All bodies matter

 

Luke 3: 1-6
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
December 5, 2021

It sounds simplistic and yet the idea of the incarnation, God made flesh, means that our bodies, all bodies are sacred. We refer to the earth, sun, moon, stars, and planets as celestial bodies. Corporations are bodies, as is government at all levels. Schools have a student body. Bodies are treated as less than sacred when we overwork and underpay them, when we judge or oppress them, punish or harm them based on ability or size, color or gender, when we incarcerate them, when some do not receive the healthcare, housing, education, and food they need, when we protect guns rights more than human lives. To say that all bodies are sacred is a justice issue. All bodies won’t be sacred until Black bodies, trans bodies, poor bodies are sacred.



In an empire, bodies are not sacred. In an empire, bodies are manipulated and controlled. They are commodities, replaceable and objectified. Empire does not offer deliverance, only disappointment. Salvation, liberation does not come from empire, only domination and destruction. And so it is in the midst of political, religious, and economic powers—an emperor, a governor, three tetrarchs, and two high priests—that John the Baptist raises his voice to those on the fringes of empire. John hears the word of God in the wilderness, a place where our bodies are vulnerable and outcomes are uncertain. The wilderness is a place of hunger and thirst, where we embody our fears, we can face danger and temptation, in which we can lose our way and hope to be found.

The way of the Holy One, the way of the Kindred One to the kin-dom of God is to be made accessible to every body so that all flesh, all bodies may see, perceive, recognize the salvation, the liberation of God. The Hebrew word for flesh can also be translated as nakedness, vulnerability. It is when we are vulnerable, like a newborn in a feeding trough, that we are able to make sense of the liberation that comes to us not from government or money or power but in the fragility of our bodies, the limitations of being human.



Again, the Five Remembrances of Buddhism: We will grow old. Our bodies will know sickness. There is no escape from death. Everything and everyone changes. All we have are our actions. When we accept the vulnerability of our existence and that it is not ours to manipulate or command, we are delivered from fear, liberated from our desire to control, and our actions become the conduit, the way made smooth, the repairing of the world, the turning toward God, the forgiveness of sin.

All bodies shall recognize their liberation.



Children will go to school without fear of being shot or bullied.

Workers will receive a living wage, paid parental leave, and affordable childcare.

No one will be judged or punished because of their weight or appearance or ability.

Sex work will be recognized as real work and protected as such.

Transgender and gender non-conforming folx will live a long and joy-filled life.

People of color will no longer have to live in fear of police brutality, of having their skin color weaponized against them.

Indigenous people will have self-governance, self-determination, land restoration, and the land will no longer be a commodity.

White people will no longer be the center and Whiteness will no longer exist.

Those who are pregnant will decide for themselves the care that they need.

Mental health will be just as important as physical health.

The rich will be sent away empty, and the poor, the disabled, and the unhoused will have everything they need including dignity and worth.

Every vote will count.

The earth will know peace.

Jesus hung out with drunk and gluttonous bodies, sex worker bodies, disabled bodies and sick bodies, poor and neglected bodies. He didn’t judge or punish them, he healed them, forgave them, had compassion on them, loved them. When Jesus said “Remember me” with his body broken for us, we remember that his body was brown and poor, unhoused, incarcerated, tortured, punished, and executed, and yet his body was also brought into this world like any other, naked and vulnerable and dependent on others. As we come to this Table hungering for our liberation, let us do so recognizing that our liberation is inexorably connected to those on the fringes of empire and to the demise of empire itself. This is the advent of the kin-dom of God, the good news for the people of God. Amen.

Benediction – enfleshed.com


We are all born on this plane of existence
crying for connection and reaching for a human to hold.
Let us go forth co-creating community
where vulnerability is treasured and protected,
and where compassion abounds,
that all may know the freedom of being loved
for Love’s sake.