I try to write sermons for everyone. Yet, this one might not be. This one is not for the confident or the self-assured. Apologies. I hope the result will be more confidence and self-assurance for each of us, but we’ll end there.

This one is more like my friend, Paul. In his letter to the Romans, he writes, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do; but what I hate I do.” He doesn’t understand himself. He writes about the flesh in a detracting way. Which has led some traditions to be suspicious and downright shaming of the body and human nature.

Jesus was not exempt from talking bad about our bodies either. In the garden in the hours before his crucifixion and death, Jesus asked his disciples to stay awake and pray with him. However, exhausted by the late hour, the disciples kept falling asleep. He says, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

We often don’t understand our thoughts or behavior. Do you ever wonder, “Why do I keep doing that?” Or relate to the pop-singer P!nk when she sings, “But we try too hard, and it’s a waste of my time
Done looking for the critics, ’cause they’re everywhere
They don’t like my jeans, they don’t get my hair
Exchange ourselves and we do it all the time
Why do we do that? Why do I do that?
Why do I do that?”

That’s this sermon set to music. The chorus of that song is, “Don’t you ever feel like you’re less than, less than perfect.” Which is, once again, where we’re going. But we often don’t start or end there. It’s hard being alive. It’s a lifetime’s work to become yourself. Everyone else seems to have an opinion on who we should be. But we can only be ourselves as everyone is already taken.

I mean, we have all these labels to deal with. We’re either too short, too tall, too skinny or too big. We’re too much or not enough. We’re male and we’re female or something else or the mind doesn’t fit the body so we’re trans and all the struggle that goes with that.

There’s our mental health and those struggles. Some are contextual; a hard time at work, a hard season of life where everyone and our pets keep dying on us. Then there’s the chronic struggles of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, neurodivergence and all that jazz.

Then there’s family systems. Birth order. Parental closeness or distance. Family emotional webs and dynamics. Economics, context, world outlook, genetics, and more! The soup we’re born into really never leaves us.

Oh, and then we have our Astrology signs and birth stars and Myers Briggs, and Enneagram numbers. All of these things supposedly say who we are. What stage is the moon in. That has bearing on our mood and personalities. We should invent like… a ring to help us see our mood at any given time. More emotional awareness is good, right?

Then there’s the clothes. Are these appropriate? Does this brand reflect my personality and outlook of the world? If it were up to me, I’d wear a band t-shirt and jeans and consider the matter closed, but apparently that’s not how people expect a pastor to dress.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that we’re a Trinity. We’re a mysterious mix of different evolutionary brains.[1] Like we have the reptilian brain; survival. Eating. Nervous system stuff. Our mammalian brain: to go with the herd. Acknowledge group dynamics. Then there’s our human brain: our frontal lobe with its abstract thinking and math and art and creativity.

That’s one of the Trinity that we are. Although the triune brain model remains useful as a metaphor, many neuroscientists now consider it an oversimplified account of brain evolution. So here’s another Trinity: Mind, body, spirit.

Sometimes our mind keeps serving us things that aren’t helpful. Like, “Oh, look! You messed up. You are a terrible person. Do you find this helpful? You seem to like thinking this thought at times like these.” It takes a lot to learn to ignore the inner critic and find new neuropathways for our brain to serve us.

Our bodies are a mystery. Sometimes when something feels sore, the last thing we want to do is move. But movement is medicine. It’s counter intuitive. Also, we’re learning what gut health does to our mental state. Some research suggests probiotics may influence mood and mental state.[2] So our bodies are connected to our brain. It’s why we feel better after eating. Or exercising. Not during, but after. Mostly.

Then both of those affect our spirit. Our vibe. Our energy that we bring into any given situation. Sometimes this is right in line with our mind and body. If we didn’t get enough sleep, and we’re physically and mentally tired, it affects our spirit. Except for when it doesn’t. Or Mercury is in retrograde. Or that one time our fortune cookie said something we’re still holding onto.

Baffled? Yeah, yeah. Me too. It’s all too much. We don’t all look like models. And that’s bad. And it’s worse for those that do. Because they are only valued for their looks, and not what’s on the inside. And that’s damaging in another way.

SHEESH. After all this, what is our only comfort in life and death? According to the Heidelberg Catechism, it’s Jesus. This teaching comes to us from the German heritage of the UCC. The exact question and answer is this: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?

That I belong, both body and soul and in life and in death, not to myself, but to my faithful savior Jesus Christ, who has totally paid for all my sins with his precious blood and completely liberated me from the power of the devil, and who takes care of me so well that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven. In fact, everything must work together for my salvation. Besides this, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready to live for him from now on.”[3]

Part of me wants to argue with this. Like the hair falling from my head part for starters. But here’s what I like. I am not my own. I don’t really belong to myself. I think that’s true, as uncomfortable it is to admit. As philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre famously suggested, we often come to understand ourselves through the imagined judgment of others.[4] Not the judgement of others, the imagined judgement. So, we aren’t our own: we are who we think other think we are.

We are social animals. We look to one another. Peer pressure is a real thing. A lot of the internal critic voices come from disproval I met early on. When I was shamed, when I was bullied, all those things that form us in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

I’d rather exchange those voices for a better one. How about my faithful savior Jesus Christ who gives me assurance for this life and the next. His assurance makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready to live for him from now on. And Jesus has a way better view of us than we have of us.

When God put on flesh and dwelt among us, where did he go? Who did he hang out with? He didn’t go to the top of the social pecking order. He wasn’t born in a palace in a town that was known. He was born to and hung out with the losers. Born in a backwater town, by a poor couple who didn’t have a roof over their head. Or if they did, it was a barn roof; for there was no room for them in the inn.

The cool kids, the religious leaders and gatekeeps kept asking, “Who is this guy who hangs out with sinners?!” Others are impressed by how he teaches with authority and his knowledge and questions, even at a young age.

Jesus constantly hangs and defends the least of these. The hungry. The widow and orphan. Those with a checkered past. Those with unsolvable medical ailments, who have been ignored by their communities. They have a demon, they say. They are outcast and the reviled. Jesus goes right to them.

Who are you to think you’re beyond the love of such a man as this? The evidence is clear. The presence of God is good news for us who struggle with self-esteem. Those who struggle with talking nicely or thinking well of ourselves. Jesus thinks you’re pretty swell.

In fact, I believe we all have an inner child. One that just was joy! And ran around with abandon until we were told we weren’t enough. Or we were wrong. Or worms. Or whatever. Yet Jesus isn’t having any of that. Jesus sees past all of the names we’ve been called and have internalized. Instead, he says, “Let your inner child come to me.”

Despite the objections of his disciples, Jesus places a child at the center and quietly dismantles every performance-based identity. This must mean that our truest self is not something we earn or construct, but something received, named, and cherished by God long before we understand it.

Well, pastor. That’s nice of you to say. But you don’t know me. No. I don’t. But you don’t know you either. And the one who does, loves you fully and completely and offers us daily bread and a covenant for the forgiveness of sins. May we give ourselves to that fully. Right here. Right now. Who are you? You are beloved. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Works Cited

[1] Paul D. MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York: Plenum Press, 1990); Joseph E. LeDoux, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains (New York: Viking, 2019).

[2] Daniel Rojas-Valverde et al., “Examining the Interaction between Exercise, Gut Microbiota, and Neurodegeneration: Future Research Directions,” Biomedicines 11, no. 8 (2023): 2267, https://doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines11082267; Vincenzo Monda et al., “Exercise Modifies the Gut Microbiota with Positive Health Effects,” Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity 2017 (2017): 3831972, https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/3831972.

[3] Lee C. Barrett III, trans., The Heidelberg Catechism: A New Translation for the 21st Century (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2007), 29.

[4] Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.