Rev. David Holwick K
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
March 13, 1988
Hosea 11:1-3
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One of the first things our kids have learned is how to hug.
I like the kind of hugs where they wrap their little arms around my neck,
squeeze tightly, and grunt.
The grunting is very important.
If they don't go, "GGRRRUUUUUNNNT," then it wasn't a heart-felt hug.
Rebecca adds a nice touch by saying, "I love you, Daddy!"
That's just as good as a grunt.
I like hugs because I associate them with love, being accepted, and being
protected.
I can shake hands with anybody, but hugs are only for those I like.
Hugging someone you don't know well feels weird.
I can remember as a kid having to hug some relatives I had never seen before.
They smelled funny and almost smothered you.
I didn't like it.
Most people are just like me.
We want to embrace those we like, those who are lovely, those who have
something positive to offer us.
Jesus was not like me at all.
A person cannot read the gospels and not be impressed with the fact that
Jesus treated the unlovely differently than we do.
Rather than avoiding them or rejecting them (even condemning them), Jesus
accepted the unlovely.
He embraced them.
This attitude was dramatically different from the people of his day, and
was a large reason why he was sentenced to death.
The Gospels reveal three examples of embraces by Jesus.
The first was his embrace of children.
It represents the concern Jesus had for those who had not yet "arrived"
in Jewish society.
The second was his embrace of a leper.
This embrace shows his concern not only for those who were not yet
accepted, but for those who never would be.
It was an embrace that included anyone who was an outcast, including
foreigners, women, the sick and lame, prostitutes, and even lepers.
Finally, Jesus embraced a cross.
By doing this he embraced the sins of the world, the ugliness that
separates us from God.
First let's look at Jesus' embrace of children.
Turn in your Bibles to Mark 10:13-16:
"And they brought young children to him, that he should
touch them: and his disciples rebuked those that brought
them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and
said unto them, Suffer (allow) the little children to come
to me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.
Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive
the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter
therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands
upon them, and blessed them."
You might wonder what is so unusual about Jesus putting his arms around
children.
We do it all the time, and this passage is a favorite of millions of
Christians.
So why did the disciples try to keep the little ones from coming to Jesus?
They weren't ogres.
In the eyes of his society, Jesus was the strange one.
This is hard for us to understand.
Our politicians love to be photographed as they kiss babies.
Charities take in tons of money by showing the pitiful faces of starving
children.
We view it as a natural, maternal instinct to reach out and be tender to kids.
But you're making a big mistake to assume that people in Jesus' day viewed
children the same way we do.
One prominent historian, Barbara Tuchman, has done an extensive study of the
Middle Ages.
She found that no one in that period received less attention than children.
There was a good reason for this: 50% of all children died before they were
three years old.
In our society a family is crushed if a child dies.
They think that they have been cursed and abandoned by God.
In ancient times, every family would have had at least one child die, perhaps
even half a dozen.
Adults could not afford to be emotionally involved with their children.
The grief would have been too much to bear.
And when a seven-year-old child was considered a miniature adult and expected
to perform a full day's work in the fields, you didn't get sentimental
about them.
This is what it was like in Jesus' day.
The rabbis taught that children were part of God's people only because they
were connected with the adult males in the family.
(They taught the same thing about women.)
Children had no religious standing until they were 13.
They had little value.
But Jesus took them in his arms and hugged them.
More than this, he said they were guides for the way to heaven.
They had nothing to show for themselves, and knew how to receive God's kingdom
as a gift.
How do we view children in the church: a nuisance? cute entertainment?
What do we do to accept them into the full life of the church?
Now turn in you Bibles to Mark 1:40-42:
"And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and
kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, if thou wilt,
thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion,
put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him,
I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immedi-
ately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed."
We live in a society that takes care of the mentally ill, and the disabled.
The ancient world had a much different attitude.
Those who were sick were separated from society.
In the Old Testament those with leprosy had to live by these rules:
-They had to tear their clothes and leave their hair messed up.
-Whenever they passed someone on the street they had to call out,
"Unclean, unclean!"
-They had to live alone outside the city. *(Much like AIDS patients?)*
The leper who came up to Jesus was committing a huge offense.
But Jesus did not drive him away.
Instead, he touched him.
This touch did more than heal his disease.
It told him he was now accepted back with other people.
The final embrace of Jesus was the strangest one.
He embraced the cross.
There is no record in the ancient world of a nobleman being crucified.
It was reserved for the most despised elements in society:
violent criminals, foreign terrorists, and especially slaves.
When the Roman general Crassus smashed the slave revolt in Spartacus in 71 BC,
he punished them with crucifixion.
More than 6,000 slaves were put on crosses on a 100 mile stretch of highway.
When the Bible tells us that Jesus became obedient to death, it adds:
"...even death on a cross."
Jesus knew this was going to be his fate, but he did not try to avoid it.
Why would he embrace a cross?
1 Peter 2:24 tells us:
"He bore our sins in his body on the cross, that we might
die to sin and live to righteousness; for by his stripes (wounds)
you were healed."
Each embrace of Jesus was intended to bring hurting people back to God, and
back to fellowship with their neighbors.
The people of Jesus' day did not accept it.
This is not surprising, because they had rejected the strange embraces of God
before.
The passage in Hosea 11 tells us that God reached out his arms to his people
just like a father reaches out to a son taking his first steps.
But they had turned away from him.
Many people turn away from God's embrace in their lives.
They may not even realize it.
And we don't even like the way He embraces others.
When the Prodigal Son came back, his father ran out to him and threw his arms
around him.
The Prodigal Son was overwhelmed by this show of love.
-His older brother was not. He resented it.
We may reject the embrace of God because we are too proud to admit we need it.
We prefer to put God up on a pedestal.
-We worship him, but we keep him at arm's length.
A theologian named Helmut Thielicke wrote this:
"Tell me how lofty God is for you, and I'll tell you how little
he means to you. ... It is certainly remarkable, but it is true.
God has become meaningful to me only because he has made himself
smaller than the Milky Way, only because he is present in my room
when I am sick, or understands the little cares I cast on him, or
takes seriously the request of a child for a bicycle.... If God
has no significance for the tiny pieces of my little life, for
the things that concern me, then he doesn't concern me at all."
The strange embraces of Jesus reach out for the needy, the forgotten, and
those who are rejected in each generation.
They are meant for those who have problems that are humanly impossible to
solve.
His hugs demonstrate that God is a real God, that he is concerned about our
smallest concerns.
But we have to come to him, like the children or the leper, and admit that
we need him.
(Application to loving AIDS patients.
If we've accepted Jesus, we need to have the same attitude toward
outcasts.)
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Adapted from "The Strange Embraces of Jesus," by James R. Edwards
(associate professor of religion and chairman of the Department
of Religion at Jamestown College, Jamestown, North Dakota),
Christianity Today, March 16, 1984, pages 26-27.
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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