All flesh shall see God

The Rev. Aron Kramer

Advent 2, December 9^th, 2013

The hardest thing I do in my entire life happens each Saturday between 5:30 and 6PM. That moment is the one moment in my life where I enter into a space and no matter how I look at it, I see that I am far from perfect. I see clearly, that I have made mistakes in my life. That half hour window is the hardest moment I experience, and I experience it every single week,

But it is also a moment of redemption, it is a moment when I get to take stock, understand who I was and begin to look at how I can become a better person. It is, for me, today, a moment that is motivational, still painful, still filled with hills and valleys, but very much a moment where I can be made new, where my flesh can see the salvation of God.

That moment is the time I drop Eliot and Naomi off at their Mom’s house. Divorce has been difficult, it has been transformative, and it has been filled with hills and valleys. Words meant to comfort, as from our Old Testament and Gospel reading, do not really hold much comfort at all for me as I look at my life and its hills and valleys. As I look at the lives my two children are forming and growing into. It is hard to hear these words from Baruch and from our Gospel writer today and understand how it is the hills and valleys will be made low, and even more than that, what that would mean.

The martyr/masochistic part of me wants not to have the valleys and hills flattened out because then, how on earth would we have the amazing human experiences that we have?! If the journey were one of simplicity and ease, what fun would it be? How would we learn, how would we live?

Our human flesh is what makes us whole; our human flesh is what makes us who we are. The scars, the bumps, the marks, all of those little imperfections each one tells a story. This scar is from when the basketball backboard fell down and ripped all the skin and flesh and muscle off my hand. This scar is from when I wanted to get my Mom’s attention and when she wouldn’t give it, I reached into the sink where she had just put a knife and cut myself, not on purpose. My chipped tooth is from one of the hardest fought soccer games I have ever played and won.

Our flesh tells a story as much as our memory and that is very important for us to understand, because it is the story of our flesh that helps us understand God’s salvation more fully. All of the things that have happened to us, whether big or small, help us to understand what God’s salvation means for us as people of faith. Our flesh is the vital connection, the true reality that connects us to God’s divinity and God’s very spirit.

I have the following quote on my wall from Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers. He writes: The flesh, then, is washed, so that the soul may be made clean. The flesh is anointed, so that the soul may be dedicated to holiness. The flesh is signed, so that the soul too may be fortified. The flesh is shaded with the imposition of hands, so that the soul may be illuminated by the Sprit. The flesh feeds on the Body and Blood of Christ, so that the soul too may fatten on God.

Not only do the stories marked on our bodies tell the story of salvation, of failure and of success, but the way we use our human flesh, the way we use our bodies also leads us towards that vision of God’s salvation for all flesh. We are in our bodies, and we are in our humanity, and our humanity is blessed and filled with the divine spark.

Our bodies are God’s blessing and gift to each of us, our bodies are our temples, we bring them before God for those joyous and happy moments to be blessed. We bring our bodies before God in those less than full moments asking for help and forgiveness.

Mumford and Sons, yes, here I go again, Mumford and Sons have a song called Awake My Soul, it is a perfect Advent song, and it calls us, in the same way this Gospel calls us to see the salvation of God through our own eyes, with our own bodies, not in some way where we give up our power, our sight or our soul.

The final verses sing, In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / Where you invest your love, you invest your life. / In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die / Where you invest your love, you invest your life. What does it look like to invest our love? What does it look like to commit our love to someone or something? And what does it look like to invest our love and our life, knowing that in our bodies, in our flesh, in all that we have, there is no accepted currency or quantitative evaluative way to understand what we have given or what we have received?

As I pull away from Eliot and Naomi every Saturday, I have no idea what I have said, or what I have done that has shaped or formed them in some positive or negative way. All I know is that I have invested in them my love, so therefore have invested my life in them as well and not just them, but God’s promised and preferred future for all of us.

The other thing that goes along with that Saturday ritual is a sense of seeing that I have never had before. A sense of trust that everything will be ok, everything will work itself out, because no longer do I have control over the outcomes, I am merely a vessel of love, a place of peace, safety and trust that Eliot and Naomi have been able to experience for a few days at a time. The orientation of my life shifts, just a little towards God, my creator, my maker, my all.

God created us to walk with God, to celebrate and give thanks for all that is around us and for one another. May our souls awaken during this Advent season, so we can recognize one thing, and one thing only, we were made to meet our maker.