Nadia Bolz-Weber

Ash Wednesday is my favorite day of the church year and Lent is my favorite season.  Our culture has quite ruined Christmas and Easter with Santa and the Easter bunny and all the grotesque consumerism and made for TV specials behind all of it. But oddly nobody waits every year to watch the Ash Wednesday Peanuts Special.  There are no Doorbuster sales at 4am on the first day of Lent.  There are no big garish displays in the middle of Cherry Creek Mall with mechanical Children in sack cloth and ashes.  Nope.  We get this one all to ourselves.  Our culture has no idea what to do with a day that celebrates the fact that we all sin and are going to die.  But sin is strangely enough one of my favorite things to talk about.  I sometimes greet my friends by saying “hello sinner”.  It’s a term of deep affection.  I reclaim the word sinner.

I love to talk about sin, which makes little sense to people who want to label me as a liberal.  I think perhaps that actual liberals equate admitting we are sinful with having low self esteem.  And then the conservatives equate sin with immorality (only some times do sin and immorality converge).  So one end of the church tells us that sin is an antiquated notion that only makes us feel bad about ourselves so we should avoid mentioning it at all.  While the other end of the church tells us that sin is the same as immorality and totally avoidable if you are just a good squeaky clean Christian. But when sin is boiled down to low self esteem and immorality then it becomes something we can control or limit in some way rather than something we are bondage to.  The reality is that I cannot free myself from the bondage of self.  I cannot keep from being turned in on self.  I cannot by my own understanding or effort disentangle myself from my self interest and when I think that I can …I am trying to do what is only God’s to do.

To me, there is actually great hope in admitting my mortality and brokenness because then I finally lay aside my sin management program and allow God to be God for me.  Which is all any of us really need when it comes down to it.

…to be continued.

I was asked by the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado to testify in front of the senate judiciary committee on the issue of civil unions for GLBTQ couples.  Here it is.

Thank you Madam Chair and members of the committee.

My name is Pastor Nadia Bolz-weber.  I am ordained in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and serve a congregation here in Denver called House for All Sinners and Saints.

I’d like to start by saying that people of good faith dis-agree on this issue but I speak in favor of civil unions.

I’m not an activist.

But I am a preacher and a public theologian. So here’s what I feel is mine to say.

Much of the early church were convinced that gentiles could only become Christians if they changed into being Jews first (which, for the record, involved a rather unpleasant process), and much like our first century brothers and sisters there is a segment of the church today who thinks that if we extend the roof of the tent to include “the gays” then the whole thing will come crashing down around us.

And some will say that if we allow gay couples to have equal status under the law, the institution of marriage will come crashing down.

So there are some who see it as their job to stalwartly guard the boundaries of the tent to keep it from crashing, and some who think it our job to be bravely inclusive and stretch the tent.

Either way, it’s misguided because …it’s not our tent.  It’s God’s tent. The wideness of the tent be it the church or society, should only concern me insofar as it points to the great mercy and love of a God who welcomes us all as friends. And of Jesus who welcomes all to his table.

You think I like that?  You think I want to sit at the heavenly banquet next to Ann Coulter?  Not so much.

But that’s what I’m stuck with because I’m in the Jesus business.  And in the Jesus business there is not male or female, jew or greek, slave or free, gay or straight, there is only one category of people: children of God. Which means nobody gets to be special and everybody gets to be loved.

People born in this country aren’t special.

Men aren’t special.

Christians aren’t special.

Straight people aren’t special.

And if the laws of our great land make it seem so, then SHAME.  ON. US.

Thank you Madam Chair.

Yesterday afternoon I received an email from a friend of a friend who said that my name and church are being tossed around by some LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod – they don’t ordain women) types (again) as an example of all the horrible things that go wrong when women become pastors.

Apparently  there are some who are just appalled by the chocolate fountain in the baptismal font picture on my church’s website.

The writer of the email was kind.  She wanted to hear from me about why we would do this rather than joining the others in rending their clothes and gnashing their teeth about it.

Here is my answer:

Having buried the Alleluia on Transfiguration Sunday and entered into the 40 days of Lent (remembering our mortality and sin)…as a community we walk through the paschal mystery of the Three Days.  We gather to remember the night our Lord was betrayed unto death and yet washed the feet of those whom he loved, and having Friday experienced the death of God on the cross on which hung the savior of the whole world, we gather on Holy Saturday to tell one another the great salvation history of God and God’s people. We finally finally finally enter the church singing Alleluia and baptize the catechumens as a celebration of the great and glorious resurrection of Jesus.  For us there is no better symbol of Easter – nothing says “He is risen” like  a chocolate fountain in the baptismal font.  It is a celebration of pure joy and not one we would ever suggest is right for all churches but for us it is life.

 

Click on link below to hear audio:

Sermon on Jesus’ Dream Team: rank fishermen, demoniacs and sick old ladies

Mark 1:29-34a

²⁹As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. ³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. ³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
³²That evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.

That famous yet fictional saint of the church, Homer Simpson once said Well, I may not know much about God, but I have to say we built a pretty nice cage for Him.

So, we’ve been slowly making our way through Mark’s Gospel since December and our reading for today starts exactly 26 verses into the book. Here’s a little re-cap to catch you up to speed: The Beginning of the Good news of Jesus Christ.  John the Baptist appears in the wilderness with his questionable wardrobe and dietary choices and baptizes Jesus. Heavens torn open.  This is my beloved. For which Jesus is rewarded with 40 days in the wilderness with the wild beasts and angels. Repent and believe the good news of the kingdom.

On his way to Capernum he picks up some stinky fishermen.

Then on the Sabbath he’s teaching in the synagogue – and everyone’s like “wow.  That Jesus isn’t totally full of it like the other guys” Finally he casts out an unclean spirit after commanding it to shut the hell up.

And that’s pretty much where we pick up the story today.

As soon as they leave the Synagogue they entered Simon’s house and Simon’s mother in law was sick in bed with a fever. Jesus came and took her by the hand, lifted her up.  Then the fever left her and she began to serve them.

For the record: Feminists hate this verse.  Well, at least my first reaction to this text is “of course” – Rather than scrounging around for their own lunches they heal the woman of the house so she can serve them.

So don’t feel bad if that’s how you heard this story too.

But I started to see the healing of Simon’s mother in law story differently after sitting with it awhile.

It’s true that Mark doesn’t tell us her name so lets just agree to make one up for her so she has an identity other than mother in law.  We’re going to call her Lois.

See, I don’t actually think Jesus healed Lois so she could make them lunch.  Because the thing is, for a male Jew in 1^st century Palestine, it was considered taboo to even touch an unrelated woman.  And it was considered unclean to touch someone who was sick.  And it was considered a religious violation to do any kind of work on the Sabbath.  So I can’t imagine that Jesus would defile himself on so many levels just so he wouldn’t have to make his own sandwich.  I think this scene with Lois is a demonstration of what Jesus was talking about 11 verses earlier when he spoke for the very first time in this Gospel and said the kingdom of God has come near – repent and believe the good news.

The kingdom of God has come near – repent and believe the good news. Is like Jesus is saying “No more cages for God and while I’m at it, no more cages for you either”

In Marks Gospel it’s like Jesus starts his ministry by trying to shake our religious etch a sketch .  All those lines we draw between us and God, us and other and others and God….all the cages we can construct through religion well…Jesus shakes them and they disappear.  Of course I have my hands on the knobs ready to keep drawing more lines so you know…that keeps Jesus pretty busy.

Jesus starts his ministry by saying forget what you thought you knew because God is near in a whole new way and then he goes on what is like the weirdest recruiting trip ever. It looked like this:  Jesus starts by gathering up some rank smelling fishermen and then enters the synagogue with them where his next recruit is a demoniac.  After which he makes sure he gets a sick old lady on his team. It’s Jesus dream team. With most of the characters who only show up for a verse or two we never find out what really happens after they encounter Jesus, But that’s the cool thing about Lois, see…when Jesus reaches down and touches what his culture had deemed unclean – when his hand touches a sick old lady more than just a fever leaves her.  The cages of culture and religion fall away and the world according to God bursts through.  And the thing I love about Lois is that Lois knew what you do with hands which have received the healing touch of God….Lois used those very hands to serve. She immediately became an agent of what she had just received: grace and mercy and healing. Not as and act of obligation, or law or social expectation but as an act of freedom. Because the boundaries that Jesus transgresses allows the most unlikely and broken people to give what they have received. We see again and again Jesus literally touching the untouchable and giving them a whole new identity. It’s like he was deputizing them. Because Jesus was about more than just healing certain sick people…the gospel tell us that Jesus greatest desire was to restore all that has been broken.  So every person who Jesus healed was conscripted into the Kingdom of God so that they may go and do likewise. It’s like a spiritual pyramid scheme.

This is why the next part of the text is so great.  It says that evening they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. The next verse literally says this: the whole city was gathered around the door. There is no separate category of people called the sick and possessed. Jesus knew this. Some people just hide their sickness more than others and as human beings we prefer to have certain people be the identified problems so that we can look healthy or sane or good.  But Jesus shook that etch a sketch.

When Lois sees a whole city’s worth of sick and demon possessed outside her door, I like to imagine her pushing up her sleeves and touching and healing and loving and speaking truth to all of them.  She transmits what was given to her.  She gets up and serves. She’s been deputized.

That’s the thing with the kingdom of God, there is no personal treasure to be had…there are only gifts to be shared.  God’s desire for the wholeness and healing of all creation was inaugurated in a world changing way in the life of Jesus and it continues through you – through the hands on which rest the waters of baptism and the hands which, when extended at the Eucharistic table, receive Christ’s own body and blood.  Your hands are what God has to work with here.  Hands that, no matter what your story is, have as much to receive as they have to give.  Just by merit of being here, you’ve been conscripted into this beautiful, redemptive story of God’s love for all of humanity along with smelly fishermen, demoniacs and sick old ladies and the rest of Jesus dream team. And God wants you to be healed for the sake of your own wholeness but also because there’s a lot of healing to be done out there.  The kingdom of God has indeed come near. So rethink the cages and believe the good news. Amen.

(during Open Space, a 10 minute time after the sermon where we reflect and respond to the Gospel, we had a couple healing prayer stations set up where people were prayed over and their hands blessed and anointed with oil.  Then they changed placed and did the same for the next person)

If you are a Christian who takes offense at swear words or believes for some reason that clergy should never be cranky or irritated, then I am not the person for you to follow.  It’s ok.  You don’t actually need me. The entire publishing arm of the Christian Industrial Complex (I believe my friend Shane Claiborne coined that term) has a great deal of material that is just for you! Countless Christian websites and books and blogs are your brand of Christian.  No need to leave me comments about how disappointed you are in my use of language because out there in cultural Christendom you will find niceness in abundance, super-duper positive thinking, and lots of inspiration with (best of all!) no swear words! The Christian world is your oyster.

You are not my audience.

But there are other folks out there who are comforted by ambiguity, who need a Word of grace which is not covered in strawberry syrup. Who need the stark truth of what it means to be broken and blessed at the same time.  Who are at home in the Biblical story; stories of anti-heroes and people who don’t get it; beloved prostitutes and rough fishermen.  They tend to not really care that I use colorful language.  If anything, they are relieved that they don’t have to watch what they say around this particular member of the Christian clergy.

I’m not a role model. I’m not really that nice (but I hope that I am kind). I’m just trying to figure out what it looks like to confess the truth about being deeply faithful and deeply flawed at the same time – and how to have humility in all of it without being self-apologetic.

Because, I seriously love Jesus, but I DO swear a little.

House for all Sinners and Saints, the congregation I serve in Denver, Colorado, started with 8 people in my living room in the Fall of 2007. (I hereby proclaim the living room of a church planter to be the iconic equivalent to the garage of a tech start-up’s founder)

Someone asked me early on what’s your 5 year plan? Um, yeah…never had a plan.  Well I kind of have a plan:  I plan on being a responsive and adaptive leader and who and what I am responding and adapting to changes with everyone who comes and everyone who leaves. How in the world can you know what that will look like in 5 years?

Our first public Eucharist was in April of 2008 and we began worshipping weekly in Advent of the same year.  Until last Summer we never really averaged more than 50 people in liturgy.  Last night there were 120.

I know that there are some who have been part of this church for awhile who are feeling a sense of loss around the growth.  There was a greater sense of intimacy and community before we grew.  Also…there was never a line at the prayer station But there was also far less diversity.  I want to honor the real feeling of loss they are experiencing, but at the same time I want to be clear about something: this is not our church.  This is a gift God has given us.  This church is here as a gift from God for us and for us to share so that others can also receive what we have been enriched by.  Two years ago someone asked me what was the biggest issue facing my congregation. The fact that everyone involved likes it just the way it is was my answer.

I reject the idea I hear out there that the church is the only institution that exists solely for the people who aren’t inside of it.  (is that what “missional means?  i’ve never quite figured that one out)  When churches are turned in on themselves they can develop an unhealthy fixation on their own needs.  In this situation the church exists so that I can be around the people I already know and have everything just the way I like it so that my needs are met and most importantly so that everything remain unchanged until the church meets my final need: my own funeral. (See my previous post about dying congregations holding onto their buildings in what I am now calling The Babylonian Captivity of the Church Buildings).  However, when churches are only turned outward so that reaching out to new people and being of service to others is the only focus there can be an unhealthy fixation on how much of a “blessing” we are.  The danger here is that nothing may be feeding the people who are doing the serving and they become spiritually and emotionally malnourished.

So how do we hit that sweet spot where what we do as a church is truly a feast and a feast to be shared?

This is where House for All Sinners and Saint is trying to figure some things out.  We have never wanted to get really, really big.  The reason for that is not because we’re like a child with a bag of sweets and the more people we have to share with the less we will have for ourselves.  The reason is that there is a purpose to the way we do liturgy (see my post on the Problem with Pews) and we could not be as participatory if there were several hundred people at HFASS.  (Also, I like being the pastor of a small church.  I want to know about the lives of the people that I am preaching to.)

Now that I’ve written all of this I’m not sure what the point is.

I do know this: It makes me unbelievably happy to see all those people in church and I hope we have the grace to know this is God’s church and to celebrate it all as a feast and keep adding chairs to the table.  …and figure out how to make a larger prayer station

Nadia Bolz-Weber circa 1994

I recently realized that someday I too will be a baby boomer. It’s not that the year of my birth will mysteriously jump to 1959 but that culturally I will become (or realistically I have already become) that which I criticize.

Complaining about Baby Boomers is a part time job for Gen Xers in church leadership.  I sometimes say that mine is the Prince Charles generation…Boomers are never going to retire and the crown will pass right to Gen Y. My theory about why Baby Boomers have difficulty listening to younger generations or even entertaining the idea that maybe they are not as culturally relevant as they once were, is that Baby Boomers were the first generation to come of age in what we call youth culture.   Prior to 1950’s there simply was not a distinct teenage and young adult culture.  (The advent of such was deeply rooted in marketing opportunities within the burgeoning consumerism of post-war America.) So I wonder if, being the first generation to grow up with the idea of themselves as being culturally “young”, if Baby Boomers have, to large extent, not adjusted to the idea that they are, well…old.   The counter-cultural and anti-war movements in their formative young adult years instilled a lingering identity that prevents them from realizing just how much a part of the Establishment they have become.

Of course there are many exceptions to my characterization of the generation that came before me and I am painting with an awfully broad brush and perhaps lacking in generosity.  But the purpose of this post is not to make my case about Boomers, it’s to say that I realize that soon, if not already, I will be the one of whom younger generations say she doesn’t get it. A day will come (or is already here) when exasperated young leaders in the church will be begging me and my Gen X peers to hand over power based in part or full on our inability to grasp the cultural changes that have taken place since we began our careers.  “Hold on” I (cringe to) imagine myself saying, “I’m a heavily tattooed, cool emerging church pastor.  I know what young adults want…just stick with some Gregorian chant, interactive ancient liturgy and candles…lots and lots of candles.”  And when these younger leaders roll their eyes at me and say how irrelevant, un-hip and out-of-touch I am I think I know how that will feel: like shit.

This week one of my parishioners, Asher O’Callaghan wrote a post for the Fund for Theological Education about his experience as a transgender man at House for All Sinners and Saints.  You can read his lovely reflection here.

After posting this link on Facebook and Twitter this morning  several people have asked to see what rite we used.  I had posted this on my previous blog last September, but here it is now on this new site:

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Here is the rite we used at Baptism of our Lord Sunday when a transgender member of House for All Sinners and Saints was undergoing a name change.  This is largely taken from a rite shared with me by Episcopal priest, Michele Morgan

One really lovely thing about this day was that Asher made a little shrine to his previously female self, Mary.  It included the whole name lovingly written out, several photos and a candle.

(Prayers of the People)

Presider:

Holy One of Blessing, in baptism you bring us to new life in

Jesus Christ and you name us Beloved. We give you thanks for the renewal

of that life and love in Mary Christine Callahan, who now takes on a new name.

Strengthen and uphold him as he grows in power, and authority, and

meaning of this name: we pray in the Name above names, Jesus, your Son,

whom with you and the Holy Spirit, the Triune God, we adore. Amen

(Lindsey) A reading from the letter of Paul to the Galatians.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no

longer male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus

The word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

(Laying on of hands)

Let us pray:

We pray for your servant Asher, with thanks for the journey and awakening that

have brought him to this moment, for his place amongst your

people, and for his gifts and calling to serve you.

O God, in renaming your servants Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Peter,

and Paul, you gave them new lives and new tasks, new love and new hope.

We now hold before you our companion. Bless him with a new measure

of grace as he takes this new name. Write him again in your

heart and on your palm. And grant that we all be worthy to call ourselves

Christians, for the sake of your Christ whose name is Love, and in whom,

with you and the Spirit, we pray. Amen

The Giving of the name

Pr. Nadia: By what name shall you be known?

Kate: The name shall be Asher 

Asher: My name is Asher

The community may respond by repeating

Your name shall be Asher

Pr. Nadia: Bear this name in the Name of Christ. Share it in the name of Mercy. Offer it

in the name of Justice.

Christ is among us making peace right here right now.  The peace of Christ be with you all. And also with you.

Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit by Paula Huston (Ave Maria Press:2101)

Paula Huston suggests that humility is the key to Lenten practices and the grime hidden behind my otherwise clean refrigerator might, just might, be a metaphor for what is deep and hidden in my own spiritual life.  My first reaction to this? “how dare her!” My second reaction to this? “ok.  She’s right.”

Huston is right.  The experience of keeping a holy Lent is one of growing not in spiritual greatness, but growing in humility.  Humility is Huston’s goal here, inviting her reader to see that, far from self-abasement, “truly humble people are grounded in reality; they neither preen under illusions of greatness nor suffer agonies of self-hatred.” Her compilation of daily spiritual practices for Lent is a perfect guide for keeping a Lent which is holy and built on humility.

Each day offers a short reading from a Saint followed by a “meditation” – short, lovely personal stories of her own, then a suggested practice is offered, ending with a scripture passage.  It’s the perfect package.

Her suggestion for the 2^nd day of Lent: “physically scrubbing out a dirty corner, especially one that is hidden, can be a helpful reminder of our preference for life on the shining surface.  And the humility required to get down in the muck…points us to the life of the Spirit.”

What I love about this idea as a Lenten practice is that it takes the relatedness of our physical and spiritual lives seriously. What I do not love about this idea is that she adds “When you’re done – here’s the tough part – resist the temptation to point out your hard work to anyone, especially your spouse.”  She’s right.  Again.  But that doesn’t mean I like it.

Almost all of her suggested practices like a day without the internet, seeking a place of quiet in your home, sitting for an hour in total silence, were inviting but some readers not of the Roman Catholic persuasion might find one or two of the practices a bit alienating, like praying the rosary or attending morning mass.  My suggestion would be: suck it up.  You never know how God might be present to you in something uncomfortable and less familiar.

You do that.  And I’ll clean under the fridge and try…try and not point it out to my husband. And I’ll meet you on the other side of Easter.

(Check out the Patheos Book Club for more on Simplifying the Soul.)

This week a video went viral on the Internet. Not some cloyingly cute thing with kittens and not the Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus video.  It was much more disturbing than that.  No, this video was of American soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of supposed Taliban soldiers.

Mohsin Naquvi, a director of the Islamic Information Center in Washington was quoted saying that

“A dead body … is the property of God, and the property of God is to be respected.”[1]I just kept dwelling on that quote this week: human bodies are the property of God and to be respected.

The more I thought about that the more convinced I became that this is what we hear and sing and know in the 139th Psalm when the Psalmist writes of God:

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.¹⁴I praise you, for I am reverently and wonderfully made.

Perhaps this, the belongingness of human bodies to the Almighty, should be the basis for an ethic of war and economics and religion.

Because both the bodies of those dead soldiers and the bodies of the ones who desecrated them were all knit together in their own mother’s wombs by God. This is political.

Every human body is knit by God, known by God and as we learn in Genesis 2 that God breathed into dust and created humanity so our bodies are actually animated with the very breath of God.

So the belongingness of human bodies to God may be political, but it is also deeply personal.

Star Trek fans will tell you of an episode in the original series in which a superior species, which had no bodies and was only reason and cognition, had a great name for humans.  They called us “ugly bags of mostly water”. Sometimes in my house we use this as a term of affection for one another.

It’s not hard to agree that were we more evolved as a species we would no longer need bodies.  I mean, bodies are just so inconvenient.  They break and grow old, need sleep, demand food, get fat, acquire acne, and produce embarrassing noises.  Our bodies are so often just disappointments to us. But what better time to consider the sacredness of human bodies than in the New Year in America – a time when we annually punish our bodies through rigorous exercise and deprivation to make up for abusing our bodies last month through gluttony and over consumption.

And of course there’s a multi-billion dollar industry poised to solve the problem of us having bodies which disappoint. For a price they will stretch your skin, vacuum out fat, insert in silicone, break your nose, inject poison in your face, and apply chemicals to your scalp.  Which all feels to me like things prevented by the Geneva Convention.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between Cherry Creek and Internment facilities. Torture is torture.  It’s just for some reason here we pay money for it.

So here’s my suggestion:  the church should open a shop right in the middle of all the Botox and liposuction clinics where for free anybody could walk in and we’d tell them that their bodies are wonderfully knit together by God.  That their bodies are holy and beautiful to the one in whose image they were created.  And then maybe we could serve them bread and wine.

Because the belongingness of human bodies to God is not just political and personal, it’s also spiritual.

Yet you don’t have to look far to find that there are many forms of Spirituality that are disembodied, in which the flesh is forced into submission. As much as I love the medieval mystics they were totally into this. And we come by it honestly in Christianity.  Meaning that, thanks to Roman imperialism, the writers of the New Testament were ensconced in Greek thought.  Intrinsic to the Greek way of thinking is that on the one hand there is flesh, which was base, and lower; on the other hand there is spirit which is elevated and higher than flesh; and ne’r the 2 shall meet.  To be “spiritual” then was to transcend the evils and demands of the body.  But that is far from a Hebrew way of thinking.  And the true spiritual origins of Christianity are more Hebrew than Greek.

When we think of it, so many of our personal and societal problems stem not from a lack of ethereal disembodied spirituality but stem from not considering our created, physical reality to be holy.  Bodies, streams and rivers, flora, fauna, food. I just don’t think that the world can afford a disembodied spirituality any more.

So let us remind each other that every human body is the same in form as the one taken on by God in the incarnation of Christ.  That God slipped into skin and walked among us as Jesus Christ.  Who ate with riff-raff, kissed lepers, drank wine, washed the dirty feet of his faltering friends, made mud out of spit and dirt to heal the blind and said “Follow me”. We see in Jesus that a physical life is a spiritual life. And even after his torture and death when he was raised from the tomb he was not raised as a disembodied spirit floating around like an a ghost….no, at the end of Luke’s Gospel he ate grilled fish on a beach.

And in those last days Jesus told us he is present when we gather around an actual table and take a literal chunk of bread into our bodies.  There’s nothing disembodied about it.  If anything it’s disturbingly physical.

So even if your body disappoints and is seen as imperfect by the mirrors of culture, you are nothing less than a walking miracle of flesh knit together by God and animated by God’s own breath. And this is nothing less than grounds to bless our own and indeed all human bodies with the dignity afforded them by their creator.  For they are all – every one of them reverently and wonderfully made by God.

So listen again to  Psalm 139 re-told

¹The  Lord has searched you and known you.

¹³For it was God who formed your inward parts; and knit you together in your mother’s womb.

¹⁴ praise God, for you are reverently and wonderfully made and wonderful are God’s works

And nothing else gets to tell you who you are.

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(during Open Space – a time of response and reflection following the sermon – we invited people to write “hand-knit by God” or “wonderfully made”on themselves.)