Body Imago : The Incarnation

Christmas One ‘09 Body Imago

(Written by Gloria Stubitsch, Paula Best and Ryan Marsh)

INTRODUCTION:
PAULA: Welcome to Christmas at Church of the Beloved. Yes, I know, you thought Christmas was over and life could finally go back to normal. But in the Christian calendar the Season of Christmas begins on Christmas day and continues for twelve more days. And tonight we explore the incarnation and body image.

Yes, I know, what a cruelty to hold a service on body image directly after the highest caloric intake of the year. Honestly, we didn’t plan it that way. We know that this topic is highly sensitive and awkward and sometimes painful and you might be thinking, “I came here to worship and now we’re talking about our bodies? What does this have to do with Christmas?”

Don’t worry, you’re not going to be asked to say or do anything that you don’t want to, but we hope that you can risk engaging in the stories, engaging in the mystery of the incarnation and perhaps at the end of tonight’s service you might see a deep connection between body image and Christmas that you hadn’t known before.

INVOCATION: And we pray, ‘Holy Spirit, create a safe place for us here, a sanctuary where we can be met by you and let our vigilant defenses relax.’ Now take a deep breath. Fill your lungs all the way up… and then blow it out. Rub your hands together until there is heat between them. Touch your face with your hot palms. Become aware of your body. God is here. And you are here. And we are here to worship God.

SONG: ONE OF US

STORY 1: ‘ONE OF US’
RYAN: Joan Osborne’s song “One of Us” has almost become cliche, but I remember when it first came out… I remember the outrage of so many pastors, calling it blasphemy and saying, ‘God is not just a bum on a bus!’ I didn’t really get what everyone was so offended about. Were they offended that Joan Osborne called God a bum? Someone homeless and unkempt? Is that what was so offensive about the song? But how can the incarnation be anything but offensive? Even the Apostle Paul calls the incarnation “a stumbling block” to those who look for power and “foolishness” to those who look for wisdom. The only people that the incarnation is not going to offend are those who look for God to be born a bastard in extreme poverty and then die as a criminal cursed on a tree. Do we have any takers for that God? The incarnation is not offensive only as long as his feet never touch the ground.

My parents recently had some of their old home movies turned from super eight film into DVDs. The footage was sixty years old or more, the colors were vibrant like only the super eight can capture and the scenes were of sunny days at the beach, a young woman in a flower print dress laying out a blanket on green grass, her daughter sitting in a bright red child sized rocking chair. There was a dreamlike quality to the movement of the old film of my mom with her mom. They were beautiful and overflowing with life.

But in the other room there was a very different scene. The young woman who was laying out the blanket on the grass in the home movie was lying very still in a hospice bed. The color was gone from her face. Her skin seemed almost transparent, lying loosely over her hands. By all accounts this was a good death. She was surrounded by her family who loves her. She had lived 96 amazing years and claimed zero regrets. And yet, even under these best of circumstances there seemed something so offensive about her death. The inability to walk, the moving in and out of coherent consciousness, the spoon feeding, the diapers… all the roles that she had once performed for her own child were now being reversed.

When God’s word, “became flesh and dwelt among us” he entered all of it, the very deepest of human offence. It seems to me that Joan Osborne was saying something right… maybe orthodox, and even pulling some punches when it comes to the offensiveness of the incarnation.

SONG REFRAIN: ONE OF US
What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home

READING: GENESIS
GLORIA: A story from Genesis about beginnings: God spoke, saying “Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature. So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.” God created human beings; created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. God created them male and female, blessed them and called them good, very good! The man and woman were naked and they felt no shame.

STORY 2: KNEW NO SHAME

PAULA: They were naked and knew no shame. This is currently Adia, my one year old. She has no awareness of or shame about her nakedness; when I bathe her, when I change her diaper, when she runs around naked. She is free and content. She is completely oblivious to the centuries of battling with shame and contempt of our bodies. It is quite beautiful to see on a daily basis, and it is also hard to see given my own shame about my body.

This got me to thinking about loss of innocence. At some point Adia will lose her innocence. She will become aware of her body. This awareness will be good, normal, and hard. She will be impacted by our broken world and feel pain. She will have to learn how to adjust to and tolerate these broken feelings, just as I have and all of us have and do.

What feels hopeful amidst the contempt and the pain is to begin to invite the contempt and pain to speak. What might my contempt be trying to say? What is the pain that lives behind it? How can we let our hurting voices know that we are listening? If we silence them or try to get rid of them, they grow louder and more destructive within us. Perhaps in the listening and in the building of relationship with these voices, the contempt will be soothed and the pain more bearable. The bind of loving and hating my body will continue to exist, but through listening to my contempt and destructive voices, perhaps I will better be able to tolerate the bind and perhaps become a friend of the bind.

SONG: BROKEN

READING PSALM 139: GLORIA
ONE: This is the prayer of the psalmist concerning the body:
O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.

You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.

ALL: O Lord, you know me inside and out.

ONE: For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

ALL: O Lord, you know me inside and out.

ONE: My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body.

ALL: O Lord, you know me inside and out.

ONE: All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

ALL: O Lord, you know me inside and out.

STORY 3: ENEMY LOVE
RYAN: I have big legs. Always have. It makes it hard to find pants that fit right. If I’m getting fitted to wear slacks or a suit the tailor will predictably say, “Ohh. You must have pleats. Many, many pleats.” I hate pleats. I think they look silly on me, like the pirate shirt episode of Seinfield, I feel like I’m wearing pirate pants. Big pleated pirate pants.

And I hate my legs. Always have. I know I shouldn’t hate my legs. I don’t want to hate my legs. I want to love my legs and say, “Legs. God made you. You are big and occasionally you must wear pleats. I’m sorry about that, but I love you and you are my legs.”

But there is a big difference between what I want to feel and what I do feel. I’m not sure that accepting my big legs is something I can just will myself into doing. Sometimes the pressure of “I ought to” only takes me down another path of self-contempt for not “being able to”. I join the prayer of the Apostle Paul when he reaches the end of himself and says, “What I want to do I don’t do, and what I don’t want to do I do. Who will save me from this bind?”

Phew! This prayer points me out of my culdesack of contempt and towards the gospel. Loving our enemy is at the heart of the gospel, because that is what God did for us. But isn’t that how many of us treat our bodies – as our own intimate enemy who is inseparably with us. The gospel doesn’t help me slide into a size 32 jean or lose twenty pounds. In the gospel Jesus simply says, “When you thought you were an enemy with God, I loved you. And continued to love you even through death.” This is good news because there is only one thing that can answer shame. And it’s not trying harder. It’s not even forgiveness. The only thing that can answer shame is acceptance. And in the incarnation God says, “I made you. I made your body. I love you. I love your body. And I have come all the way to you to tell you this one thing: Because of Jesus, you are accepted.”

FREE FORM STATIONS:
CONFESSING SHAME STATION: Body Cut Out
RECEIVING ABSOLUTION STATION: Mirror

SONG: BLESSED

PRAYERS:
ONE: God incarnate, for those who feel too big in their body and for those who feel too small, we pray -

SING: Receive, receive, receive the blessing of God

ONE: God incarnate, for those who eat but cannot satisfy themselves and for those who barely eat at all, we pray -

SING: Receive, receive, receive the blessing of God

ONE: God incarnate, for those who are under the weight of comparison and for those who have stopped caring altogether, for those who feel too different and for those who feel too much the same, we pray -

SING: Receive, receive, receive the blessing of God
And be reminded we are guided by Love on every step of our lives.

COMMUNION PRAYER: GLORIA
ONE: The human body is a unit, it is made up of many parts; and although there are many parts, they form one body. So it is with Christ.