Lent 2C: Genesis 15:1-12,17-18; Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 13:31-35
The Rev. Stephen Siptroth
March 16, 2025
St. Paul writes, “He will transform the body of our humiliation…”
We are all – each of us – born into a body that will fail us. We are born into a body that, at some point, will fail us. Maybe you’ve been fortunate to find this comment doesn’t apply to you. But, at some point, we will realize that the body we were born into is imperfect, and fallible, and unable to live up to or reflect the dignity and worth and personhood of our being. We live in bodies that have broken, or that are broken, or that will break. This is an undeniable reality of personhood, or creatureliness, of creation.
I have inhabited a body that has failed me over and over and over – in big ways and in small ways. I’ll give you the reader’s digest version. When I was about four, I fell off a tricycle and hit my head on a lamp post in my grandparents’ front yard. When I was seven, I was diagnosed with a rare condition called pseudotumor cerebri, which is a fancy name for a severe increase in pressure of the brain without an identified cause. Since age seven, I have had a shunt that takes fluid out of my brain to maintain this delicate balance of pressure that needs to exist in this space in order to live and live comfortably with eyesight. Since that first surgery, I have had at least 30 surgeries, including 10 since 2009, all somehow related that shunt – revisions due to blockages, or poorly functioning units, or moving tubing. These have all been preceded by months of agonizing pain, because even outside of Kaiser there are huge wait times! And they have been followed by months of pain in recovery. And although I have an amazing and new shunt that was placed in 2020, it also is imperfect, not totally resolving my daily headache, and it, too, will eventually fail. It, too, will need to be replaced someday – I know not when.
I have become keenly aware that our bodies, these precious and yet fallible parts of ourselves, fail us. And, yet, my story is not the worst of the ways our bodies fail. Our bodies, the bodies we are born into, are the cause of much grief, and anxiety, and pain. Our body of humiliation.
Is it any wonder then that the other bodies we inhabit are sometimes broken, and the source of grief, anxiety, and pain? Is it any wonder that our other bodies inflict pain on themselves, either intentionally or unintentionally, directly and indirectly? Is it any wonder that the body politic, or the body of Christ in the church, or the body of our society, or the body are broken and sometimes – or, perhaps even often – the source of grief, and anxiety, and pain. These also are our bodies of humiliation, bodies we live in, or participate in, that are broken, or that will break; bodies we are born into – imperfect, and fallible, and unable to live up to or reflect the dignity and worth of our being. These are undeniable realties that we remember each time that we confess the sins that we do, and the sins that are done on our behalf.
Jesus knew that his body would fail him. He knew that, at some point, his body would break. He also know that his body was broken – the body of his people, the body of God’s Creation. He knew that the bodies in which he found himself – the social, and religious, and political bodies in which he was situated – he knew those would fail, too. In today’s Gospel, he is warned: “get out of here, Herod wants to kill you! Leave, Jesus, Herod wants to break your body.” But the body was already broken.
And what does Jesus say? He says, “don’t bother me; I don’t have time to waste worrying about what will inevitably happen or the present reality about a broken body, in all the meaning of that phrase.” He says he doesn’t have time to worry about that because he’s in the middle of his mission to cast out demons, to heal, to move the margins, to love, to welcome, and to embrace – to gather under God’s wings all of God’s children, as a mother hen gathers her young. He knows what’s coming, but he doesn’t have time to lament or worry. He knows that, in the end, the forces of evil will not have the last word, and, so, they should not have the last word here and now, because kin-dom building was happening; and the kin-dom of God, the Beloved Community of God, would be the ultimate reality that would prevail, and that reality should prevail now – in our hearts, in our minds, and in the work that we are called to do.
St. Paul writes in his letter to the Church in Philippi, “He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.” Sarah Henrich, a former professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, explains that, here Paul is speaking to a church – a body – to remind them that the transformation into the body of Christ’s glory is a reality that they are called to co-create in their midst, through their unity as members of the body of Christ. It is this membership and source of identity that calls them to be co-creators of the kin-dom here and now through their ministry and work in the world.
It is true that we live in broken bodies. It is true that we live in bodies that have broken, or are breaking, or will break – both our human bodies, but also the bodies in which we claim membership. Social bodies; political bodies; even the church. These bodies also are broken. And the extent of that brokenness can sometimes feel overwhelming. And while we can never truly not escape worry or concern over the brokenness of our bodies, human and social, or even the feeling of being overwhelmed by how broken we are, what God asks of us is that it not be paralyzing – that we not be so consumed that we become paralyzed by grief or fear; prevented from following the Crucified and Risen One who walked among us. Because we are reminded that, in an ultimate sense, the brokenness of all of these bodies will be transformed by the work of God that seeks the restoration of all of God’s creation. And we are reminded that this transformation begins now; and we are called to be co-creators of it in the same way that Jesus ushered more of this kin-dom in as he walked among us.
We are reminded that the resurrection of the body begins now: as we cast out the demons of our time by reminding God’s people of their inherent dignity and worth as human persons; by seeking to heal the brokenness of our churches and social and political institutions; as we advocate for those on the margins and seek to move the margins by centering human dignity in our decision-making; as we sow seeds of love by enacting justice; and as we welcome the stranger, and the outcast, and the alien, and the vulnerable, and all of God’s people, to better reflect the reality that all of God’s people are gathered under God’s wings, as a mother hen gathers her young.
We may not be able to escape the reality that our bodies will break; but we are called to not be consumed by that reality. And we are reminded that, where there is brokenness, there also is a promise and opportunity for resurrection – beginning here and now. Amen.
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