This Is My Body
In the care given to Jesus’ body after death, we glimpse how God comes close to us in the every death.
Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Sunday of the Passion, year B
Texts: Mark 11:1-11; Mark 14:1-15:47
God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
By now the palm branches should be feeling strange in your hands.
Were we just celebrating? It seems like a long time ago – like a dream. How did we get here? How did we get from Jesus, vital and assured, riding into Jerusalem to the sound of cheers and singing, all the way to the dull thud of the stone being rolled in place, enclosing the corpse of God?
I can’t stop thinking about that. Because of the beautiful and tender conversations we’ve been having in Adult Forum for the last few weeks, I can’t stop thinking about the corpse of Jesus – and about how preciously it was cared for. I keep thinking about the unnamed woman with alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and how she did what she could, she broke it and poured it out to anoint Jesus’ body for its burial.
And I keep thinking about “Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was himself waiting expectantly for the reign of God,” and how he “went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.”
He asked for the body of God.
God’s body, which was completely–and unfathomably–helpless. God’s body which, as we heard in Mark’s brutal account, had been beaten and bound and spat upon and mocked and flogged and struck and derided and nailed to a cross until it was just limp flesh, without breath or warmth or life. Just a broken body.
But Joseph went to Pilate “boldly” and asked for it —perhaps out of that stubbornly hopeful expectation that it still wasn’t too late for the reign of God. Or perhaps because he just couldn’t bear to see that broken body hanging there. He had to care for it. To tend it. To wrap it in linen and lay it to rest in a safe place. To respond to the love of God–shown at its most extreme—with his own love in return.
And imaging those moments of tenderness and care for the remains of a loved one revealed a new depth of this story for me.
We say so often that the story of the cross is the story of Christ coming close, meeting us in our very deaths. But our deaths–those are still abstract for us – we don’t know what experiencing death is like yet. But the story of the cross is also the story of Christ meeting us in the deaths we have experienced, the deaths of those we love. When we tend their bodies, when we anoint them with costly ointments, when we attempt to memorize their faces, when we sing them to their rest. When we wash and arrange and bury their bodies – Jesus is there.
Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body.
Christ is there in the body that has died in peace, surrounded by loved ones, and Christ is there in the ones that have died alone in fear or pain. And Christ is there in every single body strung up or blown apart by violence and cruelty and hatred. And Christ is there in the bodies of those taken too soon. Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body. And every single body is a site of sacred love come close.
God came to us in a body and God still comes to us in bodies.
We bear the life of Christ to one another and we hold the death of Christ in one another as well. In the care and kindness we show one another in life and death and in the memories and wisdom that are passed down from our loved ones. One of those souls whose beloved memory we keep in our congregation is Susan Cherwien, whose words in so many hymns and writings still soothe and challenge us. And her words about death have been echoing in my mind as well. She once remarked that the soul does not inhabit the body, the body inhabits the soul.
And in Christ, we are not souls inhabiting separate bodies, but bodies inhabiting one soul – the very soul of God.
The soul that holds us all in astounding love – that comes near and meets us where we are – that loves through life and death.
In a few minutes we will celebrate the Eucharist. We’ll see the bread and cup, Christ’s body and blood for us, wrapped tenderly with linen. We will hear Christ’s words, spoken once more, “Take; this is my body” – the body that lived and died. The body that cared for others and was also tenderly cared for. That came close and still comes close to us in every death and holds for us the promise of the resurrection and restoration of all creation. The body that showed us the love of God at its most extreme.
Today, like the unnamed woman, we respond to love with love. And we join Joseph of Arimathea, as we come boldly and ask for the body of Christ and we wait expectantly for the reign of God.
In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Worship, March 24, 2024
The Sunday of the Passion, year B
Download worship folder for Sunday, March 24, 2024.
Presiding: Pastor Joseph Crippen
Readings and prayers: Carolyn Heider, lector; Tricia Van Ee, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
Download Easter Sunday’s readings (not part of the Tuesday study this week.)
Worship, Saturday morning, March 23, 2024
Holy Eucharist, and the funeral of Lawrence H. Crosby
Download worship folder for this liturgy, March 23, 2024, 11:00 a.m.
Presiding and Preaching: Pr. Joseph Crippen
Readings and prayers: Consuelo Gutierrez Crosby, lector; Kathy Thurston, assisting minister
Organist: Cantor David Cherwien
As One Who Serves
Midweek Lent, 2024 + Love One Another + Week 5: Serve One Another
Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
Texts: Luke 22:14-27; 1 Peter 4:7-11
Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
“I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus said.
This might be the most challenging “one another” we’ve looked at this Lent. “Serve one another” is very different from the other ways we’re called to love. To live in harmony, without judging, encouraging one another and confessing our sins to one another, these are actions we can do.
But serving is about being. “I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus said. A servant is who Jesus is, not what he does. And that’s what he calls those who follow him to be.
Jesus lived in a different world. But not so far different from ours.
As is common in human history, in Jesus’ day there were people who were servants by their class and birth. (Slavery was a whole different thing.) Those who served at table, if they weren’t slaves, were a different class from those who sat at the table.
If you remember “Downton Abbey” or “Upstairs, Downstairs,” you saw this kind of class system. Those below-stairs were seen and saw themselves as different to those above-stairs. They were servants. They didn’t make decisions all day whether they were going to serve someone. It was who they were, how they lived.
With as many divisions as our country has along racial and gender and wealth lines, we can’t argue we don’t have class stratification. Poverty spans generations in families, and we have chasms between the rich and poor. Racism and sexism have kept huge numbers of people on the wrong side of opportunity. That’s our version of the British class system. And it’s just as pervasive, contrary to the American myth that anyone can break free of their starting place and become who they want to be.
So from our perspective, it’s the same as in Jesus’ day: he calls us to willingly become someone who sees themself as servant to all others. To step away from the idolatry of your rights being paramount to all else, and saying, “I am here as one who serves.”
This is what the early believers learned and understood from Jesus.
It shook their world to see the Son of God kneeling before them as a servant.
As Jesus points out in our Gospel reading from Luke, everyone knows the one who sits at the table is greater than the one who serves at the table.
And then he says: “but I am among you as one who serves.” This teacher whom they believe is God’s Son, God’s Messiah, and whom they’ll see risen from the dead in a few days, should be worthy of all honor. People should be serving him, washing his feet, bringing him fresh wine.
“But I am among you as one who serves,” Jesus says. Jesus doesn’t make individual decisions during the day whether he’ll help someone, or carry someone’s burden, or care for their needs. It’s who he is.
And that’s how it will be with you, Jesus says. You who follow me will live in the world not thinking you’re the greatest, worthy of others’ attention and praise, deserving to be served. You will live in the world as a servant like me. You will rise a servant and go to bed a servant. It will be your identity as it is mine.
Don’t underestimate how hard that will be.
If we’re honest about our lives, we can look back and see that. How easily we take offense when things aren’t done properly for us. How quickly we’re upset when someone takes advantage of us. How we struggle to get first in the cashier line, or ahead of that car driving in front of us, how frustrating it is when we have to wait for others. How our thoughts of helping others are shaped by how it’s going to affect us and our bottom lines of how much money we have, how much time it will take, how much inconvenience it will be to be of service to that other person.
But if you’re a servant, you can’t be taken advantage of, it’s your job to be of service, no matter the cost. Your time isn’t your own, it belongs to the one you serve. Inconvenience is what you try to keep away from the one you serve; yours is irrelevant.
Do you see how hard this is?
But here’s some grace to notice: First, you’ve seen this in others.
There likely are people in your life who embodied this kind of being. Who acted as if their reality was to be of service to other people, people who never seemed inconvenienced, who didn’t appear to consider the cost to them or their lives. You know the kind. The ones people would say, “he’d give you the shirt off his back,” or “she’s always there for you.”
These are the witnesses that help you see it’s not just Jesus who can be a servant. They’re a sign of grace and hope.
Second, if you’re willing to become a servant, God is ready to help.
“Create in me a clean heart,” we sing, and “put a new and right spirit within me.” A new and right spirit. That’s God’s gift.
That if you want to follow Jesus, which means becoming a servant to all, you will get the new spirit to become that, a right spirit that orients you to a new way of seeing your neighbor, your loved ones, your world. God will calm your anxiety, take away your irritation over inconvenience, ease your fear of time costs or wealth costs. The Spirit will give you a new spirit, to be a servant.
And ultimately, remember what Jesus said: “I am among you as one who serves.”
Even as you become a servant, you look down at your feet and see God’s Son, at your service. No matter the inconvenience or cost, Christ is in your life to serve and bless you.
And so are others. If you look, you’ll see others serving you, caring for you, embodying Christ’s servanthood in their generosity of time and help and love. Let them do that. As the Spirit gives you grace, you’ll have your chances to serve them, too.
And if you look at God’s big picture, can you see how this will heal all things? If everyone born on this planet saw themselves as servants to each other, all would be whole and well, with abundance and life for all.
That might sound impossible. But it’s God’s dream. And it starts with you and me becoming servants to each other and the world. God will take it from there.
In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
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