherished, and loved.

So God has come close enough to touch, and encountering Him, we become fully alive.

I’m going to read you a story.

And I don’t know if you’ve heard of “Ragman” by Walter Wangerin. And it’s a short story. It’s about three total pages. Okay, I want to read this to you as an illustration of what we’re talking about, the concrete connection of humanity with eternal life.

It says:

“I saw a strange sight. I stumbled upon a story most strange, like nothing my life, my street sense, my sly tongue had ever prepared me for. Hush, child, hush now, and I will tell it to you.

“Even before the dawn one Friday morning, I noticed a young man, handsome and strong, walking the alleys of our city. He was pulling an old cart filled with clothes both bright and new, and he was calling in a clear tenor voice, ‘Rags!’ The air was foul and the first light filthy to be crossed by such sweet music.

“‘Rags! New rags for old! I take your tired rags. Rags!’

“Now this is a wonder, I thought to myself, for the man stood six feet four, and his arms were like tree limbs, hard and muscular, and his eyes flashed intelligence. Could he find no better job than this, to be a ragman in the inner city?

“I followed him. My curiosity drove me, and I wasn’t disappointed.

“Soon the Ragman saw a woman sitting on her back porch. She was sobbing into a handkerchief, sighing and shedding a thousand tears. Her knees and elbows made a sad X. Her shoulders shook. Her heart was breaking.

“The Ragman stopped his cart quietly. He walked to the woman, stepping round tin cans, dead toys, and Pampers.

“‘Give me a rag,’ he said so gently, ‘and I’ll give you another.’

“He slipped the handkerchief from her eyes. She looked up, and he laid across her palm a linen cloth so clean and new that it shined. She blinked from the gift to the giver.

“Then, as he began to pull his cart again, the Ragman did a strange thing. He put her stained handkerchief to his own face, and then he began to weep, to sob as grievously as she had done, his shoulders shaking.

“Yet she was left without a tear.

“‘This is a wonder,’ I breathed to myself, and I followed the sobbing Ragman like a child who cannot turn away from mystery.

“‘Rags! Rags! New rags for old!’

“In a little while, when the sky showed gray behind the rooftops, and I could see the shredded curtains hanging out black windows, the Ragman came upon a girl whose head was wrapped in a bandage, whose eyes were empty. Blood soaked her bandage. A single line of blood ran down her cheek.

“Now the tall Ragman looked upon this child with pity, and he drew a lovely yellow bonnet from his cart.

“‘Give me your rag,’ he said, tracing his own line on her cheek, ‘and I’ll give you mine.’

“The child could only gaze at him while he loosened the bandage, removed it, and tied it to his own head. The bonnet he set on hers.

“And I gasped at what I saw, for with the bandage went the wound. Against his brow it ran a darker, more substantial blood. His own.

“‘Rags! Rags! I take old rags!’ cried the sobbing, bleeding, strong, intelligent Ragman.

“The sun hurt both the sky now and my eyes. The Ragman seemed more and more to hurry.

“‘Are you going to work?’ he asked a man who leaned against a telephone pole.

“The man shook his head.

“The Ragman pressed him. ‘Do you have a job?’

“‘Are you crazy?’ sneered the other. He pulled away from the pole, revealing the right sleeve of his jacket flat, the cuff stuffed into his pocket.

“He had no arm.

“‘So,’ said the Ragman. ‘Give me your jacket, and I’ll give you mine.’

“Such quiet authority in his voice.

“The one-armed man took off his jacket. So did the Ragman, and I trembled at what I saw, for the Ragman’s arm stayed in its sleeve, and when the other put it on, he had two good arms, thick as tree limbs.

“But the Ragman had only one.

“‘Go to work,’ he said.”

After that he found a drunk lying unconscious beneath an army blanket, an old man, hunched, wizened, and sick. He took the blanket and wrapped it round himself. But for the drunk he left new clothes.

And now I had to run to keep up with the Ragman. Though he was weeping uncontrollably and bleeding freely at the forehead, pulling his cart with one arm, stumbling for drunkenness, falling again and again, exhausted, old, old and sick, yet he went with terrible speed on spider’s legs.

He skittered through the alleys of the city, this mile and the next, until he came to its limits. And then he rushed beyond.

I wept to see the change in this man. I hurt to see his sorrow, and yet I needed to see where he was going in such haste, perhaps to know what drove him.

So the little old Ragman, he came to a landfill. He came to the garbage pits. And then I wanted to help him in what he did, but I hung back, hiding.

He climbed a hill with tormented labor. He cleared a little space on that hill, city side. He lay down. He pillowed his head on the handkerchief and a jacket. He covered his bones with an army blanket, and he died.

Oh, how I cried to witness that death. I slumped in a junked car and wailed and mourned as one who had no hope, because I had come to love the Ragman. Every other face had faded in the wonder of this man, and I cherished him.

But he died.

I sobbed myself asleep. I did not know—how could I know?—that I slept through Friday night and Saturday and its night too.

But then, on Sunday morning, I was awakened by a violence. Light, pure, hard, demanding light slammed against my sour face, and I blinked, and I looked, and I saw the last and first wonder of all.

There was the Ragman, folding the blanket most carefully, a scar on his forehead, but alive. And besides that, healthy. There was no sign of sorrow nor of age, and all the rags that he had gathered shined for cleanliness.

Well, then I lowered my head, and, trembling for all that I had seen, I myself walked up to the Ragman. I told him my name was Shame, for I was a sorry figure next to him.

Then I took off all my clothes in that place. I said to him, with dear yearning in my voice, “Dress me.”

He dressed me, my Lord. He put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him.

The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen, which we have looked at, and our hands have touched. This we proclaim concerning the Word of Life.”

Right? He has appeared.

I realized, even this morning, this weekend, as I prepared the sermon and thought through this, I’m realizing I often relate to God as a concept.

As an idea, as a theory. Someone I need to understand intellectually. And if I think I get enough understanding in here, it’ll work its way through my heart and my body and my behavior.

But I think today John reminds me and reminds us that before God is an idea, before He is a concept, before He is a theory, before He’s something for someone to study or to be understood, He is God made flesh.

And He is God to be encountered as a person, and to be experienced, and to be known, and to be heard, and to be seen, and to be touched.

God must touch me.

God must encounter me in my specific pains, in my specific doubts, in my specific limitations, in my specific struggles as a dad and as a pastor and as a friend and as a person.

I need to encounter the living God, that which was from the beginning, eternal life, to be healed in this humanity, to be forgiven, to be restored.

I need the touch of God, the encounter of a person.

And when I do, and when I do, and when you do, and when we do, our joy is complete. What we were made for comes to fruition, right?

I want to stress that the transformation and the healing we receive, that’s not the goal or the purpose. That’s not the prize.

The prize is walking in the living, loving relationship with God Himself, the encounter with God, the shared life with eternal life. Knowing who you are made to know and be known by. That’s the prize.

But you know what the result is? The healing. The transformation. Because that’s what we were designed for.

We can’t encounter and know and be known by perfect love and light and life and not be transformed. We will be.

And so this eternal life, heard, seen, touched, this isn’t just an intellectual thought to file away and to contemplate. It’s meant to move us into a life of love, a shared life in the life of God.

Paul, what does he call us? What does he call the church? One of the phrases is the body of Christ.

Think about it.

Where’s the body of Christ? Where is He seen and touched and heard?

Feel your fingers. Pinch yourself a little bit. The body of Christ.

This means that Jesus—what Jesus did with flesh-and-blood hands, touching wounds, exchanging rags for new life—we now do together as His body, filled with His Spirit. His hands are now our hands in some way.

So think of someone in your life this week, would you? A neighbor, a coworker, a friend who is isolated, doubting, struggling, wounded, tired, discouraged.

What would it mean to bring them an encounter with eternal life?

The way John received it. Not as an argument, not as a theological debate, but as a touch.

A meal shared, a door left open, right? A text, a call, a story listened to.

So I want you to do that. I encourage you to do that.

But before we go looking for someone else’s rags, let’s take stock of our own.

Right. What are the wounds we carry? What are the doubts we hold? What are the things in our life that feel too big for us to face? We’re feeling crushed and oppressed by them. The addictions that we struggle with, that our families struggle with.

The Ragman doesn’t only meet us on the streets we walk for others. He’s walking towards us.

He’s here now, walking towards you.

So what are you still holding on to? What wound have you been carrying, managing, hiding instead of handing it over?

It could be shame. It could be addiction. It could be anger. You stop calling anger. It could be grief nobody’s asked about.

We don’t have to clean up. We just have to show up and give Him a rag. Encounter eternal life, who touches us and changes us.

So what might it look like to meet with Him this week? It could be a prayer alone, just in your room. It could be telling a trusted person the truth—what’s hurting. It could be showing up here next week just a little bit more open to what God might do.

It could look a bunch of different ways, right?

Just know that you don’t have to carry it alone.

I gave the saints some rags. All right, I want you to pass them out, please.

We’re going to come to the communion table, as we do every week. And again, this is always a reminder and invitation to come to that which was from the beginning, that we have heard and seen and touched.

So, please, why does Jesus give us a physical memorial of His life, death, resurrection, and reality? Something that we can touch and taste and see every week? Why would that be?

Do you think it’s to remind us that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, that He was seen and touched and heard, that He comes to our actual lives, our concrete existence, that we can see and touch, encounter Him?

That this meal isn’t just an idea. It’s not a concept to interact with. It’s something to touch and to be with and to consume. And actually, this bread will actually transform into energy in your body, right? Physically.

This is something so concrete, so tangible, so physical, that God has come in the flesh. It is foolishness to the world, right? But this is where we get eternal life now and forever. This is where transformation begins.

So I want to invite you, with that rag, just an added kind of symbolism to this meal: What is the thing you need to give Jesus in exchange for His life, His death, His resurrection, His healing of that specific thing?

It doesn’t have to be sin. It could be sin. It could be something. But it also could be a wound, a frustration, something, a sin someone has sinned against you, that is growing and festering and holding you back.

What is it?

You know what it is.

I just encourage you: just bring the rag. Set the rag on the table as you then receive from the Lord.

And I think we’ll just keep it here. We won’t have the elders come up and serve it this week. Just do your business with the Lord. Drop the rag and pick up His body and His blood.

Once everyone has received and returned back to their chair, we’ll take it together.

Come on forward, please.