A little hug would go a long way

Sometimes, for a preacher, things just drop into our laps. We don't anticipate them, we haven't read ahead to receive them - they just arrive, as if they're a gift from God.This week, having already announced the nature of my sermon title today, about hugs, a very well-known minister of Irish descent sent me something electronically from The Irish Times.

He thought it would be good for me to read The Irish Times once in a while as well. In it was an article about hugging and how important hugs are. The article, which was originally published in April of this year, extols the virtues of hugging. It suggested that hugging is, first of all, a profound human need. Not only do we need air and water and food, we also need hugs.

It went on to suggest that not just human hugging helps, but even the hug of a dog would be effective. Evidently, according to the article, they hug us with their eyes - did you know that? Through their eyes they let us know that we're important and we're precious. Hugs are good for us.

It also suggested that hugging releases a hormone within us called oxytocin, a feel-good hormone that lifts you up, and gives you a sense of buoyancy. Hugs release hormones that make us feel good - I love this article. It goes on to suggest that it is this very oxytocin that's released in the new mother when she holds her child. It is precisely this that gives a person a sense of acceptance and nurturing. That it is a great gift and enriches life. We all need hugs.

Being, as I often am, a little sceptical, I decided to do some more scientific research on hugging; never mind the article in The Irish Times, as authoritative as it might be, I went and checked it out. In the World Congress of Psychology, suggests, in fact, that hugs produce things within us a sense of security, of positivity, of health, and freedom. The research conducted suggests that people who receive hugs and people who give hugs experience a greater degree of all four of these virtues.

All of this got me thinking. If the God who made us, who created us in His image, who has given us the virtues and the good things in life, has created this thing called a hug, to what extent can we actually say, with any authority or any conviction, or any form of a foundation, that God hugs us? I don't wish to overly anthropomorphize God and turn God into a cuddly teddy bear, but what I do want to do, is suggest that God does hug us.

I thought about that again week: hugs were everywhere in the media. I must have been on to something a couple of weeks ago when I made this my sermon title, because one of the commentators, when the Bishop of Rome was meeting different religious leaders at the 9/11 memorial this past week, he made the comment that Francis hugged all the other religious leaders on the platform.

As I carefully observed that historic moment – Francis was shocking people – it was obvious from the look on their faces. To be hugged on a stage, publicly in front of everybody else was absolutely astonishing. Then they smiled, and you could tell that the hug had been therapeutic and well received. I thought yes, it must be true. There must be some way we can understand that the God who made us, hugs us. But how does God hug us?

God hugs us through his word. His word throughout the ages has brought comfort, and solace. “God,” Isaiah says, “takes us into his arms.” Maybe this isn't a physical hug; maybe this isn't a hug that you and I can experience in the physical dimension, but the sense that there is a hug or a graciousness that embraces us. He embraces us through his word in today’s passage from Isaiah, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” says the Lord.

If that is not a hug from heaven, I don't know what is. Why is it so powerful? Why is it so effective? And, does it change lives?

Well, if you look at the moment it was spoken, you realise the sheer power of it. Israel, we had been told in the first 39 chapters of Isaiah, had been living in exile. First of all they're warned that they're going to live in exile, and then they actually experience exile. By the time that Chapter 39 is finished, there is this sense in which God has allowed his people to suffer. It's a bleak time.

Then Isaiah 40, as all scholars agree, is a point of transformation in the Book of Isaiah. The Prophet starts talking, not about exile, but about comfort. Not only about oppression, but about freedom. Not only about being constrained, but being liberated by God. It's an entirely different picture.

You can see how, for the people who lived in darkness for a long time, the words of Isaiah 40, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” are like a hug. Over a period of 70 years, in three different waves, the people of Israel suffered at the hands of their enemies. In 605, they were forced into exile. In 597, Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian took over Israel and destroyed the temples and the synagogues and forced people into slavery. In 586, once again another visitation that caused them to be forced out of their land. For 70 years, the people of Israel did not know peace, they did not know security, they did not know freedom. Many of them stayed in the countries where they had originally been exiled, in what was known as the Diaspora. Others, eventually though, wanted to find their way home.

In 536, in the greatest irony I think in all of Old Testament history, it took a Persian leader to bring them back to their home. Many came, but many had also died in exile and many stayed to make a life where they were. Clearly though, when Isaiah says, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” he is talking about them returning home.

It wasn't just returning home that was important for them; this was a momentous occasion in terms of their relationship with God. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” was a statement about God embracing the people. People had felt that God had rejected them. They were convinced that God, through the exile, had so punished them that there was no road back, no hope - no chance of redemption. Isaiah says, “No, the Lord will return. The Lord will restore.” It wasn't that God had ever left them at any moment, but rather it was the sense that they had- this feeling deep in their hearts that God no longer cared for them. Isaiah reassured them that God will always come back for you. God will not leave you destitute and alone.

It's for that reason that this passage is quoted in the New Testament, where John prepares the way for Jesus coming. He understands that the arrival of Jesus is the fulfilment of all that had been promised in the Book of Isaiah. That God will return; God will not leave his people comfortless. “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.”

The comfort he's talking about is not just a nice warm feeling, but a profound consolation. Nachamu is the Hebrew word for this comfort. It's a consolation; an all-round, all-embracing sense of compassion. It is so powerful that when Boaz talks to Ruth, he uses the same word.

The people of Israel heard these words at a moment when they were at their darkest, when they were despairing, God said, “Comfort ye, comfort ye.”

Who of us, as a people have not felt like the people of Israel? Who of us have not felt the seeming absence of God? Or felt that there is nothing benevolent within the world to help us? I'm sure for the people who are homeless and wandering all over the earth right now, there must be a sense that God has abandoned them and there is no hope for them.

Well, if you've felt like that, listen to the words of Isaiah because they are a great big hug. They do all the things that the World Psychological Congress said a hug does. God gave to Israel a profound sense of security. When you've been invaded three times, when you've lost everything that you believe in, when your Synagogues are being destroyed or sold, when your children are having to live in a foreign land and because they cannot live safely at home, you feel insecure.

It's no surprise, is it, that throughout the centuries, the people of Israel felt insecure. The Holocaust, the Shoah, was very much a moment that shook the Jewish people because, at the very heart of their agony, was not only the physical pain of the Holocaust, it was the spiritual and the emotional and the psychological devastation of believing that you are alone.

When you visit, as Marial and I have done, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and you walk around and look at the horrific depictions of the Shoah, you realise that it's not surprising people feel insecure. Or when you're told that there are other nations that want to obliterate you from the face of this earth, you're going to feel insecure. And that insecurity goes all the way back to the exile, it's reliving the exile all over again.

The words of Isaiah continually need to be heard for people who feel insecure. Lord knows at times, even though not faced with persecution, we feel insecure, do we not? Do we not at times feel - and this is a day of our Annual Congregational Meeting, as a people of faith, we feel insecure in a world that seems to be drifting in so many directions that does not seem to give a place for the worship of God? Do we not feel, as individuals, insecure in our guilt, or in our sense of mortality? Of course we do.

What does a hug from God do in the midst of that? It gives us the security that we cannot find in anything else. Gives us the “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” that we need to hear.

There's also a sense in which the hug of God gives us a positive outlook. I don't mean that the world will always be fine, everything will work out, that kind of fatalism. There were false prophets in the Old Testament, unlike Isaiah, who would go around telling people “peace, peace, peace,” when there was no peace. Or they would tell them they're fine and they're okay and they're great, when they weren't okay, and they weren't great. Not all the time is there a power of positive thinking. It's not something that's innate within us. In fact sometimes there are false prophets who tell us everything is okay when it isn't.

I couldn't believe it this week, when there was an item on 680 News about someone who goes around giving people hugs. I'm not kidding you. Sadly, it’s for the purpose of stealing from them. Now listen to this, right out of Georgia, there are a couple who have found a new way to scam people. What they do is pull up at a garage, pump gas into their car and then pretend that they have no money. They then try to get some dear soul who's got a credit card, to actually pay for their gas. They tell people a sad story that they need $20 to help fill up their car, and they always find a Good Samaritan - isn't that nice to hear though? They always find somebody who's willing to help them, but then it gets worse. The woman thanks them profoundly, then her accomplice, a man, approaches. He's so moved that they would be so kind, he says, “Please, let me give you a hug,” and gives them a big hug. Meanwhile, he has a little machine that scans their credit card and days later these people find out that they have a $2,400 bill on their credit card courtesy of the people who scammed them and gave them a hug.

Sometimes human nature can be like that. It's not all good and positive and rosy - life isn't like that. God isn't saying life is like that. God is saying be careful who you trust. That is why the words of Isaiah are clear, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” and then he talks about the return of the Lord. It's not that everything's going to work out, as Voltaire put it, in the best of all possible worlds, but rather it is God's gracious intervention that gives a positive outlook.

It's also a positive outlook that gives you health - and it's a hug from God that gives you that health. Often times Israel was like a sick child, mad at its parent, upset it was broken, and hurt and had lost everything. It was sick because of its guilt, and therefore felt that the exile was a result of something they'd done. They were sick because of their sense of self-loathing and lack of pride. They had lost so much - it was a sick nation.

Isaiah speaks to this sick nation and said just a minute now, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. I am there, I will restore you. I will take what is broken and mend it.” Because that is what a hug from God is like. A hug from God also - and this is profound - gives us a sense of freedom.

The people of Israel had lived in exile, they were an oppressed group, they were the poor of the world and Isaiah speaks to them a word of liberation a word of hope. You can have everything in this life, but if you don't have freedom, true freedom, what do you really possess?

I read a report recently about a chimpanzee called Washoe. Washoe is, I've found out, the most famous chimpanzee in North America - I'm sure you all knew that. This chimpanzee was actually the subject of scientific research in the 1960s/70s/80s and '90s. Washoe lived until she was 42 years old. She went from one university to another - from California to Virginia to Oklahoma - and the thing that they wanted to do with Washoe was to teach her how to use sign language. They were able to teach her, through ASL, 35 different words. Staggering research in psychology.

So much so that researchers concluded that this chimpanzee was able to emote, to express feelings. Jane Goodall said it's one of the most important forms of research ever. This chimpanzee had been treated really well; she'd had two offspring, she'd lived in luxury, she'd been well-fed, she had had a great deal of affection from everybody. They tested her to see if they could elicit responses. One of the questions asked, in sign language, was “What do you want the most? What do you like the most?”

She replied, “I want to get out of here.” She wanted freedom, she wanted liberty. She had everything else, but she wanted freedom.

When Jesus stood at beginning of his ministry in the Synagogue, he opened the Bible and he read from the prophet Isaiah. Listen to this.

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the Synagogue were fixed on him and he said to them, “today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” God was giving his hug to the world in person.

If this world needs anything, it is not only to hear: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” but to receive a hug from the one who made us. Amen.