Blessed and Beloved, Re-member Preached at Wollaston Congregational Church On January 11th, 2019 Scripture: Matthew 3:13-17 This Sunday we celebrate the Baptism of Christ. We remember that from the beginning of his ministry God blessed Jesus and pronounced him as beloved. Traditionally in the church, we also remember our own baptisms on this day. In some churches the congregants renew their baptismal vows. Sometimes they are sprinkled with drops of water from evergreen branches. Or, as we will do today, they are invited to put their hands into the baptismal waters to remember the day they were baptized. And, like Jesus, we are reminded that we are blessed and beloved, we remember. We even re-member. Jesus received his own baptism from his cousin, John the Baptist. In the gospel, Matthew writes that John “appears” in the wilderness preaching a message of repentance and baptizing the crowds from the whole region of the Jordan, who are drawn to him. Jesus takes his place in the line, as John baptizes each person one by one. And so John is taken aback as he is confronted by his younger cousin. He doesn’t know what to do. He knows that his time of preparing the way for the Lord has come to fruition. And yet, here is the Lord in line, waiting for baptism from him, John. And so John says "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" Jesus speaks, for the first time in this gospel. "Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness." And so John and Jesus go down into the waters of the Jordan. John feels humbled beyond belief, but Jesus has submitted. This is the order of things. This is what God has called him to do. John is to inaugurate Jesus’ ministry with this seal of baptism in the water. This is the long expected One, the One for whom John has been preparing the way. And now, here he is in the water, having hiked out into the wilderness. The sandals he has just removed are dusty and worn. His tunic is sweaty and rough. As he steps onto the riverbed mud seeps between his toes, grit gets under his toe nails. And so John looks to the sky and says a prayer. He places a hand on Jesus’ head and gently pushes him into the water. As Jesus emerges from the waters, earth and heaven meet. He is fully human and his vision is clear. He can see God his heavenly parent, and the Holy Spirit who descends on him. All who witness the baptism hear the same voice “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking of Jesus as a disembodied spirit. We say that he was above being human. We think that he possessed super powers to perform miracles and that is why we should revere and worship him. And we sometimes believe that we fail to be like Jesus because we do not live on his spiritual plane. We interpret our earthliness as sinfulness. We think that we are instructed to rise above the needs and desires of our bodies. And when we fail to do that, we point to what has been described as “original sin.” This is all a big mistake. Jesus’ specialness comes from him being the most truly human being. He owned his body and lived fully in it, from birth to death. Jesus did not take a break from his body. He did not try to numb the feelings of it, or escape it. He got hungry and thirsty, he got tired, he got dirty. He laughed and he cried. The voice from heaven says “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” The heavenly voice speaks to Jesus in his fully human condition. We fail to be like Jesus not because we inhabit our bodies fully, but because we don’t. We try to separate and hide our desires and needs from our relationship with God. When things get too hard, we’d prefer to numb ourselves than face the pain. We separate from our relationships and we isolate. We not only separate from our own bodies, we separate from the greater body of the community and the church. As I have said, on this Sunday when we are called to remember our own baptisms. Re-member. Perhaps we are also called to re-member our own selves. To reintegrate and reconcile our embodied selves. On Being is an award-winning public radio show and podcast. In each show the host, Krista Tippett, interviews a different guest, asking questions like: “What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other?” [1] Recently I listened to Krista Tippett, interview Dr. Bessel Van der kolk, in her On Being podcast. Dr Van der kolk is a psychiatrist and professor who specializes in trauma care. He notes that psychiatrists have been aware of the impact of trauma for some time, but generally relate it to the experience of war. The diagnosis of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, came about following the Vietnam war and advocacy for the veterans. [2] Later, doctors realized that the diagnosis applies to victims of rape and childhood abuse. And more recently, they have realized that it applies to anyone who has had terrible experiences. Over a lifetime, even if we do not have PTSD, the majority of us have experienced some kind of trauma. In our churches and communities there are people who have lived through World War II, the nuclear age, the Cold War, the events of September 11th 2001, and now the climate change crisis: just a few events that have caused communal trauma over the past 80 years. And in our individual lives, many are the victims of imperfect parenting, alcoholism and other addictions in our family systems. We have experienced bullying in school and in our work places, hazing in the military, sports teams or fraternities. Many of us live with memories of abuse by teachers, clergy people, medical professionals, and coaches. The older we are, the more likely we are to be carrying some kind of trauma. And it is not surprising that we humans try to distance ourselves from the pain of trauma. As Dr van de Kolk says, “The big issue for traumatized people is that they don’t own themselves anymore. Any loud sound, anybody insulting them, hurting them, saying bad things, can hijack them away from themselves.” This is what is known as being “triggered.” When we are triggered our rational brain disengages and our amygdala, our reptilian brain, takes over. Ironically, when someone is “out of their body” and triggered they cannot notice what is going on with others. Dr. Van der kolk says that if someone can learn to “own themselves”, they may become resilient to their trauma. If someone says something that is hurtful or insulting, they can simply notice what is going on. They can differentiate themselves from the other person. They may even understand that the person is coming from a triggered place themselves. Jesus’ owned his own body in a noticing kind of way. He noticed what was going on with him and he also noticed what was going on around him. He could differentiate between his own feelings and those of others. He knew his own membrane: where he ended and another person began. And so, when someone came to him for healing he knew what was required. He knew which body part to touch, he knew intuitively what kind of spiritual care was needed. I am a recent convert to the idea of being in my body and noticing what I am experiencing. In the environment of my upbringing, the body was something to be disregarded or conquered. Pain and other symptoms were best ignored, unless there was a complete system failure. Then you wound up in the hospital, where “they”, the health service would take care of things. As a young adolescent, I knew I was supposed to be careful about my diet. I had a tendency to gain weight, apparently inherited from my dad. My dad had been overweight as a young man, but now he was on a Spartan regime. He at a meager breakfast, took three pieces of fresh fruit, in his brief case for lunch, and then ate a substantial dinner. He had no trouble maintaining a healthy weight. My attempts were not so consistent. I’d eat less for a while, but then one day I found myself in the pantry eating a whole leftover dinner. I had been hungry when I began, but now I was just stuffing it in. My stomach was full, I could no longer taste the food, eating didn’t even feel good. And yet I didn’t stop. I didn’t own my body. When I first began to work with a spiritual director a few years ago, I would describe an experience to her. Often she would gently ask, “how did that feel in your body?” I’d be floored. I didn’t know or I couldn’t recall. But then I began to attempt to pay attention, and I noticed how anxiety felt in my body. It was a revelation. Soon I was able to notice anxiety as it actually happened, instead of looking back on an event and saying “I think I behaved that way because I was anxious.” Dr. Van der kolk notes that “Western culture is astoundingly disembodied and uniquely so …. the notion that you can do things to change the harmony inside of yourself is just not something that we teach in schools and in our culture, in our churches, or in our religious practices. But, if you look at religions around the world, they always start with dancing, moving, singing: physical experiences … the more ‘respectable’ people become, the more stiff they become somehow.” Perhaps this is what Matthew is trying to teach us, with this story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and this baptism in the River Jordan. Jesus walks into the wilderness, unties his own sandals, descends into the chilly waters of the river. He is baptized by John and then emerges. He is blessed as the beloved child of God, the beloved truly humanly embodied child of God. And so, we inherit that blessing and that beloved-ness. We are beloved in our bodies, whatever they are … male, female or neither one, black, brown, or another of the many hues of human skin, LGBTQ+ or straight, strong and able to do most things, or differently abled and in need of human or mechanical adaptations. Whatever the size of shape of our bodies they are utterly acceptable, totally blessed. And so, it would be OK to reclaim our embodied-ness. It is OK move in church, to sing and dance and own our physicality. It would be more than OK to share this with others. And so, I invite you to check in with your body, feel in right now … sitting on the pew, your feet on the floor. Your arms by your side, you hands … clenched or relaxed. Feel the breath coming in to your lungs and out again. Then come to the waters of baptism and re-bless yourselves. Re-member that you are beloved. Amen. [1] https://onbeing.org/series/podcast/ [2] https://onbeing.org/programs/bessel-van-der-kolk-how-trauma-lodges-in-the-body/#transcript
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