Preaching the Word

It's been years since I preached. It wasn't often, but I did preach several times a year back in the day.

I love Jesus, and I love preaching about Jesus.

I still believe that He is the Way, Truth and Life, capital letters and all.

Strangely enough, I'm still a thoroughgoing supernaturalist. I believe the miracles stuff. Ya know, the virgin birth, loaves and fishes, bringing people back from the dead, he died, was buried and was resurrected on the third day and ascended to heaven stuff. I can gladly recite the Apostle's Creed without question or doubt.

And I say this as a deeply doubtful person.

But I believe.

But I'm also a skeptic.

And that's a good thing to me and to everyone I know.

I grew up a child of the post 60's, a 70's child, spiritually untethered by any institutional structures. It was the zeitgeist I guess. All spiritual options were open back then, and are again today. We really do live in untethered times once again.

How do we ground our being? How do we find a center, a core, a Way that gives us a sense of Why, How and Who?

I mean, this is a wibbly wobbly kind of question which leads to a need for a spiritual Dramamine.

The Incarnation.

God became flesh. God showed up through a virgin's vagina and became a child with a penis. Is that too vulgar to you? Are those body parts offensive to you? Apparently God thought otherwise. In the beginning, God thought all of those body parts were good and very good. And remember folks, they were initially intersexual and betwixt. Apparently, God has a side splitting sense of humor. Pardon the ribbing...

Meanwhile, God showed up as a vulnerable child in a far off land, in a part of the Empire that most had forgotten. Inexcusably dirty and poor. Parents running away from death squads. Trying their best to escape to a new life somewhere else.

The baby showed up, slimy and wet, but exquisitely beautiful, in the town of bread. Both Miriam and Joseph cried tears of joy. Even the animals nearby seemed to lean low in adoration at this beautiful sight. This little baby, unexpected in so many ways, rang out in cries the Universe Itself sang in response as a Holy Echo.

And God in Christ pooped and cried out in need of his mother's milk.

And that's OK. Physicality is not our enemy. It's our friend and close neighbor. It's us, in fact. It's you. It's me. It's we.

This is what it means to be enfleshed and holy, physical and spiritual, intellectual, emotional and sexual.

God in Christ saves ALL of this. This gives me comfort. This gives me hope.