Good Morning. Happy Super bowl Sunday. Thank you for the privilege of allowing me to be part of this WomenSpeak Sunday. As we start, let me ask you this – have you read any good magazines lately? Look at the advertisements, if you will. In a recent trade magazine, Madison Avenue, the advertising capital of the world, stated, “Women are finally coming into their own.” In fact, Madison Avenue thinks THEY invented women. Remember the commercial that showed a woman in a business suit, complete with her very black briefcase with the caption, “I can bring home the bacon” followed by the same woman with an apron over her suit. She is seen standing at the stove and saying, “can fry it up in a pan.” The commercial ends rather seductively, with the caption. “And never let you forget you’re a man, because I’m a woman, etc. And of course, we remember the Virginia Slims, “You’ve come a long way, baby campaign. Although these commercials tend to make many of us laugh, the object of them, to be certain, is to sell products and capitalize on today’s woman, seeing her as a new kind of customer. But, is today’s woman really different from women throughout history?

Woman have always worked along side of men since the world began, keeping homes and raising families. The Genesis story of Eve portrays all the great epochs in a woman’s life – her marriage, mating, motherhood – her joys and her heartaches. In Eve, all the elemental questions of life, birth, death, sin and temptation are shown in their human dimension.

We are all familiar with women in the bible, woman like Sarah, the “mother of nations: Rebekah, Rachael and Leah, the mothers of the 12 tribes of Israel. Women like sisters Martha and Mary; Martha, to whom Jesus announced his victory over death and Mary, who anointed his feet with oil. They are inspirations to all of us. The list of women who labored with and for Jesus, doing all that was expected of them and even more, regardless of what sacrifices were required, this list is endless. I think we can agree that They set the examples for women of today, not Madison Avenue.

The legacy of service that these women left has just grown stronger with time. Pioneer women left their familiar surroundings and traveled with their families across the country into unknown territories, facing undue hardships—working shoulder to shoulder with their men while keeping the family together and finding the time somehow to help others in need.

And it goes on and on. Clara Barton founded the Red Cross to help fellow human beings. Every child in school learns about Molly Pitcher who fought along side of her husband during the Revolutionary War. Women have been in the forefront of social and civic responsibility since the world began. They have fought for better social conditions and then actively used those privileges that were won. Today, women are working in corporate board rooms and serving in governments throughout the world, even in Milltown where I, in my capacity as Mayor am the first women to be elected to the governing body. I am happy to report that other women have joined me now. Not yet satisfied, women have joined men in the quest of outer space, and a woman has become a serious candidate for President of the country

Although women’s roles of service have changed as society has changed, there is one common thread that exists. Women are and always have been ready to reach out and give a helping hand to people in need. We must remember, however, that helping hands are just not owned by women but by every caring, loving person in the world.

Let’s look at this statement for a moment. The hand is one of the most telltale features of a person’s appearance. A person’s hands often reflect their thoughts or words. Hands are bearers of meaning in our lies. They bear witness to the human urge for connectedness, whether handshake, the embrace of lovers, or a handwritten speech meant to inspire people to tend to the earth. Public speakers use their hands when they want to emphasize a point. When a mother wishes to calm a distraught child or friend, she places her hands gently on the person, soothing them with her soft touch. The familiar Praying Hands have always been symbolic of faith, hope and strength.

At the same time, our hands are the mark of our individuality. Indeed, a casual glance at the hands of a woman or man can reveal something about his or her character or livelihood. I would venture there is not a woman here who has not suffered with a case of dishpan hands at sometime in her life. Office workers, teachers, writers will find a callus slowly developing on the middle finger of their writing hand. Automobile mechanics will have grease marked hands, while the outdoorsman very often will have suntanned, wind-roughened hands. And I, for one, have often admired the long, slim, strong hands of a concert pianist or artist. Next time you meet someone, look at their hands and try to determine what they spend a great deal of their time doing. But how about the things those hands do that are not visible – or are they? Maybe your hands show a great deal more than you realize.

It is quite evident that our hands disclose something about ourselves. Remember the story we have just heard in John 20 vs. 19 – 21. It refers to the day of Jesus’ resurrection: On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said

“Peace be with you.”

After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said

“Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me,
I am sending you.”

Two thoughts come out of these three versus. One concerns something that Jesus said, the other something that he did. What Jesus spoke was this,

“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

And what Jesus did was this:

“He showed them his hands.”

What do you think the disciples saw when they looked at the hands of Jesus? What did his hands reveal to them about his personality, about his character? There they were – ten disciples and their Lord on that first Easter Sunday evening. They had walked with him, they had talked with him, and they had been with him for something more than three years by that time. They had enjoyed many opportunities to observe him in many different contexts. What did they see in his hands?

Maybe Peter remembered the time when he had seen Christ walking on the sea. It was shortly after the feeding of the five thousand and Jesus had sent his disciples on ahead of him across the Sea of Galilee. A storm arose on the lake and the disciples feared that high waves would swamp their little boat. Jesus, aware of their plight, walked on the water toward them. But far from calming them, the sight of him scared them even more; for they thought he was a ghost although he called out to them and assured them that he was, indeed, Jesus himself. Peter was not convinced. He shouted, “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.” Jesus shouted back, “Come on ahead.” So, Peter stepped from the boat and began walking across the surface of the waves toward Jesus. But before long, the novelty of what he was doing wore off and his attention wavered. He took his eyes off Jesus, his courage failed and he began to sink. At that point in the story, Matthew 14 vs. 31 tells us that immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. Yes, Peter may very well have thought about that incident as he looked at the hands of Jesus.

Or possibly the disciples remembered the occasion when a blind man approached Jesus and begged him to touch his eyes. Mark 8 vs. 23 tells us that Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village and restored his sight.

Like the women we talked about earlier, when we reach out to others, we, too, have helping hands. We cannot, of course, cause people to walk on water, nor perform breathtaking miracles, but people around us everywhere need our help. The stores where we make our purchases, the shops and offices where we make our living, the schools in which we study, the homes in which we live – all are full of people who need our help. Not just spiritual, but physical help as well. As Billy Graham has reminded us we need to be prepared to offer the bible in one hand and a cup of cold water in the other. And we must learn not to be offended if one reaches for the cup and not the bible. For Christian love is unconditional and must be offered with no strings attached. (But that does not prevent us from offering the bible again later, does it?)

Some years ago, a little girl was left motherless at the age of 10. There were younger children in the family, and taking care of them became the girl’s major task. While her father worked long hours to support her family, she cooked meals and scrubbed floors and mended cloches and wiped tears out of little eyes and did all the other things that the mother had done before her death. For five long years she worked from early morning till late at night. Finally the backbreaking labor took its toll and she became seriously ill. A neighbor, visiting the young girl’s sick room, found her crying. “What’s the matter, dear?” she asked. “I think I’m going to die and I am so ashamed, replied the girl. “Why in the world should you be ashamed? The neighbor asked. “Since Mother left us, the girl replied, I haven’t time to do anything for Jesus. When I get to heaven, what can I tell Him?” Taking the girl’s hands in hers and looking at the scars and calluses, the neighbor said, “Honey, I don’t think you’ll have to tell Jesus anything. Just show him your hands.”

I think Jesus disciples also saw Jesus’ healing hands. We remember He healed as well as helped. Jesus used his hands to cleanse a leper, drive out fevers and cure incurable afflictions. If course, we cannot do those things and, unless we are trained medical people, we cannot treat medical conditions. But look at how our hands can heal – a gentle hand on a fevered brow, a hand extended when someone has lost their way, a genuine interest in a person’s needs – all these things can help heal a person who is in pain.

But what else do you think the disciples saw when they looked at their master’s hands? As we mentioned before, there they were – ten men and their master – together in the house on that first Easter Sunday evening. Of course, they couldn’t fail to see the nail prints in his hands. Jesus had dedicated his hands to a solemn purpose and his father had consecrated those hands to that same solemn purpose. It is in this, then that we find the distinguishing characteristics of the hands of Jesus. They were separated to the specific task of saving all people everywhere from the power and penalty of sin. Unmistakably there was, there still is and there always will be grace and love and mercy in this touch because the hands of Jesus are holy hands.

“As the Father has sent me,”
said our Lord, “I am sending you.”
And “He showed them his hands.”

While today we are especially honoring women, all women who strive to achieve, to love, to reach out, to contribute, to pass this legacy on to their loved ones – wives, daughters, mothers, aunts, grandmothers, sisters and friends, we must also recognize men. For men and women have longed forged a partnership in service that is stronger and needed more now than every before in the history of mankind. Men and women are bonding together in the service of God and service to their fellow human beings. They are joining hands to achieve goals unthinkable in previous years.

I ask you to look at your hands. These hands have tremendous responsibility. They should reveal Jesus’ character. Remember Jesus said, “For as much as you do this to the least of them, you do it also unto me.”

During the closing months of World War II, a group of American soldiers set about to rebuild a partially destroyed cathedral in one of the bombed out towns in Southern Europe. They began their task with a generous amount of zeal and zest, and in short order they were able to reconstruct the walls and roof, restore the stained glass windows and replace the pews. One soldier had been assigned the job of repairing, as best he could, a life-sized white marble statue of Christ that had stood at the front of the church. Not being able to find the hands of the figure in the rubble, he was about to admit failure and throw the statue on the rubbish heap outside. Then he was struck by a flash of inspiration. He found a white rectangle of cardboard, tied the ends of a length of string to two corners of the rectangle, and hung the cardboard around the neck of the statue. Then he tenderly set the statue in its honored place at the front of the cathedral. On the cardboard he wrote these words, “I have no other hands but yours.”

So given the abundance of possibilities, I ask you “what are you called on by Jesus to do with your hands? What will be your handiwork? Does Jesus have your hands? Does he have mine? Only each of us can answer that.