Body

As we move from Easter to Pentecost I find myself thinking about this our body of Christ.  Different times of year we are called to regroup.  Lent and advent come to mind.  Certain times of the year we push forward.  In reality we are always doing these two activities.  Regrouping and pushing forward.  Lives are very similar in many ways.  

A recent TED talk by physicist and entrepreneur Riccardo Sabatini demonstrated that a printed version of your entire genetic code would occupy some 262,000 pages, or 175 large books. Of those pages, just about 500 would be unique to us.  Every variation we have ever seen are contained in those 500 pages. 

Now you know there is an eternity in those 500 pages.  If you will miss just two letters in this position, two letters over 3 billion, you will be condemned to a terrible disease - cystic fibrosis. We have no cure for it. We don't know how to solve it, and it's just two letter of difference.  Darryl Nichols a child of this church I grew up with is gone, but for two letters.

Remembering Darryl Nichols today.  Play D&D, watch Star Wars and LOTR, drink overpriced coffee, talk about religion, paint with acrylics, consider vaccination, and be sure to become an organ donor.  

"Luminous beings are we.... not this crude matter." - Master Yoda.  Been more than nine years.

 

"Prophets, poets and philosophers realized thousand of years ago that being satisfied with what you have is far more important than getting more of what you want. Still, it's nice when modern research - bolstered by lots of numbers and charts - reaches the same conclusions the ancients did. " That is a quote from a favorite book of mine: Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

We have really come full circle in our ability to quantify difference.  Much of what people want in this world is to feel safer.  This also leads directly to security dilemmas that are the basis of many of the difficulties we face.  To be safer we often put ourselves in greater danger.  We are terrible at estimating what 99.9% means.  We walk past it on our sanitizer bottles and think this just some legal warning.

.001% like pizza you cut into 1000 pieces.  We are not very good at cutting things into 1000 pieces.  We lose resolution.  What we see as enormous is miniscule.  We magnify and think we are seeing something different. 

What does that mean to be the body.  It is something overwhelming.  Just to think of the size of the universe required.  More than any idea, required before anything else is possible.  The body is what was created first and the mind doesn't want to hear about it mostly.

There is a great anthem of my generation written by Peter Gabriel.  The words sung by Kate Bush are what come to me something like this message I get from the body.  My body our body.  I don't really know the labels.  Yet I know the message I receive resonates.

 Don't give up

'cause you have friends

Don't give up

You're not beaten yet

Don't give up

I know you can make it good

My experience is that my body always responds.  Put work in and the body will respond.  It is never too late until it is too late.

Don't give up

You still have us

Don't give up

We don't need much of anything

Don't give up

'cause somewhere there's a place

Where we belong

We don't need much of anything

It is a positive message because it is alive.  Negativity is a luxury of the mind. .  I once heard someone talking on the radio, the essence was that even in our worst times, we are mostly healthy.  It is easy to forget the miracle that anything works.

I offer a lot of technical advise in my life.  People naturally come to me with problems.  Most who do have come before.  I always mention something that I don't think anyone really hears.  People always ask me why their electronics are not working.  I always respond that the real miracle is that electronics work at all.  Computer are very sensitive.

We don't have proof, but it is mostly likely that a cosmic ray has killed someone by bit flipping the computer in their car.  One 0 turned to1 and a chain of events.  Computers don't like magnetic fields which we create all around them.  What can go wrong does, but mostly doesn't.  That is the real miracle to me.  We can make quantum computers we just can't stop them from breaking yet.

When I became a vegan I tapped into a deep muscle memory of the body.  It was how I managed the cravings.  Forty years I had eaten everything I wanted when I wanted.  In my family we have this experience. Sometimes you are hungry for something and you make and eat it and realize that was not it.  I have found myself at times at my fourth attempt disappointed.  Most of the time I enjoy what I have.  

This deep muscle memory allows me to say my favorite food is still the oyster.  I loved them raw and two never tasted the same.  This was a food that could kill you.  It had my respect.  I don't miss them at all simply because I find my experience of them not gone.  This is not an idea I have.

The body I will tell you has more memories than any of your ideas of them.  To pray without ceasing does not require words at every moment.  There is this connection.  This geometry.  

From the Amplified Bible 1 Corinthians 12: For just as the body is one and yet has many parts, and all the parts, though many, form [only] one body, so it is with Christ. 

So there I was contemplating as I approached out liturgical calendar.  We find several themes this week.  There is one story I will share briefly from Acts 16:9-15 from the Amplified Bible

9 Then a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man from [the Roman province of] Macedonia was standing and pleading with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us!” 10 And when he had seen the vision, we (including Luke) tried to go on into Macedonia at once, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

11 So setting sail from Troas, we ran a direct course to Samothrace, and the next day [went on] to Neapolis; 12 and from there [we came] to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. We stayed on in this city for several days; 13 and on the Sabbath day we went outside the city gate to the bank of the [Gangites] river, where we thought there would be a [c]place of prayer, and we sat down and began speaking to the women who had come there.

14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a dealer in purple fabrics who was [already] a worshiper of God, listened to us; and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention and to respond to the things said by Paul. 15 And when she was baptized, along with her household, she pleaded with us, saying, “If you have judged me and decided that I am faithful to the Lord [a true believer], come to my house and stay.” And she persuaded us.

Is it too far I wonder that it was a man Paul saw in his vision, but when he came in body to be there it was a woman.  If Paul had seen Lydia would he believed it a message from God.  Did God need to get him there to then know the way.  I wonder do these messages of the body really lead us more.  Most of our ideas distractions.

Purple you should know is a royal color and not for everyone to have.  Had Paul seen this woman in purple in his vision I dare say he would have rebuked Satan.  God I believe knows what is being done.

Our scriptura today John 5:1-9 again from the amplified bible we approach with these messages from the body in mind.

5:1 After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 5:2 Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. 5:3 In these lay many invalids--blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5:5 One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 

Ill for thirty-eight years, mostly healthy, able to push forward, able to regroup.  99.9% the same as you and me and the stranger who just took their first step into our community.

5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be made well?" 5:7 The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me."

We don't need much of anything, someone to help us into the pool, even a women in purple would do.  "Do you want to be made well?"

 5:8 Jesus said to him, "Stand up, take your mat and walk." 5:9 At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk. 

We don't need much of anything, thirty-eight years waiting on Jesus and their he was, we don't have to wait for Jesus for he sent us the holy spirit.  As we find in 1 Corinthians 12 27 Now you [collectively] are Christ’s body, and individually [you are] members of it [each with his own special purpose and function].

I want you to think the next time you are ill, I am mostly healthy.  To hear the messages of your body.  I promise you tomorrow if you change your eating habits your body will hear your message.  We are a conversation more than we are any definition.  Words are limited.  Even the words of God are more.

We know the scripture and we believe we are part of the body of Christ, but this reality is greater than our mind can comprehend alone.  We don't need much of anything because we have so many resources available.  I started a meditation I can not finish.  I can not tell you how it feels, but when we are together I can try to show you

And in 1 Corinthians 13 we find: And now there remain: faith [abiding trust in God and His promises], hope [confident expectation of eternal salvation], love [unselfish love for others growing out of God’s love for me], these three [the choicest graces]; but the greatest of these is love.

There is a line a plane a cube

There is time

Angles lead to different perceptions

Mathematically

I don't always have anything to say

If you ask me I will tell you

Perhaps I should not I will never know

I open up and then I see

People see things different

You say there is no evidence of more than three dimensions

I almost wonder if we each live in our own

Don't give up

'cause you have friends

Don't give up

You're not the only one

Don't give up

No reason to be ashamed

Don't give up

You still have us

Don't give up now

We're proud of who you are

Don't give up

You know it's never been easy

Don't give up

'cause I believe there's the a place

There's a place where we belong

Then we find Psalm 34:18 Amplified Bible

18 The Lord is near to the heartbroken

And He saves those who are crushed in spirit (contrite in heart, truly sorry for their sin).

contrite

adjective

feeling or expressing remorse or penitence; affected by guilt.

"a broken and a contrite heart"

If you were a god where would your strength come from? your heart?  We are made in an image.

Lastly John 14:23-29 again from the amplified bible:

Jesus answered him, "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

Let Us Pray

Creator of the Universe,

we keep your words so you will live with us

Please help us move beyond ideas

Please help us move beyond our feelings

Help us see them as two sides of a coin

Help us render un to you

Help us move past into your true reality

We ask in the name of our savior Jesus

Amen

Benediction

Go and talk with friends

Go and talk with strangers

Go and talk with your body

Listen to friends

Listen to strangers

Listen to your body

Hear God

Imagine the reality

Nottingham UMC 5.22.22