Love letter to the Body

<sup>Sermon for Trinity 7B.

Ephesians 2: 14</sup>For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 

^{Mark 6: 31}He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

⁵⁶And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the market-places, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Love Letter to the Body

Dear Body,

You know, don’t you, that if you’re saved at all, you’re saved in your body.

It started with a body, taking flesh, being born of a woman, coming in frailty, the ‘mewling and puking’; the growing; the growing up; the slow realisation that death would be, of course, bodily.

The Jews circumcise the body to mark themselves as separate, as superior to the uncircumcised Gentiles. It was always thus.

The humanity into which I came was a humanity bitterly divided.

Years of fighting over difference – a dividing wall of hostility.

‘We know God; you don’t’.

‘You’re crazy, we’re not.’

The Jews wanted me dead: the Gentiles carried it out.

But on that cross, the one that killed the body, slowly, painfully, in my flesh, the two became one household – Gentile and Jew welcomed into God’s family with open arms, the arms of my Father in heaven.

Because all who come to me are family.

And all who are in me are my Body.

That is why I long for you all – who does not love their own body, tending it, feeding it, grieving when it hurts and waiting for its final redemption?

Because of this, you must love the body.

Come to me when you’re weary, and I will give you rest.

Those early days of ministry, Peter, James and John and the others would dash about, breathless with excitement!

Everything was so good, so new, the life of the Son of Man, the teaching and healing, cooking and laughing under the stars.

The abundant life is so attractive; it draws people.

The abundant life of God can be difficult to handle though; it can be overwhelming.

(By the way, if you only know scarcity, you must have the wrong God!)

I urged them to rest, so many were coming and going, so much need.

Once you unstop the lid, out it all spills – hungers, pain, unforgiveness, illness, bereavement, feuding, envy, anger, lust. 

Out it comes, seeking healing, seeking reconciliation.

The clamouring for my presence, like sheep endlessly bleating in the green pasture, not really knowing one end of the pen from the other.

If you don’t rest you’ll burn up, like kindling on a hot day.

The pattern is there – work, rest, play.

So many evils come from abusing the pattern.

Too busy to pray, too greedy to stop, digestive problems, palpitations; the body will rebel.

It is a finely tuned instrument, like a lute.

Let me play its tune.

Treat it carefully, this temple of the Holy Spirit. I dwell there.

The body is good.

It thrives on good, honest, sweaty labour, like the labour of carving wood, shaving off the end of a beam, sawdust filtering down in the sunlit air, the fresh odour of sap released.

Your body craves water, fresh air, the great outdoors, sunshine on skin, long walks.

Listen to your body. Care for it. Tend it gently, love your body like a child; never harm it willingly, for you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

It is in the body that you are saved.

It is in resting that you remember you are not the Creator.

It is in eating that you remember man does not live by bread alone.

Don’t over-eat; don’t hide from yourself that you’re drinking too much.

Attend to where your hungers are coming from.

Did you know that eating is a sacrament?

A living sign of the goodness of God.

Food restores both body and soul. Eat together and be thankful.

Remember that in a world where some of my children go to bed and wake up hungry, the rich are often poor before God, and the poor rich, like Dives and Lazarus.

Remember the last time we eat together, last week, the week before….?

That is true fellowship, one with another.

Take, eat, this is my body, broken for you.

Take time. Notice every mouthful; eat with thankful hearts.

Never let it be true that you have no leisure even to eat.

Despite its glory, however, the body will let you down.

It is destined for a greater glory, so first it will wear itself out.

There will be times when you feel that your very being is dissolving, that you’re being poured out like dust.

There will be times when you’re so tired, three hours sleep will seem like a gift from heaven.

There will be times when you bless those who have spent years studying the infinite complexities of your insides and who can knit you back together, as far as is possible.

There will be times when death disrupts the order of things, a little one lost; a child before a parent; a parent before a grandparent.

This is dark, like Lazarus entombed, but not dark enough not to be redeemed, finally brought into the blinding light of day.

Unwrap them now!

All of creation groans to be delivered – your sufferings will seem like the pangs of childbirth, the cries of pain before deliverance.

Mary knew all about that.

So don’t curse the body that wears out; befriend it. Tend it.

Let others serve you. Let me serve you, let me tie a towel around my waist and wash your feet in the basin, wash away your tears.

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Reach out and touch the fringe of my cloak, like the sick who were brought to me in the market places, the farms, the fields.

When you reach out and touch me, I will know that power has gone out from me, but that is why I came - to destroy all the works of the evil one, to entrust my body to death, to rise with a resurrection body, a sign of what is to follow for you.

Just imagine those walks we’ll do on the new earth, on the new grass, sharper and greener and harder than diamond...

I cannot wait!

But I am waiting...

From your loving Saviour and Brother,

Jesus.

Sermon to self

As an advert for Christianity, the quotation 'my power is made perfect in weakness' doesn't come across as very attractive. From St. Paul*, it haunts those who are not only ordained, but also 'trained', to within an inch of their lives, to be organised, professional, competent, strong, smiling priests of the church.

But when it all gets a bit much, it can be the best verse in the bible. It would seem that those in the caring professions, particularly Christian ministers, are a lot better at looking after others than they are at looking after themselves. In fact over a two week period recently my whole life became a 'sermon to self' on this particular subject. The fact that I thought I knew about boundaries, self awareness, rest and days off, and still became overwhelmed, makes it quite likely that even the 'strongest' can find themselves caught out in a bit of real, live, can't-really-carry-on-right-now full blown weakness.

Boundaries are fine as long as they do their job - i.e. keep certain things in and hold other things out. But it's like the autumn when leaves find their way down drains and rain water spills onto the road - boundaries dissolve. 'Work' spills into 'life'; 'life' spills into 'work'. Family and ministry can happily co-exist, or chafe like badly fitting boots. We're so less in control than we think, but certain things are our teachers in these times of quite scary freefall. Here are three that schooled me.

Rest is a state of mind.
Rest is not just taking your day off. It's about the quality of your time off, and finding other times of rest through the week. Daily bread includes the idea of enough strength for that day. In an ideal world there would be no housework, shopping or school run on the day off. In the real world, it's only a day off from being a Curate. Everything else, for a mum, carries on as normal. If, by the end of it, I'm more tired than I was at the beginning, something's gone wrong.

Multi-tasking is over-rated.

I used to be secretly proud of my ability to multi-task. This is what the church needs! People (i.e. women) who can mentally plan a sermon while stirring the bolognese, helping with homework and answering emails in the kitchen on their smartphone. Somewhere between the sermon and the bolognese my brain just gave up and I realised I could no longer do one thing at a time, or in fact anything slowly or mindfully. This is generally very bad for your spiritual and psychological health. To unscramble your brain from the multi-tasking habit, from the feeling that if you don't keep all the balls in the air simultaneously everything will fall apart, is very difficult indeed. But vital. I should have taken my cue from my occasional quiet days, taken in a large and peaceful country house, where the highlight of the morning for me is boiling the kettle in my room, making a cup of coffee, sitting down in a chair and drinking it, while looking out of the window. And nothing else.

Time is subjective.
I think the phrase is 'more haste less speed'. I was never very good at calculations involving time, distance and speed
but I think the idea is that if you rush through life you will find in the end everything takes longer because, presumably, doing things slower, more carefully (more mindfully), will actually save time eventually. And in my recent recovery time, this is precisely what happened. I was forced to slow down, not do things, let other things surface. And I was less frustrated, more at peace and more willing to stop when my body told me to, instead of when the work was finished (because, funnily enough, the work is never finished). And the body doesn't lie.

Slowing down reacquaints you with the stuff going on inside, of which there is a vast amount. Working through 'stuff' takes time. So everything else takes more time than you think. It's like when you've been caught speeding (NO...yes...) You have to recalibrate the time it takes to get anywhere. My physics isn't so bad that I don't know that if you religiously observe all the speed limits, the time it takes to get anywhere it will be longer. 

So time is what I make it. I can look at the clock and think 'I only have fifteen minutes before x' or I can look at the clock and say, 'Wonderful: I have fifteen minutes to sit and be.' The difference between these two, in terms of well being, is considerable.

Sermon to self over. I fear, and am suspicious of weakness. But it's part of being human. Rest is a gift designed to renew us through and through. You cannot skimp on it. Do one thing at a time and do it with your whole self. And time is subjective. There's always enough. It's just that we try and squeeze too much into it. Sooner or later, if we don't heed our own sermons, there'll be a massive leak. 









*2 Corinthians 12:9