Soul Meets Body (Death Cab for Cutie)

WWTW

Introduction- Death Cab for Cutie

Today’s band is from Bellingham Washington, with a weird name.

Death Cab for Cutie.

Their name actually has ties to last week’s song…

There is a song called Death Cab for Cutie by the incredibly named Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, who played the song Death Cab for Cutie in the Beatle’s movie The Magical Mystery Tour.

Truth be told, if you listen closely, the band Death Cab for Cuties takes a whole lot of cues and inspiration from the Beatles.

Formed in 1997, they were originally the solo project of their front man, Benjamin Gibbard.

The band had some mediocre indie success on their first couple of albums, before their 2003 album Transatlanticsm went big.

What we’re going to listen to today was the first single from their follow up to that album, and their first ever major label release, an album titled Plans.

Today we’re going to listen to “Soul Meets Body”.

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There’s a lot going on in these lyrics.

And in fact, once again, we should note that just a few tracks later on the album Plans, Gibbard shows that he has a complicated relationship with religion, Christianity in particular.

But when I think about this idea of living in that space where soul meets body, I think a lot about these verses from John’s Gospel that we seem to only read at Christmas time.

I think about the incarnation.

Soul Meets Body- The Incarnation

A different song- I’ll fly away

The idea of this song, and some of the Christians that follow this theological thinking, goes something like this:

We are spiritual beings first and foremost.

We will die some day.

And when we die, our spirits will go to heaven.

And that’s really all that matters, so why worry about physical things?

Why worry about our bodies

Why worry about our planet?

Why worry about our neighbors physical needs?

In fact, taken to it’s farthest place, it turns some folks into extreme asceticism.

They try to deny or even punish the body, the physical self, in an effort to achieve better spiritual awakening.

If this all were true, one would think that God would have come up with a purely spiritual means of salvation for us.

But that’s not at all what God did.

God took on flesh and blood and moved in to the neighborhood as Peterson’s translation reads.

It’s something that we call the incarnation, where soul meets body.

And it says a lot about our faith.

Jesus’ incarnation says a lot:

It shows us who God is in a way that we can understand.

So often, when people come to me with a frustration about Christianity, it’s just how difficult God is to nail down.

You can’t see God.

You can’t touch God.

You can’t smell God.

And what then can be really frustrating is that we humans tend to create what I call the ultimate sin of reversal.

Instead of recognizing that God has created us in God’s image, we decided that we would create God in ours.

You might be doing this if your understanding of God never disagrees with you!

You might be doing this if your God is only about what kind of blessings God can bestow upon you.

You might be doing this if your God is on your side, but not on the side of other people, once again especially those who disagree with you!

Jesus, through the incarnation, simply won’t allow us to do that.

Jesus is fully God, and fully human. The perfect example of soul and spirit meeting body.

Jesus came so that we could answer the question: what would it be like if God was like us?

Jesus taught us so that we could have a framework for how we understand God, and where God wants us to move and be in the world.

Jesus, through the Gospels, gives us borders and boundaries to how we understand God and how God feels about us.

Spoiler alert: He loves us.

That all by itself would be a tremendous blessing for the incarnation.

But…there’s more!

It says that there is a collision of the physical and spiritual.

Jesus’ incarnation won’t let us fly away from this life and only focus on the spiritual elements of life.

If only because Jesus sure didn’t.

Jesus took the time to heal people who had life-altering disabilities, because for him soul and body were both important.

Jesus took the time to feed people, particularly when moved with compassion for them, because for him soul and body were both important.

Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, even though he knew that Lazarus would one day die again, because there must have been something more going on there than just spirit.

And Paul insists later that Jesus’ resurrection is something that we will have a share in, that in some mysterious way we won’t just be spirits floating around up there, we will indeed have resurrection bodies.

Which means, with a word of warning, that we can find God anywhere in this world.

We can find God in the beauty and the majesty of this created and natural world, because God is in it all.

We can find God in the wonder and the mystery that exists in our fellow human beings, if we’re patient enough to really notice God in them.

We can find God in our own relationships with our bodies too! Just ask anyone who has taken a liking to yoga, or hiking, or even cycling!

This is not to say, that God is those things.

We don’t believe that the trees are God, or that we are gods in ourselves.

It’s just to say that where soul meets body, where the spiritual and the physical collide, we can find God’s fingerprints there, if we’re careful enough to look.

It says that love means showing up

There’s a line in my favorite show The West Wing that keeps popping up:

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Those who are willing to take the time to show up get to make the decisions.

Those who are willing to get out there are the ones that are invested.

Those that show up for their brothers and sisters are the ones who have voice.

I might amend that line just slightly for us today:

Love is displayed by those who show up.

God was not content to let us wallow in our failure after the fall.

Nor was God content to sit back and give us a good finger wag and a stern talking to!

God decided the best way to love us was by showing up.

God stepped into our reality through the person of Jesus Christ and

Teach us what love is.

Show us what love is.

Become love for us through his death and resurrection.

In fact, think about the ultimate reminder of Christ’s love at the communion table:

As Father Richard Rohr points out, Jesus does not say “This is my spirit given for you,” or “this is my soul.”

He says “This is my body.”

Love comes in the embodied Jesus Christ, the one who shows up, and then gives that body away on our behalf.

The entirety of the Gospel is in fact us trying to live where Soul Meets Body.

Can we live where soul meets body?

This life matters.

We are not just hanging out in the waiting room of life, hoping for a great cosmic and spiritual reward at the end of our days.

This life matters quite a great deal.

I didn’t quite know where this was going to fit in to this sermon, but…

Perhaps you heard last night that there was an assassination attempt made on a candidate for President in these United States of America.

I have quite a few thoughts about this, but for now:

Regardless of which party you belong to or who you plan to vote for in November, there is absolutely no room for violence in this country, particularly among people of faith.

And of course, we pray for Former President Trump to have a quick recovery, and we pray for the rally goers and their families who have tragically lost their lives in this cowardly act.

But one thing that shook me most this morning was waking up and reading that the gunman was actually from my neighborhood in Bethel Park.

I had to go the long way to work because the FBI has closed off this person’s street for investigation.

This is a person that I very likely may have crossed paths with at the grocery store.

This is a person that I very likely might have bumped into at the gym.

This is a person who I could have passed on the bike path on any number of occasions.

Which is all to say, I think that all of us need to pay attention to the tendency toward violence in our politics.

Yes, there is no room for violence with guns and fists and riots…but also…

The way some of us have been speaking about politics has been too violent for too long.

The way some of us have been insulting our fellow citizens has been too violent for too long.

The way some of us approach our political positions has been too violent for too long.

If we want to live where soul meets body, if we want to live an incarnational Christianity, then we have to care about this life.

We have to care about the way we speak about each other, because this life matters.

We have to care about the violence in our world, because this life matters.

We have to care about those with whom we disagree, because this life matters.

We have to love everybody, no conditions, because this life matters.

We recognize the collision of the physical and spiritual

In how we care for creation

One nasty side effect of the “I’ll fly away” kind of Christianity is that we feel like we can use and abuse the creation, because we’re headed to a different spiritual home when we die anyway, right?

But to believe in the incarnation, to believe that God meets us in both the spiritual and the physical, we need to look after this created world that God has handed us.

We need to steward its resources well.

We need to make sure that we promote the health of this creation.

We need to make sure that there is something left for our grandchildren to enjoy the incarnation of God.

We need to remember that the way we interact with our planet impacts not just our bodies, but our souls as well.

In how we meet the physical needs of others

Again, it just kind of sticks out like a sore thumb how much Jesus looked after the physical needs of others.

Healing the sick.

Feeding the hungry.

Spending time with the lonely.

If we are to imitate Christ, we ought to live with the same priorities.

We as a church dedicate ourselves to ministries and missions around the world that advocate for adequate health care and medical assistance, especially for those who don’t have the resources we do in our ludicrously blessed nation.

About 75% of the population of South Sudan for instance lives more than 2 hours away from a hospital.

The challenge in Pittsburgh, by contrast, is figuring out which of the 40 hospitals are best suited to help you.

That’s an issue that we can and do help with our friends at The Medical Benevolence Fund, who will be here later in August to talk to us more about that.

We are also dedicated to feeding the hungry.

We have dedicated resources to make sure that if someone comes to us in need of assistance, we can get them a warm meal, and do so with dignity and respect.

And of course, we hope to be a resting place for those who are walking this life alone.

Could we do better in those efforts? Of course!

And we do it not from a place of guilt, in a kind of “aww I guess we have to” way.

We do it because when we look after the physical needs of others as Jesus did, it does something to our souls as well.

Ask anyone who has engaged in that kind of work.

When you show up to the places where soul meets body, Christ is alive and active in your heart.

Speaking of which…

We love by showing up.

We love best by showing up for people.

And this is contrary to the way so many churches operate in our world.

Somewhere along the way, the major goal of the Church was to get more people inside the building.

Let’s reach out and bring in new members!

Let’s host big major events!

Let’s focus on getting more butts in pews (or chairs as the case may be!)

And that’s all well and good on one level.

But on another level, if we follow after Jesus, love means showing up, and that means going out.

Love means showing up in our neighborhood.

Love means showing up for people in need around us.

Love means showing up at our local schools.

Love means showing up in places where the church may have otherwise pulled steaks and run.

Love means showing up among the lost and the hurting and the lonely.

Love means putting an emphasis on getting ourselves out, every bit as much as we put an emphasis on bringing people in.

There’s another line in that song that your hopelessly optimistic pastor loves:

There are roads left in both of our shoes.

We’re not done with this work yet.

When it comes to making sure that this life matters, there are roads left in our shoes.

When it comes to speaking peace to our overly violent political system right now, there are roads left in our shoes.

When it comes to caring for the creation, there are roads left in our shoes.

When it comes to how we look after the needs of the left out, the lost, the hurting, the hungry, the sick, and the lonely, there are roads left in our shoes.

When it comes to showing up, to going on the great adventure of loving others around us, there are roads left in our shoes.

There are adventures to be had in encountering the incarnational Jesus out there my friends.

And they lead to that beautiful place where soul meets body.