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The Body That Keeps The Score - The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Sermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19.Today's readings are:Wisdom 7:26-8:1
Psalm 116:1-8
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp19_RCL.htmlTranscript:
Transcript:
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Gracious God, I turn to you in gratitude and thanksgiving, knowing that when the cords of death entangle us, when grief and sorrow are on us, that you are there, that any forsaken place you will find us, any place of being lost and alone, you have been there. I give you thanks that your grace surrounds such pain with hope in new life. In Christ's name, Amen.
I feel like with everything Tyrone taught us, I should sing my sermon this morning. Of course, nobody wants that. I want to recommend a book to you all...a book called The Body Keeps Score. It's a wonderful book that explores how post-traumatic stress gets lodged in our bodies, that all those terrible events of our lives that were painful and raw and hurtful actually persist in us long past when we may have cognitively remembered them, and that they're prone to emerge later in reactions we can't quite understand or depression from trying to keep those feelings at bay. I strongly recommend this book: The Body Keeps Score.
I can give a very quick real-life example of this phenomenon of traumatic stress rearing up when you didn't expect it. Some of you know that in the last two years of high school and the first two years of college my son Tim gave my wife and I a run for our money. Lots of crises. Crisis after crisis concerning his addictions, and they were stressful and hard and difficult times. We've had two peaceful years of recovery and we thought we were past it. Then on one very kind of rainy wet day this summer, with the flood warnings in effect and the stream really high, my son set off to fish. Later that day we got a call from my daughter Martha. "Hey, Tim was supposed to pick me up from work. Where is he?" Allison and I went into full alert. (Allison is my wife if you don't know.) We are on both of our cell phones at the same time, texting, calling, calling friends, emailing, pacing up and down our house with our hands on our head, our pulse racing, our breath short, and we're being curt and tense with each other. Luckily he emerged some hours later and was safe and sound. Allison and I took a deep breath and we looked at each other and said "Where did that come from? We must not be over this yet." We had a good look at how the trauma was still in us, the anxiety and stress just ready to pop at the next occasion that seemed like a crisis from the past.
I tell you this story about how the body keeps score because for me it indicates the level of work Jesus is announcing in the gospel. The level of work Jesus is announcing of the gospel isn't just notional or cognitive, it's on the deepest level of our human experiences, the places where we often times do not want to go. Jesus's Messiahship will not be as expected, will not be full of power and success and parades and palaces and princesses. It won't be the glory of military victory. It will be ignominious defeat on a cross, because Jesus has to go to that place to surround with God's love and compassion and attention. All of the most alienated parts of our humanity, God has to go to those places we wish not to go, to overcome them with the hope of the Resurrection. That's the good news I want to cling to.
It is the good news I cling to daily, but with the 20th anniversary of September 11th being yesterday, I believe it's a good news we need to hear for our own savior, for the sake of those we love, because I am sure some of you and some of the people you love are carrying in their bodies the score of that day, the horror, the fear, the panic, the worry, the anger, the powerlessness, the shame. Some of us had friends in lower Manhattan. Some of us had family there. Some of us had friends in the towers, or acquaintances, or knew people flying that day, knew people in the Pentagon. And if we take a deep breath we can feel those feelings under the surface of that day. Our spiritual work is to wrap that pain in the compassion and love of Christ, who knows all of it, and lives in that place eternally in love and hope and healing.
For me, Jesus is the ultimate body who keeps the score. In this Messiahship he describes in the gospel, he's describing how he has to take on the suffering of humanity - all humanity from day one to the end of time - in his body. All the alienation, the anger, the hostility, the rage, the shame, the rejection, he takes on for us so that he can overcome it with love and hope and new life. And that is what we cling to when we enter these painful spaces. This truth about Jesus is not just an individual truth. It's not just the pastoral need of us who suffer an anniversary or the needs of our families and friends suffering with us. It's also a larger corporate need because Jesus is not just an individual human on the cross, he is corporate humanity in the biggest sense. Plural humanity.
I heard a story that reminded me of this fact, a story of healing a new life that to me is the epitome of what I'm saying. The Diocese of Pennsylvania is involved in a ministry at the Veterans Affairs Hospital here in Philadelphia, and the ministry is a ministry to soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering from what's called moral injury. We know that in warfare we can suffer psychic injury, we can suffer physical injury and now we know we can suffer moral injury. If only I had this language I would have understood my uncles who went to World War 2, Korea and Vietnam. But here at the V.A, we work with soldiers who are working through this pain, this oppressive pain that they carry.
Part of what they do is they present their story to an assembly of friends and fellow veterans and church people and they tell us what happened, and I've heard the story of one particular person I'll call Andy. Andy was a young man at the time of 9/11 and to honor his grandfather who served in World War 2, he joined the military soon after that day, and he was deployed to Iraq. On one of his patrols, his patrol took fire from a building. They hunkered down and called in an air strike and moments later the building was reduced to rubble. His unit moved into the rubble to search and discovered there was no gunman. There were no guns; no gunmen; no ammunition; no weapons. There was a family. Multi-generations of a family now dead. This was Andy's moral injury, something he could not erase from his conscience. Something that worked against all of his commitments. Something that broke his heart. Something he struggled with mightily to find relief and forgiveness for years after his service.
He told this story to the assembly with great emotion and then the assembled gathered around Andy and recited some words written for the occasion. The group said "Andy, we (Key word: We) are sorry. It is because of our choices that you were put in that impossible situation. It was because of our choices you are morally injured this way, and we take responsibility and beg your forgiveness." It was a healing moment, a healing moment of corporate responsibility. Joint shared responsibilities finally acknowledging that the shame this man felt was something we all shared and put on. I see the story of our Christ, our messiah, in this story, where the body of Christ finally is taking this pain into itself, not denying it, not ignoring it, not putting it away, but turning into it with love and compassion that leads to life renewed. Connection renewed. Souls saved and restored. This to me is the mission of the body of Christ, formed by Christ when we live out this mission.
I have one final challenging place to go with you all this morning, because there's a bigger picture here. We've looked at compassion to the individual who suffers, we've looked at the community rallying around someone who suffers. We need to look at the global presence of the messiah who suffers. One of the most striking and difficult things for me as we have observed the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and 20 years of warfare is the death toll.
929,000 people have died in the last 20 years in Afghanistan; in Iraq and Syria and Yemen. That number is almost too big to grasp. Humans notoriously have a hard time relating emotionally to large numbers, but I have to ask myself "How do I live with this death toll as I try to live a life before God? How do I live with this? What do I do with it as I live with my suffering messiah?"
The first thing I can say that causes me some gratitude in the midst of the entangled grief is that thank God, that God can love that many people, because I know I cannot. But I know that God's love treats each one of those people as a child of God, and the vast majority of them were civilians: women and children and non-combatants. This was a slaughter bigger than the American Civil War and I need to know that my suffering messiah can teach my heart, hardened by nationalism, hardened by parochialism, by all the limitations of my place and time.
Our suffering messiah can teach me that God's love extends to all those people; that they are human beings that are infinitely valuable to God, and arriving at that deep inner knowledge, that wisdom, I can only believe that we need to find another way. That living before God we cannot endorse such slaughter. That living unashamed of our association with Jesus, we cannot endorse such massive killing. We must at least sit in the pain and ask ourselves what can be done differently for the sake of the one we follow. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org
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By St. Martin-in-the-FieldsSermon by the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 19.Today's readings are:Wisdom 7:26-8:1
Psalm 116:1-8
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net
https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp19_RCL.htmlTranscript:
Transcript:
Please join me in the spirit of prayer.
Gracious God, I turn to you in gratitude and thanksgiving, knowing that when the cords of death entangle us, when grief and sorrow are on us, that you are there, that any forsaken place you will find us, any place of being lost and alone, you have been there. I give you thanks that your grace surrounds such pain with hope in new life. In Christ's name, Amen.
I feel like with everything Tyrone taught us, I should sing my sermon this morning. Of course, nobody wants that. I want to recommend a book to you all...a book called The Body Keeps Score. It's a wonderful book that explores how post-traumatic stress gets lodged in our bodies, that all those terrible events of our lives that were painful and raw and hurtful actually persist in us long past when we may have cognitively remembered them, and that they're prone to emerge later in reactions we can't quite understand or depression from trying to keep those feelings at bay. I strongly recommend this book: The Body Keeps Score.
I can give a very quick real-life example of this phenomenon of traumatic stress rearing up when you didn't expect it. Some of you know that in the last two years of high school and the first two years of college my son Tim gave my wife and I a run for our money. Lots of crises. Crisis after crisis concerning his addictions, and they were stressful and hard and difficult times. We've had two peaceful years of recovery and we thought we were past it. Then on one very kind of rainy wet day this summer, with the flood warnings in effect and the stream really high, my son set off to fish. Later that day we got a call from my daughter Martha. "Hey, Tim was supposed to pick me up from work. Where is he?" Allison and I went into full alert. (Allison is my wife if you don't know.) We are on both of our cell phones at the same time, texting, calling, calling friends, emailing, pacing up and down our house with our hands on our head, our pulse racing, our breath short, and we're being curt and tense with each other. Luckily he emerged some hours later and was safe and sound. Allison and I took a deep breath and we looked at each other and said "Where did that come from? We must not be over this yet." We had a good look at how the trauma was still in us, the anxiety and stress just ready to pop at the next occasion that seemed like a crisis from the past.
I tell you this story about how the body keeps score because for me it indicates the level of work Jesus is announcing in the gospel. The level of work Jesus is announcing of the gospel isn't just notional or cognitive, it's on the deepest level of our human experiences, the places where we often times do not want to go. Jesus's Messiahship will not be as expected, will not be full of power and success and parades and palaces and princesses. It won't be the glory of military victory. It will be ignominious defeat on a cross, because Jesus has to go to that place to surround with God's love and compassion and attention. All of the most alienated parts of our humanity, God has to go to those places we wish not to go, to overcome them with the hope of the Resurrection. That's the good news I want to cling to.
It is the good news I cling to daily, but with the 20th anniversary of September 11th being yesterday, I believe it's a good news we need to hear for our own savior, for the sake of those we love, because I am sure some of you and some of the people you love are carrying in their bodies the score of that day, the horror, the fear, the panic, the worry, the anger, the powerlessness, the shame. Some of us had friends in lower Manhattan. Some of us had family there. Some of us had friends in the towers, or acquaintances, or knew people flying that day, knew people in the Pentagon. And if we take a deep breath we can feel those feelings under the surface of that day. Our spiritual work is to wrap that pain in the compassion and love of Christ, who knows all of it, and lives in that place eternally in love and hope and healing.
For me, Jesus is the ultimate body who keeps the score. In this Messiahship he describes in the gospel, he's describing how he has to take on the suffering of humanity - all humanity from day one to the end of time - in his body. All the alienation, the anger, the hostility, the rage, the shame, the rejection, he takes on for us so that he can overcome it with love and hope and new life. And that is what we cling to when we enter these painful spaces. This truth about Jesus is not just an individual truth. It's not just the pastoral need of us who suffer an anniversary or the needs of our families and friends suffering with us. It's also a larger corporate need because Jesus is not just an individual human on the cross, he is corporate humanity in the biggest sense. Plural humanity.
I heard a story that reminded me of this fact, a story of healing a new life that to me is the epitome of what I'm saying. The Diocese of Pennsylvania is involved in a ministry at the Veterans Affairs Hospital here in Philadelphia, and the ministry is a ministry to soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering from what's called moral injury. We know that in warfare we can suffer psychic injury, we can suffer physical injury and now we know we can suffer moral injury. If only I had this language I would have understood my uncles who went to World War 2, Korea and Vietnam. But here at the V.A, we work with soldiers who are working through this pain, this oppressive pain that they carry.
Part of what they do is they present their story to an assembly of friends and fellow veterans and church people and they tell us what happened, and I've heard the story of one particular person I'll call Andy. Andy was a young man at the time of 9/11 and to honor his grandfather who served in World War 2, he joined the military soon after that day, and he was deployed to Iraq. On one of his patrols, his patrol took fire from a building. They hunkered down and called in an air strike and moments later the building was reduced to rubble. His unit moved into the rubble to search and discovered there was no gunman. There were no guns; no gunmen; no ammunition; no weapons. There was a family. Multi-generations of a family now dead. This was Andy's moral injury, something he could not erase from his conscience. Something that worked against all of his commitments. Something that broke his heart. Something he struggled with mightily to find relief and forgiveness for years after his service.
He told this story to the assembly with great emotion and then the assembled gathered around Andy and recited some words written for the occasion. The group said "Andy, we (Key word: We) are sorry. It is because of our choices that you were put in that impossible situation. It was because of our choices you are morally injured this way, and we take responsibility and beg your forgiveness." It was a healing moment, a healing moment of corporate responsibility. Joint shared responsibilities finally acknowledging that the shame this man felt was something we all shared and put on. I see the story of our Christ, our messiah, in this story, where the body of Christ finally is taking this pain into itself, not denying it, not ignoring it, not putting it away, but turning into it with love and compassion that leads to life renewed. Connection renewed. Souls saved and restored. This to me is the mission of the body of Christ, formed by Christ when we live out this mission.
I have one final challenging place to go with you all this morning, because there's a bigger picture here. We've looked at compassion to the individual who suffers, we've looked at the community rallying around someone who suffers. We need to look at the global presence of the messiah who suffers. One of the most striking and difficult things for me as we have observed the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and 20 years of warfare is the death toll.
929,000 people have died in the last 20 years in Afghanistan; in Iraq and Syria and Yemen. That number is almost too big to grasp. Humans notoriously have a hard time relating emotionally to large numbers, but I have to ask myself "How do I live with this death toll as I try to live a life before God? How do I live with this? What do I do with it as I live with my suffering messiah?"
The first thing I can say that causes me some gratitude in the midst of the entangled grief is that thank God, that God can love that many people, because I know I cannot. But I know that God's love treats each one of those people as a child of God, and the vast majority of them were civilians: women and children and non-combatants. This was a slaughter bigger than the American Civil War and I need to know that my suffering messiah can teach my heart, hardened by nationalism, hardened by parochialism, by all the limitations of my place and time.
Our suffering messiah can teach me that God's love extends to all those people; that they are human beings that are infinitely valuable to God, and arriving at that deep inner knowledge, that wisdom, I can only believe that we need to find another way. That living before God we cannot endorse such slaughter. That living unashamed of our association with Jesus, we cannot endorse such massive killing. We must at least sit in the pain and ask ourselves what can be done differently for the sake of the one we follow. Amen.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187. All rights reserved.
Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org