The Practice of Getting Lost - Genesis 12:1-5, Mark 1:9-13

There’s an old story about an archbishop who was travelling to the States in the 1950’s and his advisors warned him to be careful how he spoke to the press. “They’ll take anything you say and twist it” they said.

So when he’d come off the plane and was in his press conference, he wasn’t surprised when one of the hacks said – “So, Archbishop – will you be going to any nightclubs while you’re in New York?”. Raising an eyebrow, the Archbishop played ignorant – “Are there any nightclubs in New York?” he replied with a smile.

The next day the headline was – “Archbishop’s first question on arrival – “Are there any nightclubs in New York?” !

I tell that story because I’m slightly worried that on the basis of today’s sermon, the Ellon times will give me a write-up saying “Minister tells congregation to Get Lost!”

In truth,  it’s Barbara Taylor who – in this week’s chapter - is telling us to Get Lost. She begins by saying….

"When I first moved to the land where I live, I shared it with a herd of cows. The first thing I noticed about them was that they were pure white. The second thing I noticed was how predictable they were. With a hundred acres at their disposal, they had worn narrow paths across these acres to their favourite watering holes, shady spots and clover patches. When they wanted to get from one of those places to another, they lined up single file and followed the tracks they had made across vast expanses of pasture. Some of the tracks were no more than eight inches wide, which is about one fourth the width of a cow. Yet the cows knew exactly where to put their feet, even without looking.”

How like those cows we are! We’re all creatures of habit.

We have our routines that get us through the day, and in many ways they’re a blessing because when you’re in a routine you don’t have to think too much about it. You just get on and do it, whether it’s cooking a meal, or feeding the beasts, or driving the same journey to work each day.

There’s a comfort, or maybe better, a security in routine that’s not to be sniffed at. We need patterns in our day to make the business of living manageable.

But when a track becomes too well worn, we give it a different name. We call it a rut.

The flipside of the blessing we call our routines, is that they can end up stifling spontaneity and newness. If we let the routine make our choices for us all the time, pretty soon we forget that we have any choices to make at all. We live life on autopilot.

Take Sunday worship as an example of that.

We have a pattern here on Sundays that most of us have been living with all our lives. A combination of hymns and readings and prayers that’s sometimes disparagingly referred to as the hymn-prayer sandwich.

Now that form of worship, with which we feel comfortable, isn’t obligatory. Thy hymn-prayer sandwich isn’t commanded in the Bible. It’s our tradition. And it’s served us well over the years.

But it can also do us a disservice because, like the cow-tracks, it’s quite possible to amble along through a very familiar service like this, without thinking.

Suppose when you came in this morning, I said that today we’re abandoning our usual format. We’re going to have an open meeting. The next hour stretches before us like an empty field and we can go anywhere we like. If someone wants to bring a prayer, they can bring a prayer. If someone wants to share a reading, they can share a reading. If someone wants to say a little about what God has being doing in their lives that week, they can get up and tell us about it.

If someone wants to choose a hymn, they can choose one and tell us why they want to sing it. I’ll preach, but the rest is up to you.

Would that be terrifying or liberating? My guess is probably both.

I wonder how we’d fill the time? Would we be able to fill the time?

I don’t doubt that many of us would feel rather lost, with no cow path to follow.

But once you get past the terror of being lost, there may well be benefits for our congregation.

Would you come to worship in a different frame of mind if you had the freedom and maybe even the responsibility to shape its content?

Would you think differently about your week if you knew there would be a chance to share an insight from your living on a Sunday morning?

Would our fellowship and our spiritual maturity grow as we begin to hear one another, tentatively and humbly, sharing the stories of how this God is at work among us?

Scary? Of course it is. Getting off the beaten track and going somewhere new is always a little scary. But you see things you’ve never seen before; you have new experiences; you broaden your horizons.

Beware the comfort of over-familiarity. Though the church has a reputation for being staid and conservative, those traits are learned behaviour and they’re certainly not in our spiritual DNA.

One of the truths that comes through again and again in the Bible is that God does some of his best work with people who are prepared to leave what they know behind and get lost.

Think of Abraham and Sarah, setting off in their seventies to settle down in foreign land they’d never even seen! How would you feel about uprooting yourself and starting over again somewhere new at that age?

Think of Israel, trekking through the desert for years on their way to the promised land. It took them 40 years to get there, 40 years of grumbling and struggle, but get there they did.

Think of the prophet Elijah, running away from the wrath of Queen Jezebel and losing himself among the caves and mountains of Palestine; and yet it’s in his lostness that the still, small voice of God comes to him most clearly, when he most needs it.

Think of Israel, overrun by Babylon and lost in exile for a second time. Having to learn all over again that they could be the people of God without land and without temple.

Or think of Jesus in today’s reading. Taking himself off to a place where, for a while at least, he was lost to everything familiar - home and family and friends and even food. But he was there for a purpose – to experience the kind of temptations that would come his way most fully in Gethsemane and Calvary – two other desolate, lonely places.

Most of us, quite naturally, do everything in our power not to get lost; and yet it seems to me that’s exactly what God wants for us now and again.

Who sends Abraham and Sarah off to a new beginning in a new country? God

Who compels Jesus to go and spend 40 days in the wilderness? The Spirit.

This season of Lent, this purple pulpit fall, these Bible markers, remind us that there are things we learn in our lostness that we don’t learn anywhere else

So. Every once in a while, Get lost.

Get off the beaten track.

Sit in a different pew. Talk to someone you don’t know. Try something you feel is beyond you. Every now and again, make choices that aren’t the easy ones – the ones that leave you feeling comfortable. It’ll help make you a stronger person.

Many of you will remember the TV programme Tomorrow’s World which introduced the groundbreaking science and technology that would become commonplace a year or two later.

I always remember one episode where they were looking at the effects of shock on the body.

They had two guys in the studio, the same height and build, but one of whom took a freezing cold swim in a lake every day. They stuck them in shower in their swimming trunks, kitted out with electrodes to measure their heartrate, and switched on the cold water. As you’d expect, the guy who was the swimmer coped far better with the shock. His heartrate didn’t go so high, and it came back down much more quickly. He was ready for it.

Choosing lostness in little ways trains us to cope with the feeling of panic we experience when we’re out of our comfort zones. Practice teaches us to bring that panic under control; to take stock of our resources; to dare ask what potential there might be in this situation. It helps us develop the muscles we’ll need on those painful occasions when we don’t choose lostness, but it chooses us.

I’ve said many times before, I don’t believe that everything that comes our way in life comes from God. If everything that happens is God’s will, why do we pray ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?’

But I do know that every single one of us will have spells in life when we feel utterly lost.

When that person we loved and trusted implicitly lets us down in ways we’d never have thought possible.

When that partner we’d built our lives around leaves us, or passes on, and we find ourselves on our own again, not knowing how on earth we can face the future.

When some terrible circumstance enters our lives – an illness, a development in our work, a secret that comes to light – and we feel lost in the middle of a sea of worries.

When we reach the significant age of 60 or 65, and the well-worn path that led us to our work, day in and day out for decades, suddenly ends. Ahead of us there’s an open field. And rather than finding that liberating, we find it terrifying.

Some lostness we choose. Still more is thrust upon us in ways that we would never choose.

And yet, even then, we are not without hope. For time and again, the testimony of God’s people is that when our resources are nil, and our capabilities are exhausted, it’s often then that God is closest to us.

And though we wouldn’t ever choose to be in those places, they can be the making of us.

If I took a straw poll this morning and asked you to pinpoint a time in your life when you felt you had grown as a person, I’m pretty certain a good number of them would have been wilderness times.

Times when something or someone we thought we needed for living was taken away from us, and the pain was so bad for a while we thought we couldn’t go on. But we did. We came through it tired, but stronger.

If that doesn’t mean anything to you this morning, it will. Sometimes lostness chooses us, and in those times the wisest course is to accept it for what it is, and allow God to nurture its strange fruit within us.

Barbara Taylor ends her chapter with these words:

“Getting lost can happen anywhere, in all kinds of ways. You can get lost on your way home. You can get lost looking for love. You can get lost in between jobs. You can get lost looking for God. However it happens, take heart. Others before you have found a way in the wilderness, where there are as many angels as there are wild beasts, and plenty of other lost people too. All it takes is one of them to find you. All it takes is you to find one of them. However it happens, you could do worse than to kneel down and ask a blessing in your lostness, remembering how many others have passed this way before you.”

The Practice of Walking the Earth - Psalm 19

Over the past few weeks at Belhelvie we’ve been thinking about how we encounter God in the ordinary things in life, and the different themes we’ve been looking at have come from a book by Barbara Taylor called ‘An Altar In The World’.

And the title of today’s chapter is ‘”The Practice of Walking the Earth”.

When we think of how we experience God in creation, we naturally go straight for the huge and the breathtaking – the staggering enormity of the sky at night, the vastness of even our own tiny planet.

The heavens are telling the glory of God, the Psalmist says. And I think he’s right. But if we’re paying attention, we don’t even need to look that far. The places we’re in hold their own wonders, if we can just learn to take the time to see them.

The thread on which I’m stringing these pearls of wisdom Sunday by Sunday is the central idea that we encounter God in our everyday lives to the degree that we learn to pay attention. That’s the core discipline of a Christian life, and for busy, fidgety folk like us it doesn’t come easily. We’d rather be getting on to the next thing. Getting there more quickly.

We focus so much on where we’re going next we don’t often slow down to enjoy where we are, and the irony is that in our modern world, with all its time saving devices, we seem to have less time to enjoy life than any previous generation.

Now and again I dip into the work of a guy called Wendell Berry, who’s a farmer in the United States, but also a poet. I think that’s a great combination! And Berry’s whole thing is about slowing down, taking time. Showing respect for nature and for the land.

He’s written a short poem called ‘How To Be A Poet’, and in the context of what I’m trying to say this morning, this stanza’s particularly relevant.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Don’t rush – he’s saying. Open yourself up to nature. Get away from your screens for a while. Put down the phone. Fill up your lungs with the fresh air. It’ll do your heart good. It might even do your soul good.

Now who has the time for that?

Well, we all do. It’s our time. Some of our choices in life are made for us, but not all of them. Is it utterly unreasonable to suggest that over the course of a week all of us should be able to find an hour or two to get out and stretch our legs and blow away the cobwebs – at least, those of us who aren’t stuck on a rig somewhere. And if you can’t find the time to do that, is it unreasonable to suggest that maybe you’re carrying too much responsibility just now and you need to find ways to shed some of it?

I read a fascinating article last week by a palliative care nurse who recorded the regrets of the people she was looking after, as they faced the last few weeks of their lives. I found these three particularly striking – “I wish I’d lived the life I wanted to live”. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” and “I wish I’d let myself be happier”.

Hear the words of the prophet Wendell Berry this morning. As much as you can - slow down. Simplify. Communicate. Savour. We weren’t made to be going at 100 miles an hour all the time, and if we try to, then we’ll miss life even as we live it.

Which brings me, in a roundabout kind of way, to walking.

Walking as a spiritual practice. How do you like that idea?

What happens when you walk places?

Lots of good things – not least the fact that you have to slow down, and you begin to notice things.

About a year ago I did a moonlight beach walk with some of the scouts and cubs. We started off at the Bridge of Don and walked all the way back up to Balmedie by a combination of Moonlight and torchlight.

And I remember having to practically jog along at the beginning to keep up with the boys they were so excited. But five miles in it was a different story! We had to encourage and cajole for the last mile or two and dangle the prospect of fish and chips in front of them to keep them going.

What did we learn? We learned that from here to the Bridge of Don in a car is a scoosh. But it’s quite a trek when you’re walking the same distance along a sandy beach. We got a sense of scale for this landscape we drive through and take for granted much of the time.

It was the same when some of us started cycling to Scouts on a Wednesday evening, and I know this is cycling, not walking, but the principle’s the same. Just 6 or 7 miles of a round trip by car. But when you’re putting in the miles yourself, you notice every hill, every pothole, every blind corner, every speeding motorist! And you notice what’s going on in the fields far more than when you’re zooming past in the car. You chat to one another and you take pleasure in the feeling you get after your body’s done some hard work.

When you slow down, you see more. You experience more. You talk more. You think more.

There’s an old joke about an American teenager who was always pestering his dad to borrow the car, even for short journeys. And one day his dad lost the rag at him and said “You kids! you don’t know what your feet are for!” and the boy said “Sure we do, dad! The right foot’s for the accelerator and the left foot’s for the brake”.

In our fast paced world, we’re in danger of thinking the same way, and among other thing, we need to thank the Scouts and Guides and Cubs and Brownies for what they do in encouraging our young people to get off their posteriors, away from the screens, and onto their feet in the different activities they do. Getting closer to creation, and by default, a little closer to the creator.

When folk think of spiritual practices, they often think of prayer, or reading the Bible and there’s no doubt that those are the foundation of the Christian life. But in our time there’s a welcome rediscovery of the truth that there are also lots of ways to encounter God in the simple practices of our everyday lives.

We all walk places – whether we’re walking the dog. or round to the shops, or to and from the school, or through the fields. Could we make that a spiritual practice? Could we take time to notice things and maybe pray about them as we go – with eyes open, of course!

Instead of always thinking about the destination, could we learn to savour the journey? Instead of seeing trees, could we notice their different kinds? Instead of hearing birds, could we learn to distinguish between them? Could these everyday wonders, feed our thankfulness towards God for the gift of creation if we gave them a little more attention?

There’s a story about a Native American Indian and his friend who were in downtown New York City, walking near Times Square in Manhattan.

It was lunchtime and the streets were filled with people. Cars were honking their horns, taxis were squealing around corners, sirens were wailing, and the sounds of the city were almost deafening. Suddenly, the Native American said, "I hear a cricket."

His friend said, "What? You must be crazy. You couldn't possibly hear a cricket in all of this noise!"

"No, I'm sure of it," the Native American said, "I heard a cricket."

"No way," said the friend.

The Native American listened carefully for a moment, and then walked across the street to a big cement pot where some shrubs were growing. He looked into the bushes, beneath the branches, and sure enough, he located a small cricket. His friend was utterly amazed.

"That's incredible," said his friend. "You must have super-human hearing!"

"No," said the Native American. "My ears are just the same as yours. It all depends on what you're listening for."

"That’s not true." said his friend. "I could never hear a cricket in all this noise."

"Yes you could” said his friend. "It all depends on what’s really important to you. Here, let me show you."

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few coins, and dropped them discreetly onto the pavement. And despite the noise of the traffic, every head within twenty feet turned round to see who’d dropped some money.

"See what I mean?" said the Native American. "Most people can hear just fine. But they only hear what's important to them."

The heavens are telling the glory of God says the Psalmist. And so are the land and the sea, the trees and the animals, if we only have eyes to see them and ears to hear.

Encountering God In The Other - Matthew 25:31-46

Ballymena - where I grew up - used to be a small and friendly. It's a lot bigger now, and maybe it's changed over the years. But in Ballymena, if you were walking down the street and you passed someone you would meet their eye, nod, and say good morning. It didn't matter if you didn’t know them. You were just acknowledging each other. That’s how things were, and as far as I was concerned that’s how things were meant to be.

And then at the age of 18 I ventured out into the big bad world and moved to Birmingham to study. And I remember my first shopping trip to Asda in the Bull Ring, walking up Corporation Street, and if anybody caught my eye I’d smile and say ‘morning’! And they looked at me like I had a screw loose!

I very quickly learned that in the big bad world, this is something you don’t do. Whether out of fear, or preoccupation, or self-preservation the world soon trains us not to acknowledge each other, especially if the other is a stranger to us.

This is so entrenched in our psyche that it’s now quite possible to go to Tesco or Asda and have your shopping scanned through and packed and paid for and not once make eye contact with the person who’s serving you.

We’ve got this down to such a fine art now that on a couple of occasions recently I’ve bought something and not only has the shop assistant not looked at me, they’ve managed to keep a conversation going with another member of staff throughout the whole transaction. I might as well not have been there.

That really hacks me off, I have to say!

And I guess you could say – well that’s just modern life in a big city, It’s not like that in a wee village. Oh no!?

There have been plenty of times when I’ve been going down to the school or the nursery, or walking along the boardwalk to the dunes and I’ve passed people and they blank me! I’m beginning to wonder if it’s personal!

When I’m feeling mischievous what I do is I stare at them ‘til they’re forced to look at me and then I smile and say ‘morning!’

All I’m asking for is a wee acknowledgement that I’m a fellow human being. I’m not asking to be invited back for dinner or anything!

But there’s something in us that finds it terribly hard to give even that simple acknowledgement to a stranger. So in the lift, or in the queue, or at the bus stop we tend to keep our eyes lowered in a shared conspiracy of not seeing. Not engaging. It’s the easiest way for all concerned.

Well, maybe it is. But it’s not God’s way.

God takes the opposite view, I think. He wants us to go out from ourselves towards the other. That’s how God’s people should be, even though we may find it hard.

What’s my Biblical mandate for saying that?

Well here’s an interesting fact to reckon with. The command to love your neighbour – with which we’re all very familiar - occurs just once in the entire Old Testament. Meanwhile, there are 36 occasions in the Old Testament when we’re told to act lovingly towards the stranger in our midst.

This, from Deuteronomy 10:18 is pretty typical -

God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing. And you are to love those who are strangers, for you yourselves were strangers in Egypt.

Love the stranger – God says. Why? Because you were strangers yourselves – you know what it feels like when you don’t belong; when nobody knows your name or your stories or your worth.

If we’ve been strangers ourselves, we know what it’s like to be the outsider. We know how uncomfortable that can feel, and how welcome it is when you find someone who’ll make time for you. If we’ve never been strangers, perhaps we have to use our imaginations a wee bit more, but we’re not excused from observing the command.

Love the stranger - 36 times. God’s serious about this. This is to be one of the hallmarks that sets his people apart. And then in the New Testament, we have not just the words but the example of Jesus.

Most of his time wasn’t spent in the synagogue, but out on the hoof among the people. And when you look at how he is with them, you realise that he doesn’t just gravitate to those who were like him, which is – of course – the easiest option for all of us.

He gives his time to Roman centurions, Syro-Phoenician women sitting by wells, hostile clerics and despised tax-collectors. He welcomes children and touches lepers, puts his arm around grieving widows and reasons and debates with the powerful and the privileged. No-one’s excluded from his circle – he makes room for everyone and is prepared to engage with everyone, regardless of who they are. His basic stance is one of openness to the other.

And though he didn’t have a house to invite people to or a table to eat around, you could argue that his whole ministry was one of hospitality.

Now when we hear that word, straight away we think of food. I cook a meal, I invite someone round – usually a friend – and that’s hospitality.

Here’s something I didn’t know until I started reading up on this a little.

We're familiar with the word xenophobia – which means fear of strangers or foreigners.

Well the Greek word for hospitality is philoxenia, which means love of the stranger.

Hospitality - at least hospitality as a Christian virtue - isn’t directed first and foremost to those we know, but to those we don’t know.

And though hospitality often involves food, it’s better thought of as a general openness – a willingness to engage. The opposite of the attitude I was describing at the beginning of the sermon.

Barbara Taylor puts it this way “While others opened their homes to Jesus, lending him a table to preside over for a night, his own philoxenia was much more likely to take place in a field or a boat, on a road or a mountain – wherever people who felt like strangers happened to meet this man who made them feel like kin”.

Do you see what she’s getting at? Hospitality isn’t just about eating together, though it’s marvellous when we make the time to do so and great things can happen as we eat together. The hospitable person is the one who conspires to engage, however and wherever they are. The one who treats the stranger with such kindness and interest, they feel like they’re being treated like kin.

Have you ever treated a stranger in that way?

Have you ever been the stranger and been treated in that way?

I have. I’ve spoken about it before – the wee church in Birmingham where folk took us hungry students home Sunday by Sunday and fed us to the gunwales. And the food was great, but better still was being welcomed into someone’s home and family at a time in our lives when most of us were away from home and family for the first time.

No-one had to do it. It was a choice that people in that congregation made – a costly choice - but here – 25 years later, I can still remember the names of those folk and some of the things we spoke about over those meals.

And I also remember, in the context of a church who had been hospitable to me, standing up on trembling legs at the end of a morning service and saying the first words I ever uttered in public worship. They had open meetings where anyone who wanted to could bring a prayer or a reading or a reflection, or choose a song, and I shared some lines I’d written that week. And I don’t know whether they were being kind, or were just delighted that I’d had the courage to open my mouth, but the words seemed to bless them.

We shaped each other, I guess. And that’s the thing about hospitality. It’s a two way street. If we open ourselves to the other, not only do we bless them, we bless ourselves through what they bring into our lives.

God’s made us in such a way that we need each other – that we can’t grow into our full humanity without one another.

It’s not an accident that believers generally gather together in communities. Even the monastics of the early church, who took themselves off to live alone in the desert, gathered together in convocations every now and again. We need each other - for affirmation, for guidance, for correction sometimes, to have our rough edges knocked off a little bit. To widen our understanding.

It was Jean-Paul Sartre who once said that hell is other people. I know what he was getting at, but I think he’s wrong. I think it’s far more likely that hell is where we get the isolation we think we want.

One of CS Lewis’s images of hell is that of people moving so far away from one another that they’re like constellations of stars in the night sky – separated from each other by unfathomable distances. Forever locked in the prison of their own selves with no prospect of anyone ever unlocking the door and leading them somewhere new.

Martin Luther was fond of saying that the essence of sin was to be incurvatus in se – turned in on yourself, and by definition, away from the other.

There’s no doubt that community – whether the community of the family, or the church, or the wider human family – is something that takes a lot of working at. But it’s where we learn what it means to be genuinely human. And it’s also one of the places where we meet God, in the face and the person of the other.

Hospitality is costly. Going out to the other, especially the stranger, is costly, but it’s what we as Christians, are called to do, in imitation of Christ.

We may choose not to, of course. We may say we’re too busy, or too afraid, or that’s simply not the way we do things here. We mind our own business.

Well, we have that choice. But we risk missing God in so choosing.

“I was hungry and you fed me, said the Son of Man. Thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you received me in your homes”.

“When did we ever do those things, Lord?” say the righteous. “When did we ever see you hungry or thirsty, or a stranger?”

“I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these members of my family, you did it for me.”

Why should we take the risk of opening ourselves to the stranger?

Because many of us know what its like to be a stranger, but also because God often meets us in the guise of a stranger.

So where are the strangers in your life? You don’t have to ask them back for dinner just yet.

You could start by simply noticing them. Notice the person packing your bags in Tesco. They’re usually wearing a name badge. Thank them by name and have fun seeing the surprise in their eyes,

Notice the person hoovering the carpets in the office, or bringing you your food in the restaurant, or wondering who to sit with at coffee time in the Forsyth Hall.

Maybe it’s the new mum at the school gates, or the new staff member, or the person beside you at the bus stop, or the new person at the club.

Maybe all you have to do is meet their eyes and smile – take a second to acknowledge a fellow-human being rather than walk past them. Maybe you could take the initiative and be the one to start a conversation. Maybe, next time you’re having friends round, you could take your courage in your hands and invite one or two folk who are on the fringes – begin the process that sees them become friends.

In a world so fearful of the other, what message would it give out about the church if we were all able to start living with a little more openness?

We close with some words of the Puritan George Fox.

“Walk joyfully on the earth and respond to that of God in every human being”.

Good advice, I think.

It seems to me that in life God’s arranged things so that we might just be one another’s best bet for becoming fully human.

The Practice of Wearing Skin - John 13

It became something of a ritual in our house when I was a child.

Mum would fetch the red plastic basin, weathered from long years of use, and boil a kettle of water. While she was waiting, she’d go and get some soap or bubble bath, and when the kettle was boiled, she’d pour the steaming water into the basin and add just enough cold to make it bearable. Then she’d put her hands in and swish them around ‘til a layer of suds began to form.

She’d carry the basin through to the lounge where my granny would be sitting, stockings off and bare feet ready for a good soak. She had bad feet, my granny – corns, bunions, hard skin. You name it, she had it! I’m embarrassed to say it but I remember her feet almost as clearly as I remember her face.

Once the warm water had done its job, and the skin had loosened a little, mum would set about her work with scissors and a sharp knife, paring away the layers of tough skin ‘til she got down to the softer, pink flesh.

And I would sit and watch them, as I played with a pumice stone that was exactly the same shape and size as a wee grey mouse.

So far in life, I’ve never needed my feet done. And I don’t think I’ve ever had them washed by someone else, at least, not in that kind of way. But what struck me, and strikes me, about what I’ve just described to you, and what we heard in our reading from John this morning, is the intimacy of that act. Bodies kneeling before bodies. Holding, touching, washing. Paying attention.

And given what I’ve been saying over the past couple of weeks it won’t surprise you to know that that’s where we’re going today. Encountering God as we pay appropriate attention to the body. Our own, and others.

For a moment, I want to take you back to the Labyrinth we ran in the church a few weeks ago.

One of the stations people found hardest was the one where you were invited to look in a mirror and reflect on the fact that you are made in the image of God.

More than a few folk told me that they rushed past that one because they couldn’t bear to look at themselves in the mirror for very long.

So for that reason alone, I’m not going to suggest we take up one of Barbara Brown Taylor’s suggestions – which she offers only partially tongue in cheek. She reckons that every once in a while we should pray naked, standing in front of a full length mirror!

I dare you! I’ll be asking for progress on that one next week!

But there is a method in her madness! There are so many voices in the world and in our heads telling us that our bodies aren’t good enough. They’re not the right shape or size; they’re showing their age; they tell tales on us – how we’ve lived, what we’ve done, what’s been done to us. Are those the voices that we hear when we look in the mirror? Is that why some of us find it so hard to look?

And yet, this body is the place where you live. It’s your soul’s address. And if you’re not at home in your own skin, where will you be at home?

In the face of a culture that simultaneously idolises the body and fosters huge dissatisfaction within us about our bodies, the Bible speaks another word we need to hear. It says that the body - our bodies - are good.

In the beginning, God created; and from the Adamah, the dust, God made Adam, and from Adam, Eve. And he looked on all that he had created and he called it – good.

Bodies are good, says God.

So much so that when he decided we needed to know him better, he wasn’t embarrassed to put one on.

Here’s a sentence you won’t hear often in church, though you probably should. A deep Christian spirituality is profoundly sensual.

Let me say that again. a deep Christian spirituality is profoundly sensual.

Every spiritual practice you can think of begins with the body and the senses. We sit, or kneel, or prostrate ourselves or close our eyes to pray. We open our mouths to sing and pray and tell our truths about God. We chew the bread and we drink the wine. We fast sometimes, and deny our bodies the food they need.

Our feet walk the path God sets before us, our hands and minds do the work God calls us to.

We take in the beauty of the world, and the glory of the creator of the world, through sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. We reflect it in our creativity through music, art and words; through the care and enjoyment of nature.

All of this through our bodies.

Bodies are good, says God.

There are even hints in the Scriptures that angels envy us – these strange stories in the depths of Genesis, and indeed in other traditions, of angels coming down to wed or maybe to bed human beings. Envious of their flesh.

So from the very beginning, creation, matter, flesh has been understood as basically good. And the Jewish tradition, out of which Christianity grew, understood that. It didn’t really distinguish between spiritual and physical but saw them as different sides of the same coin. Both holy, both necessary. Both good.

But in the early years of Christianity, Greek thinking began to be woven into the story in a way which threatened to undermine that truth. In the Gnostic cults that were around in the first century AD, the spiritual was privileged over the physical; in fact the physical came to be thought of as evil. Only spirit was pure, or of God.

The young Christian churches were in danger of taking that lie on board and turning their back on the goodness of creation. And that’s why the New Testament writers, especially John, attack it head on.

Listen to how he begins his first Letter:
 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”

Not only did God come to us – says John. He came in the flesh.

Later on in the same letter he writes – “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”

Those who deny that God came in the flesh are simply wrong, he’s saying. And in today’s reading, on the last evening he spent with his disciples before his crucifixion, what does John tell us that Jesus did?

He shared a meal with them; he washed their feet. Simple bodily practices that conveyed profound spiritual truth.

He broke the bread, he poured the wine, he washed their feet. And he saw that it was good.

Some Christians talk as though they can’t wait to throw off their bodies and get down to some serious soul-business with God in heaven.

A Biblical spirituality tells us that if we can’t learn to live well and reverently and thankfully in our bodies, we’re not ready for heaven because whatever our future looks like, it’s embodied. “I believe in the resurrection of the body” says the apostles’ creed.

Bodies are good, says God. They’re here to stay.

So don’t be too quick to discount the ways in which your body can bring you closer to God.

There are things that holding a sleeping child, or a dying relative in your arms can teach you, that you can’t learn from a book.

There are things about learning to live with your body’s limitations in illness or old age that you can’t discover in any other way.

There are deep levels of gratitude to plumb when you fill your belly with good food after being hungry, or feel the endorphins tingle in your muscles after you’ve had a hard physical workout of some kind.

There’s a reverence for the other that’s born in us when we get close enough to meaningfully touch them. When we wash their feet, or take their hand or touch their shoulder. When we recognise them as a fellow wearer of skin.

Our culture tells us in a thousand different ways that our bodies aren’t good enough. God says that for his purposes, they will do just fine. Don’t believe the ancient Gnostic lie that says God’s too holy to bother with bodies.

A while ago I heard a great story about StTeresa of Avila. Apparently she was sitting in the privy, praying from her prayerbook and eating a muffin at the same time.

In her heart she felt the devil condemning her. “What kind of a Christian are you, praying to God while you’re on the toilet. Don’t you know that God is holy?”

Straight away she said “Here’s how it is. The prayer’s for God. The muffin’s for me. And the rest’s for you!”.

I like her style. God’s not embarrassed by our bodies, and neither should we be.

He knows that our bodies are often his best way of getting though to us.

So here’s your homework. Try, this week, to be more aware of your body. Notice the grunting noises you’ve started making when you bend down to pick something up. Notice the niggles and pains. Notice the good sensations that bring you pleasure. Notice what you put into your body. Pay attention and talk to God about these things.

I doubt you’ll do the naked mirror thing, but maybe you could get into a wee routine when you’re washing in the morning, or eating a meal, or climbing into bed at night, where you take a moment to give thanks for the skin you’re in. That most of the time, your body works. That it’s been your home all these years. That you’ve been though a lot and you’ve come this far together.

And take a moment to thank God that he didn’t consider it beneath himself to join the community of those who wear skin – living, dying and rising again among us, and leaving a lasting memorial of his humanness as they gathered in the upper room to break bread and share wine. This is my body, he said, this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.