You either love ‘em – or they creep you out. Massages. I fall strongly in the ‘love them’ camp. Now, there are two kinds of massages: full body and not full body. If I’m going to get a massage – I want it to be full body. It doesn’t need to be extravagant – a 90-minute Swedish massage at Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon will do just fine.

Low-lighted room. Heated blankets. Terry-cloth robe. Lavender-scented candles. Soft sounds of waterfalls and ocean waves. Every knotted muscle unknotted and energized – head to toe. The strength of human hands. Every fiber of your being so relaxed that it takes whiffs of concentrated peppermint oil to bring you back to reality. This is a full body massage.

And once you have a full body massage, you’ll never go back to one of those 5-minute chair massages they offer in your lobby or university health center. You know the ones...where you stick your head through a hole in an upright backwards chair and have your shoulders and neck worked on while the rest of your body gets the shaft. And sitting in one of those vibrating leather chairs at Brookstone that kneads your back with mechanical fists won’t cut it, either. And neither will one of those vibrating foot machines at Sharper Image. These contraptions are adequate at best.

If you want to be truly relaxed – if you want the full body experience – a massage must be head to toe, with all the bells and whistles. No shortcuts. If the whole purpose of a massage is to be totally relaxed – mind and body – naturally, it can happen only if every part of your body is engaged.

If the whole purpose of the Christian life is to grow closer to Christ – to the one who loves us unconditionally and freely – then, naturally, it can happen only if every part of your mind and body is engaged. Discipleship is not a matter of convenience ... of picking and choosing what sins we’ll indulge in and which virtues we’ll ignore.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus spares no gory details in delineating what it takes to enter the Kingdom of God. It must be a full body experience – and the alternative is not the 5-minute chair-massage version of life – but an eternity in hell – separated from God. Are the stakes high enough for you?

Mark is the gospel writer notorious for emphasizing the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus – and thereby emphasizing the suffering and cross-bearing life of a Christ-follower. However, in this text, we are asked not to pick up an external cross or burden – but rather to hack off any part of us that gets in the way of our path to Christ – our daily posture of discipleship. In other words, it is our own bodies – our sinful actions, failed intentions, and stumbling and bumbling selves – that trip us up and block the path to a relationship with Christ, and ultimately to the Kingdom of God.

Jesus instructs all of us – who are bold enough to call ourselves his disciples – to be fully committed to a life of sacrifice and service. To hold nothing back.

Now we are an Easter people – we live on the flip side of the crucifixion and resurrection. This means we have already been saved, set free, and forgiven. As Christians, we experience no shortage of Grace. And we don’t “need” discipleship as a means of earning our salvation. However, the call to discipleship will not allow us to enter the fullness of life with Christ with our present sinful selves fully intact. If your hand causes you to stumble – cut it off. Your foot? Cut it off. Your eye? Tear it out.

At this point many biblical scholars flash their “don’t try this at home” warning. We can put away our chain saws – because Jesus is speaking metaphorically here. Well, metaphorical or not – the point is graphically clear: entering the kingdom of God, entering into a full understanding of who we are in Christ is a full body experience. No way around it.

We cannot just bring in bits and pieces of us – some sinful and some obedient. And, it’s not like we submit a resume or curriculum vita to the Kingdom of God – highlighting all our talents and virtues and conveniently not listing our faults or ill will or negative thoughts. Whether we like it or not, God has a curriculum vita of our soul – and because it didn’t go through our screening process first, it doesn’t omit anything. It is transparent.

As Baptists we like to put a lot of emphasis on the conversion moment – and the cleansing of the baptismal waters. The day of our baptism would be the headliner item on our spiritual resume, right?

Well, when we are baptized, we are fully immersed – it is a renewing full body experience. It is all-consuming and life-changing. Or it should be. So what makes us think that as soon as we rise up out of those waters, we can be only partially committed to Christ? Well, I don’t think we really intend this to happen – but it does ... every day with every one of us. We behave like Christ-followers when it’s comfortable or convenient.

We spend our whole lives figuring out how not to give of ourselves fully – which e-mails to answer, which ones to ignore. Which Sundays to go to church – and which Sundays to sleep in. Which homework assignment we’ll do – and which one we’ll blow off.

In our daily life, we would do well to “remember our baptism” – the full body experience that inaugurates our life with Christ. In the gospel text, Jesus is not dishing out little self-help tips about how to live a better life. This is not a Joel Osteen best seller Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential – Jesus is calling for an Extreme Makeover TV show moment here – with plastic surgery for the soul, some liposuction of desire and envy and hatred, and a new wardrobe for the mind and heart. We are called to the extreme life of service and discipleship because we are followers of Christ – who suffered and died for our extreme sin.

Until we become tired of living with our “get out of jail free card” mentality and begin to get energized about hefting the stumbling blocks of sin out of our life, we will never be satisfied in our life of faith – we will always be lost and longing.

When you confess your sins, what perches on the tip of your tongue? When you toss and turn at night, what fears and regrets tornado through your mind? When you reach your limit and explode in anger or tears, what part of you is strained and overworked? What can you dispose of – to make room for the uninhibited peace of Christ to dwell fully inside of you?

Is it a gossiping tongue – finding ways to exclude and put down others? Or a jealous heart – wishing unhappiness or hurt on another. Maybe a quick and impatient temper – yelling at our spouses and children. Perhaps it’s greed – making excuses for why we can’t tithe this month. Or even low self-esteem – closing off our hearts to the gift of grace and forgiveness.

Any one of these stumbling blocks affects the way you love your neighbor and the way you love God. We cannot hide anything from God, and truth be told, we can’t hide anything from ourselves – or our church.

Are we disciplined if we bring our children to church every week but don’t ever work extended session or teach Sunday School? How authentic is our hospitality when we neglect to say hi to someone we’ve never seen before – perhaps someone of a different social status from us – but are quick to welcome a mom we recognize from PTA or the country club?

The integration of intentions and actions is key to a growing relationship with Christ. We must freely offer our whole selves – not just our exterior images of piety – to reap the full benefits of discipleship. We speak all the time of wanting to know Christ better – to figure out what his will is for our life. Well, the first step to this kind of intimacy and understanding is vulnerability. Giving over to God. Letting go. Hopping up on the massage table and letting God knead our bodies until we are reshaped and revived from our heads to our hearts.

The good news is, if we can do it, working to remove these stumbling blocks in our own lives will have a domino effect in the lives of others. While we feed off each other’s gossip and envy, we are fed by each other’s kindness, forgiveness, and love. On a daily basis we are either nailing down stumbling blocks right and left – or we are clearing the path to Christ for and with others.

When there is a wreck on Central Expressway, traffic comes to a standstill, cars funnel down to one lane, cutting each other off and weaving around orange cones and red flares. You sigh – mutter – pull out the cell phone and wait. Eventually relief washes over you when those cones are lifted, the wreck removed, and the traffic begins to spill over into all five lanes again. You speed up and get where you need to go.

Today’s gospel lesson challenges us to take stock of our lives – to take a spiritual inventory of our hearts and minds on a routine basis, to get rid of the cones and red flares and get where we need to go. To Christ.

Today’s epistle lesson, though, reminds us that serving Christ with our whole selves is not just a solitary full body experience. It is also an experience for the full Body of Christ – for all of us who are the living Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Church. James emphasizes the unique hospitality of Christian community – prayer, song, anointing, and confession for and with one another – in good times and in bad. It takes all of us, each of us sitting in the pew this morning to build up the whole Body of Christ.

Jesus holds his disciples accountable for their own actions and faith. However, he also sets this individual commitment in the context of a greater inclusive kingdom. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Don’t worry about labels – whether someone is officially with us or not – rather, invite everyone in. Quit making excuses.

And I suspect Jesus is such a fan of radical inclusivity because he knows we cannot be Christians on our own. It is just flat-out impossible. We need unsolicited homemade chicken casseroles on our porches. We need wide shoulders to sob on. We need embraces to hold us. We need a hand to hold when we get down on our knees to confess. And a hand to hold when we stand back up after confession.

We need each other for prayer and support, for encouragement and love – but also for reminding and admonishing, confessing and correcting.

The disciples, and many of us, find ourselves caught up in the “rules and regulations” of daily church life. Who has been baptized, and was it done properly? Who interprets Scripture the right way and who the wrong? Who comes to Sunday School and who doesn’t? Who serves on committees, and what are their credentials?

When we ask these questions – and put stipulations on who is a proper disciple of Christ – we are working against the Full Body Experience of the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God. We are allowing ourselves to be satisfied with just a handful of God’s children being accepted ... and brought into the fold.

Many young people today have a longing to see the Church more united and more inviting. Seminary student centers and classrooms are bustling with conversations about the future of the Church – how to keep it alive, engaged, and enlivening.

One young pastor said, “I see so many Christians with so much of their lives not in submission to Christ, and so many non-Christians with so much of their lives in submission to Christ ... if most [churches] follow a pattern of believe – behave – belong, we reverse that pattern and make it belong – behave – believe ... we say, ‘Try on these clothes, take up these practices, and see what happens.’”[1]

Huh. Sounds strikingly like today’s Gospel, doesn’t it? What would happen in the living Body of Christ – in the Christian Church, at Wilshire – what would happen if we focused on helping people feel like they belonged here among us before worrying about whether they have the proper faith or belief?

What would happen to all of us if we focused on behaving like Christ – instead of having to agree about how we believe in Christ?

I think Jesus would be pleased. And it would be a domino effect. When we focus on loving behavior and selfless service, we behave like Christ, and we take one step closer to experiencing Christ both with our own full selves – and with the Full living Body of Christ. When we focus on loving behavior and selfless service, we become disciples living in a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.

Mother Teresa always said that her strength and unceasing commitment to serve the poor and dying came from her own understanding of herself in relation to Christ. Jesus taught us to love the poor and care for the dying – and so she actually did as he said. Picture Mother Teresa in your mind – draw up an image of her you’ve seen on TV ... focus on her body – an aged woman slight in frame, back hunched over, wrinkled and glistening eyes that tell her life story in one glance, her knees deeply bent, her weathered hands, dirt under the fingernails – lifting up a dying child and pulling him in close to her bosom. In that moment, her whole body, every ounce of it, was engaged for Christ – every thought, every action for Christ. Mother Theresa knew about the full body experience. And her whole life was about nourishing, healing, and saving every child so that the Body of Christ could be full. No wonder we call her a Saint. I bet when she met Jesus in heaven, he simply called her a disciple.

God sent Jesus so that each one of us might know him personally and uniquely. And God sent Jesus so that we all – the whole world – might have access to this personal relationship. We have no reason to settle for anything less than the full body experience.

 

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