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	"Who Touched Me: Healing Form Sexual Brokenness" By Peter Isely Voice from the Desert January 19, 2008 http://reform-network.net/?p=1351 "Who touched me?" This is a question that Jesus asks in Mark's gospel (5:31) after a woman sneaks up from behind him and touches him. It is a simple and routine question that we all ask when we are suddenly and unexpectedly touched. But because it is Christ that asks this question, it is no longer an ordinary question. It is a sacred question. It is God's own question. According to the gospel account, the woman who touched Jesus, without his foreknowledge or permission, had been afflicted for twelve years with interminable bleeding. Biblical scholars suggest that she was suffering from a severe disorder in her menstrual cycle, which would have also rendered her ritually unclean in Jewish society. The gospel tells us that she had spent all her money seeking a cure and "suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors (v. 26)." In the account, Jesus is blanketed by a large and pressing crowd. Many people are brushing up against him, which is undoubtedly why the disciples find his question absurd and unreasonable (v. 32). He is also in the middle of an urgent mission. But only this woman, whose name we do not even know, and her touch have the astonishing capacity to stop Jesus from his urgent task. Upon physical contact (we are told she barely brushes his robe with her hand) he immediately "realizes that power has gone out of him (v. 30)." Jesus does not see this woman. He does not hear her. He only physically feels her. And something in her touch instantaneously draws out the very power of God. No wonder he spins around, searches the vast crowd, and must find out who it is. This biblical story and its question provide the inspired title for Pastor Walter Harvey's first book which is taking on the challenge sexual brokenness. In it, he will explore for us the astounding possibility that there is something in human touch that is so vital and so powerful that it can arrest and even command the attention and action of the divine. In doing so, Pastor Harvey will invite and challenge contemporary Christians to think hard about why and how we touch one another, not figuratively, but literally, and teach us that our spiritual destiny is implicated and may even be determined by it. Touching, as the gospel shows us again and again, has its divine and demonic manifestations. And this is especially and undeniably true when that touch is sexual. Christians have been remarkably timid, complacent and accommodating to the epidemic of sexual violence, disguised as sexual touch, especially against our children, that is slowly but surely undermining the decency of our entire society and the ethical character, credibility and foundation of our churches. One out of three girls and one out of five boys will have some form of unwanted adult sexual contact before reaching the age of 18. These sex crimes are overwhelming committed by someone the child victim knows and trusts: a father, an uncle, a teacher, a coach, a neighbor. It typically takes years, if not decades, for victims to come forward and begin speaking about what happened to them. For many, the trauma of this touch lasts a lifetime. If complacency were the only challenge Christians face when addressing sexual abuse, it would be almost reassuring. Persistent and shocking headlines over the years concerning the sexual abuse of children by ordained clergy and its active and extensive cover up by church leaders demonstrate that this evil resides comfortably within Christian institutions as well. And even though these clergy crimes are better documented in my own faith community of Roman Catholicism, in large part due to centuries of practice at meticulous record keeping, there is not a single denomination that is unaffected by it. If sexual abuse is not being actively confronted within the church itself, how can anyone expect the church to confront it anywhere else? When it is found amongst themselves, Christians, like most people, tend to dissociate their link to sexual violence. Many would be surprised to discover that the first extant mention in church documents of clergy sexually assaulting children dates all the way back to the third century. Child rape victims, inside and outside the church, are a vast, mostly silent, anonymous army, inconceivably large. I am one of that army and that is why Pastor Harvey asked me to write this foreword. I stand with a remnant of victims of these crimes who have come forward from across the United States to break our silence and demand change. And this singular and lonely act, repeated thousands of times by thousands of other victims has led to historic if incomplete reforms within the Roman Catholic Church to safeguard God's children. The perpetrator of sexual violence commits two crimes through touch: first he steals the body, than he steals the voice. It is an endless mystery that the shame the sex offender should logically and naturally feel within his own soul while violating the body of another is rarely if ever felt by him. Instead, the shame of this crime, its awful and crushing weight, is poured into the body of the victim. Maybe that is why the victim, not the offender, most often feels like the criminal and why it is so difficult for most survivors to come forward. Needless to say, too often, when victims do speak up, with their halting and barely audible voices, voices struggling to be heard and restored, they are unwelcome and unwanted, especially when the sex offender is a valued member of the community, like a clergyman or an adult family member. It's not very mysterious why. Almost always the perpetrator of these crimes is of greater social value than the victim so it is the victim who will first be charged, if not by words than by actions, with violating the peace and order of the family, the church, the community. Indeed, there are so many psychological and social forces arrayed against a victim speaking, especially a child, that when it does occur it is almost always a miracle, a witness to what the great Christian philosopher and mystic Simone Weil meant when she wrote: "At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being." You may have guessed by now that I believe that the woman in the gospel story is, in fact, a survivor of sexual abuse. If we victims of these crimes have, as they are called in my church, a "patron" saint, surely it is this woman. Someone touched her in a way that shattered her body and silenced her voice. Sexual abuse inhabits and burrows itself into the mysterious border regions between the mind and the body, what Christians call the soul, and menstruation is very commonly altered by this unique and terrible trauma, as are many basic and necessary bodily functions—sleep, memory, appetite, sexual drive. I do not believe there will be a single reader of this book who has undergone the destitution of sexual assault, female or male, child or adult, who will not instantaneously identify with her seemingly hopeless quest to find a cure for her affliction. In fact, after seeing many doctors and specialists, she has gotten worse, not better, a not uncommon outcome for survivors under the care of doctors and therapists. Undoubtedly, like many victims, she has lost family and friends, is unable to work, cannot have close relationships, and suffers persistent and unwanted nightmares and flashbacks. No doubt she is at times suicidal. Most of all, we can surmise, she is unable to touch or be touched in any meaningful way by another human being. But, she persists. She persists because she knows that although her affliction is physical, its true source is spiritual. . For Christians, God, by becoming man and fully incarnating himself in a human body, a body just like yours and mine, forever changed how humans must touch one other. Our physical bodies, so often weighed down by what Weil called "gravity" –the gravity of social climbing, useless passions, senseless routines–are now, since Jesus, capable of communicating so much more than that, of something else, of something on the order of absolute and infinite truth, beauty, and goodness. Our bodies are the site of a great drama where God and humanity meet, argue, pray, love, weep, suffer, and rise. God brings gravity's opposite, which is grace. It is grace that fills the cursed body of the women in the gospel story and fires her with courage, boldness, and audacity, in spite of the self blame, self hatred and self accusation that sexual affliction brings and seems to permanently establish in so many of its victims. Grace plots to bring her close to Jesus. It is grace that moves from her, to Jesus, and back again. And for a moment, a split second, the inexorable and seemingly unbreakable law of gravity is suspended and the "suffering is lifted from her body (v. 34)." I am honored and pleased to introduce this urgent and necessary book from one of our city's leading churchman, an absolutely superb homilist, and a humble and gifted pastor who has helped bring God's healing to so many over the years, including myself and my family. You will find here the harvest of many hours of earnest prayer, pastoral labor, spiritual surrender and biblical study. For those fortunate enough to attend his services, it will be impossible to read these words and not hear the author's lyrical, demanding and welcoming voice resonating from the sanctuary of his wonderful and warm congregation. Mostly, you will find in it the wisdom of Jesus, who commissioned the nameless woman of faith to be our model and guide, she who dared to reach beyond her sexual cursedness and brokenness and touch the savior.
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