“From the
Water to the World”
by Bruce J. Johnson
Last
Saturday, July 1st, was Lois’ and my 34th wedding
anniversary. We were given a wonderful anniversary present. We were treated to
a night in
The city is
an amazing place, but it is not cheap! Except for the genuine Rolex
watches and designer sunglasses and lady’s handbags that are sold by street
venders, most things are quite expensive. We had breakfast at the hotel
restaurant. The waiter first came around with some orange juice and then some
coffee--- at that point the bill was $95.
While we were down there, it was announced that the billionaire, Warren
Buffet, had decided to make a charitable gift of 30 some billion dollars, 85%
of his 44 billion dollar fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I
thought about firing off an e-mail asking for some of that so we could avoid
doing the dishes or making up the beds.
What really
makes the city amazing, though, is all the people—from every nation across the
globe, different looks and languages, cultures, classes and creeds--- all
together in one city. I must say, however, that I was glad that it was back
here in Coventry that we learned about the terrorist plot to blow up portions
the New York City transit system, having used the subway system a number of
times!
David
Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column recently suggesting that if he had
$37 billion to give to charity, he’d give some of it to some foundation that
would invent an Oxytocin Meter… Oxytocin is a hormone that helps mammals bond.
Female rats injected with oxytocin nurture newborns placed in their cages,
which they would otherwise attack. Prairie voles with oxytocin receptors form
lifelong monogamous bonds, where as other varieties of voles without receptors
mate promiscuously. In humans, oxytocin levels rise during childbirth, beast
feeding and sex. Humans with higher oxytocin levels are more likely to trust
other people. They are more resistant to stress and social phobias. Humans seem
to experience delicious oxytocin floods to the brain after being with someone
they love--- (I felt that flood on our anniversary trip!)
Neuroscientists
now have a nickname for oxytocin. They call it “the affiliative neuropeptide.”
Brooks’
point, of course, was that it was high time for us to look at and deal with,
what he calls, ‘the spaces between people’ and the need for ‘attachments’ in
life so that we can live well and right.
His final
paragraph reads as follows:
“If I had $37 billion dollars, I would focus it on the
crucial node where attachment skills are formed: the parental relationship
during the first few years of life. I’d invest much of it with organizations,
like Circle of Security, that help at-risk mothers and fathers develop secure
bonds with their own infants, instead of replicating the behaviors of their own
parents: I’d focus on the real resource crisis that afflicts the country. It’s
not the oil shortage. It’s the oxytocin shortage.”
(NYTimes, Op-Ed, 7/2/06, p. 11).
How are the oxytocin levels here this morning?
I would guess that they are quite high, given the fact that we are here for
worship as the body of Christ, given that we have just gushed with “affiliative
neuropeptides’, pride and joy over the baptisms of little Elie, Evan, and
Cooper, affirming, as we did, the confluence of the various covenants or
promises that we make—God’s, the parents’ and the church’s—each and all
affirmed an ‘attachment’ that is meant never to be broken or neglected, only
sustained and grown and maybe most important of all, extended to others.
Indeed,
maybe Brook’s focus is too limited. The real resource crisis is not limited to
just our country but the globe and maybe we need more than oxytocin. We need a
more fundamental, foundational vision and commitment to reduce not just the
spaces but the hostility between people.
I watched
with fascination the broadcast from the Space Station after our shuttle,
Discovery, docked there--- being reminded again about the sight from their
window toward our planet earth—and the pressing questions of why we can’t live
in peace with one another.
But back on
the ground it always seems tough. In this morning’s lesson from the gospel of
Mark, we have quite an unsettling scenario. Fresh off his amazing success in
lifting Jairus’ daughter out of her sleep and healing that woman who had been
‘hemorrhaging’ for 12 years, a condition upon which she had spent all her money
on one doctor after another, one treatment after another, Jesus comes to his
hometown of Nazareth. Among his own people, in his own hometown, Jesus encounters
rejection and conflict. Mark suggests that they rejected him because they
thought of him as an unimpressive ‘hometown boy.’ (By the way, please make a
note of the passage, it is the only one in scripture that mentions his family.
His brothers, James, Josef, Judas and Simon and his sisters—nameless and
unnumbered but acknowledged. (Mark 6: 1-6)
The passage
even tells us that Jesus himself was “amazed by their unbelief.” I often wonder
how he really felt about all the questions they had about him. It must have
hurt hearing their questions --- how he knew so much, did so much. Where the
wisdom came from? The power he had in his hands--- a wonderful reference to the
power of his touch! And in the end, how did he really feel about being called
an ‘offense’ by those who have known him the longest.
Mark even
links this story of fragile attachments, separation and rejection with the
sending out of his disciples as if to say that the crisis in Nazareth might
very well be the crisis they would face in some but maybe not all the other
communities they would visit or better put, in some in each of the communities
they would visit with the gospel!
The mission
was to ‘clean things up!’—maybe that’s what Jesus meant when he gave them
authority over ‘unclean spirits’--- To call people to ‘change’ and challenge
them to get through all the ugly stuff
that led to so much doubt and resentment and learn to love and trust God and each other.
I love that
quote I have included in our bulletin this morning from Chad Myers of
Sojourner’s Magazine. Referring to Jesus baptism and maybe challenging us to
consider what Elie, Evan and Cooper might also be seeing, he writes: (Read it with me?)
“What does Jesus see? More than a dove, I am guessing. I
think that he sees it all.
He sees how good the world is, ecstatically experiencing the
untamed juicy power woven into creation.
He sees how bad it is: alienated and degraded, hostage to the powers of greed and
objectification and domination.
And he sees a vision of the redemption of everything.
Then Jesus hears the voice (Mark
(
The only
thing Myers leaves out is that he remains there in Jordan’s muddy flow waiting
for us, waiting to baptize each of us not just with water but the Holy Spirit
so that we can then move from the Water to the World, cleaned up and clear
about our purpose-- proclaiming for Jesus – this Gospel of love and
forgiveness, the power of the Cross and its message of reconciliation and
redemption, so that we can speak a good word for Him, hoping that we might do
something about the spaces among us and the failures of our attachments.
This
morning, on this baptismal Sunday, embracing our three new lives in Christ,
Cooper, Evan and Elie, and remembering our own baptisms, let us try to stand in
Jordan’s muddy flow and see it all too--- how good it is – how bad it is and
how wonderful it can if we might reaffirm and grow the bonds of love, the
covenants of care and concern, the spirit of confession and forgiveness and the
state of grace that are meant to draw us together and reduce the spaces between
us.
Indeed, we
are meant to one in Christ. ---let it so.
Once back
from NYC, I started to think about this morning and just happened to run across
a quote from Anne Frank, which seemed so apropos:
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment
before starting to improve the world.”
Praise be
God!
Amen