What's Done in the Body Settles in the Heart

Sermon Series: Getting It Together, Part 5

October 9, 2011

Rev. Dr. Craig Strobel

The Basic Point
What we do in the body affects what settles in heart and mind.  Rituals help us enact and embody new life.




Mark 7:31-37
 Then Jesus returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’




Opening Joke:
A preacher was becoming terribly distracted by a man who came to church every Sunday and slept through the entire sermon.  One Sunday the preacher decided to do something about it.  As he began to preach, the man, true to form, fell fast asleep.  Whereupon the preacher said quietly, “Everyone who wants to go to heaven, stand up.”  The entire congregation immediately stood up, except the sleeping man.  When they sat down, the preacher shouted at the top of his voice, “Everyone who wants to go to hell, stand up.” This startled the dozing man.  Still half asleep, he jumped up, looked around to see what was going on, then he said to the preacher, “I don’t know what we’re voting on but it looks like you and I are the only ones in favor of it.”




Ah yes, we should always be careful what we do in the body because what we do in the body articulates what we want to be in the world. Today, as we continue with this series on wisdom, we are going to focus upon what our bodies have to do with wisdom. Now this might sound strange at first, because we tend to think of wisdom as being this very intellectual process, something relegated only to the mind, wherever that may be. So what do our bodies have to do with wisdom? In order to answer this question, let’s first review this process we have been speaking about for the past 4 weeks.


Wisdom as a process:
• Know your Big Picture, how the universe is put together, Who put it together. Our Destination in life:  To become whole persons in Jesus Christ, to “...grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).
• Tell the truth of your life in context of that Big Picture
• Identify experiences of injury, trauma and seek healing in order to become whole persons.
• Integrate these experiences into your life and help others from your unique experience.


Two weeks ago we spoke about the importance of telling the truth about our lives, and last week we looked at how part of the process of telling the truth is to identify those traumas and points of pain and injury we have experienced in life. The healing we are seeking is from these very wounds we have suffered, and we all have them. But once we have identified these wounds, how do we receive healing? 


There are many ways to seek healing, of course. We can seek counseling from qualified and trained therapists and counselors. We can participate in support groups such as 12 step groups or groups for survivors of divorce or abuse or natural disasters or whatever. In the context of church we can engage in such support groups, but also engage in specific rituals that help us enact the healing we seek.


Body as symbolizer, expresser of meaning and intention.
Think of what we symbolize in our bodies: shaking hands, kiss at weddings seals the contract, when we are happy we do a happy dance or wiggle (even football players), think of all the body gestures we do when we are flirting, everyone of our facial expressions are symbolic, commencement exercises, etc. 


How rituals work:
• Ritual is based in human expressiveness
• Ex-press – “to press out.” 
• But we are also impressionable – we take in information, new states of being, etc. through the body. We enact our changes bodily. We are all actors in a way.
• We express our inner life through actions, and we are affected internally by what we do externally. 
• Performing a ritual helps our inner convictions and intentions to become present realities by enacting and settling them in the body. As we move bodily in the world, we affect that part of with which world we connect. 
• Ritual assists with our inner healing by physically symbolizing the change we wish to achieve within ourselves. 


In today’s scripture reading, Jesus engages in a very embodied ritual to heal the man who was deaf and mute. He takes him aside, and then he puts his fingers into the man’s ears, enacting the inability to hear physically. Then he spits and touches the man’s tongue. This symbolizes the loosening of the tongue in order to speak. Then he looks to heaven – did you notice that? – and he says “Ephphatha! Be opened!” He’s looking up as he says this. What is being opened? Heaven or the man’s ears? Or both? 


Wisdom Process includes finding rituals to accompany and symbolize our healing. Examples:
• Communion: Deep rich language exploring many levels of meaning, Break bread – breaking of Christ’s body but broken for us, healing of our own brokenness by symbolically partaking of Christ’s body which is given as an offering on our behalf – thus eating participates in what is originally and always a propitiation, a cleansing. Not enough simply to acknowledge it, we need to enact the healing by enacting the ritual. 
• Cursillo and Emmaus: writing confessions of our brokenness or how we have hurt others in past or even how we have been hurt by others on pieces of flash paper, nailing it to a cross, and then touching a flame to it. 


The power of a ritual to assist with our healing comes from how closely our ritual actions mimic or re-create what we are trying to achieve. If we seek release from something, then a powerful representation of this might be to bind our hands with something representing what is holding us in bondage. And then to say prayers asking for God’s Spirit to release us, and then to throw off the bonds dramatically with force and conviction. Say loudly and commandingly, ”In the name of Jesus Christ, I am set free!”


Our hurts and wounds reside in our bodies. The memories of our injuries and abuse and trauma situate themselves physically in our bodies. By doing these physical rituals, we help unlock the painful grip these events have upon this, and work with the healing power of God’s Spirit. I am willing to work with any of you here who would like to work in this manner on healing something in your life. Come and talk with me, and we will pray about it and find the right ritual to use.


God became flesh in Jesus Christ precisely in order to bring us into wholeness through the body. Jesus was a fully human person, the embodiment of the Spirit of God, and he touched the persons he healed in their bodies. This is the wisdom of God, who knows that our need for wholeness includes our bodies. 


What we do in the body affects what settles in our hearts and minds. As we seek to become whole persons in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit can touch us and heal us. What life has cast asunder, God can pull together, body and soul.