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Love EmbodiedApril 26, 2009 Third Sunday of Easter Exactly six years ago today, on April 26, 2003, a 27-year-old adventurer named Aron Ralston set out alone in the Utah backcountry to climb its forbidding terrain. Five days later, after several unsuccessful attempts to dislodge an 800-pound boulder that was crushing his right hand, Ralston snapped first the radius and then the ulna of his forearm near the wrist, applied a makeshift tourniquet, severed his lower arm with a throwaway multitool, rappelled to the base of a canyon and hiked until he came upon a rescue helicopter. [1] In other words, he cut off his arm to save himself. A recent article in The New York Times recalled Ralston’s harrowing ordeal while reporting how his life has evolved over these last years. He wrote a best-selling account entitled, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and has become a celebrity within extreme sports and the motivational speaking circuit. The article jogged my own recollection of the headline story six years ago – it made quite an impact on me at the time. I even dreamt about it more than once, that is, dreamt about myself in his predicament. His story is both thrilling and appalling. It’s hard to imagine making such a decision in real time. I’m struck by his indomitable will to live, the extraordinary lengths he went to preserve his life using all the gifts of his mental and physical powers, juxtaposed to the limitations and vulnerability of that same physical body. Our human existence is both a great wonder and extremely fragile. I think that accounts for the driving energy in extreme sports. The human body is a remarkable thing. Remarkable and breakable. Each one unique, it boundaries life as we experience it. That’s why Aron Ralston was willing to forego an arm. With our bodies we live and move and have our being. It is the container of soul. Our individual identities, our location of self, is contained within our unique material existence. I am Stephen Bauman, not Javier Viera or Cathy Gilliard. However I may feel about my body, I am at least this specific admixture of organic compounds and water. I am also more – I am mind and spirit as well – but that mind and spirit are embodied within this house not made with hands. Within these walls we say that God has fashioned this fleshly house. When matter was formed into living things our tradition tells us God called it good. The material world was good. Life was good. Humanity in its original design was good. Christianity makes a further claim: flesh also took on the character of divine personality in Jesus, which, from a theological perspective is an astounding endorsement of the goodness of humanity’s frail flesh. That proclamation was quite a mouthful in the early days, as it still remains, but it was not arrived at without experience. It came down to the fact that after a brutal crucifixion, the disciples experienced a Jesus who was very much alive. And not just spiritually alive, but somehow embodied, although not in any way they could explain. That’s what our text reports this morning. The resurrected spirit was embodied. The disciples thought they were seeing a ghost, according to the story Cathy just read. But to make the case clear, Luke says Jesus asked them if they had some fish. They did and he ate. As the story is told, Jesus had a vulnerable physical body, just like you, and me, and Aron Ralston. It was vulnerable to hunger and thirst, thorns and spikes and spear. It could not survive hanging on a wooden cross-beam in a peculiar way. Eventually it gave in to suffocation. It died. But now here’s the thing, the amazing thing, the nearly unbelievable thing – Jesus was a manifest presence after he died. And not like the old days when he caroused with his friends. This was a presence of a different order of magnitude – call it a remarkable will to life. Now on the one hand, I don’t know what to make of this. This is not susceptible to scientific proof. The stories don’t all jive and they’re laced with the fantastical. What we say over and over in here is that what we know but cannot prove comes by way of faith. If you’re a skeptic at this point I don’t blame you and I certainly don’t curse you. The story tells us that even the disciples were initially confused and unbelieving. Still, as I said on Easter, this completely demoralized and terrified band of mismatched companions was transformed by something – something powerful, something embodied they said. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they were transformed by someone. And association with this someone changed them utterly. The spirit of the resurrection took residence within them and in turn they embodied this spirit, this will to life. Now it wasn’t quite the same in them since their frail flesh was still on this side of physical death, but nevertheless, the power of resurrected life took hold of them and transformed their fear into faith. Their faith caused them to live and teach the love Jesus lived and taught – the love of God above all things and the love of neighbor as oneself. It dawned on them that the real task of life was to embody this love. Why? Because God had invaded the physical world and blessed it with God’s own presence and power. The material was not to be abhorred, but celebrated, restored, redeemed. Our physical existence, our bodies, were an integral part of God’s grace. Although fragile and breakable, frail flesh was holy, it was good, it was created and blessed by God. Jesus gave witness to that. In turn it came to the early believers that their bodies had sacred value; their actions were God’s hands and feet. When they gathered together, the spirit of Jesus was present, now embodied within them. When they shared in a meal of remembrance they knew Jesus was at their table. It’s for this reason Christ Church will offer a meal, what we call a sharing table, for those who are hungry later this afternoon; actively support the work of the Methodist Church Home for the Aged in Riverdale; partner with the church in Colombia to build their capacity at bringing the embodied message of love to desperate people; continue to help rebuild a community in New Orleans; and extend ourselves and our resources in many other ways. Ours is an embodied faith. Physical bodies and their care and nurture, as well as the dignity in which they are allowed to grow and thrive are aspects of the sacred nature and obligation of our existence. The beloved writer Madeleine L’Engle told the story of when her daughter was young and cried out in the night. L’Engle went to her and attempted to comfort her. At first, she attempted to comfort her by giving her a theological concept. Immediately we sense the rightness of this young girl’s instinctive response. We want, need, crave, embodied presence. This is the story of Jesus in a nutshell – God with us – “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” we sing at Christmas. And at Easter? Well, we tell the stories of resurrection that include such earthy details as Jesus sharing a bit of fish with his friends. On another occasion L’Engle wrote, “What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason… [it] reaches out to the wild wonder of God's love, a love we don't even have to earn.” [2] Reflecting on his life after what Aron Ralston refers to as “his accident,” or “the episode,” he has been left wondering about its meaning and the source of his motivation. “Though strength and courage remain a focus of his speeches, Ralston said, ‘I’ve identified what the source is, and it’s love. We’re tapping into that source of strength and courage when we feel love, and we do it for our families and our friends and hopefully for the world at large. Those opportunities are out there all the time, and hopefully we’re doing it for that instead of just our own egos.’” [3] Reading this I thought, that’ll preach well, Aron. Very, very well. ___________ Previous sermon: Loved Into Freedom • Next sermon: It's Not Who You Are, It's What You Do All past sermons |
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