PBS - Personal Belovedness Sense

Note - an audio version is also available for this homily.

Sunday January 9, 2011

James Krahn

Good Morning and Happy New Year!

How is your Personal Belovedness Sense this morning, your P.B.S?   For this short teaching, maybe for this coming year,  PBS can perhaps shift from being the Public Broadcasting Service(which channel you either love or surf over very quickly) to being your Personal Belovedness Sense.  That’s a theme that comes out of our gospel reading for today from the story of Jesus’ baptism. I don’t know for sure if what happens in that story is very simple or quite complex, maybe it’s both. But before I go further into the gospel passage allow me to try to paraphrase the prophetic Isaiah passage about this same Jesus who will show up at the Jordan River and give himself quite intentionally and with some persistence into the hands of John the baptizer.

The Isaiah 42 passage says something like this (and this is not from ‘The Message’): 

Here is the Helper who I’m giving to the world, who I support 100%  He is my choice, a thrill

runs through my heart when I see or even think of Him – my deepest essence covers Him from head to toe.  He will proceed in such a way that things are made right, in all places, the world

over.  He won’t go screaming and being dramatic and trying to draw attention, votes or personal popularity. He won’t be trying to fill the plazas with great speeches and rallies. For those who are barely hanging in there, who cannot shake their pain and shame, He will not be the one to put them over the edge. For those for whom the light of life is sputtering on fumes, He won’t blow them away or put them out of their misery.  Steadily, steadily, consistently, he will proceed, so that things are made right, so that things will become as I made them to be.  He won’t give up, He will not pack it in, He will stay strong, He will not be put down or silenced until He has established a new order of living and relating on this planet and places far and wide hunger for and anticipate what He has to teach       I am theLord…I have held your hand, I have looked after you, I have made you the promise and the proof for the people, the great revealer to people everywhere, to open eyes and minds and hearts that are stuck shut, that are stuck in the OFF position;  to set free  those who are all bound up and trapped and no longer know what is up or down, where to go, what to do,  or what to think, but are absolutely longing for freedom.

This is the helper, the servant of the Lord, who comes one day to the Jordan River to be baptized.

Despite John’s protests, Jesus insists and persists, this is the way in which He needs to proceed. Is it this persistence that draws the amazing belovedness response from above that follows, this following in the way of re-thinking?  I don’t know.  But as Jesus comes up out of the water, there unfolds a scene at once simple and serene, powerful and penetrating. Something opens in the sky, something light and pure and ethereal alights on Him and blesses Him, something powerful shakes Him and shudders through Him with delight. Words of belovedness, favour, and pleasedness, if there be such a word, envelope Him. I believe He feels attuned to, beyond imagining; maybe He feels ready to go – maybe He doesn’t want to move a muscle for a very long time, just wanting to keep drinking this in. Jesus comes from a family, and from a community, He’s a grown man now, He’s making His own decisions, He’s on His own now and yet in the fullest sense possible, He sure is not alone. Have you every asked yourself if the work of  Joseph and Mary, the relationships with them and perhaps with siblings, prepared Him in a significant way for this moment of intense belovedness and pleasedness?

Let’s consider briefly what this experience of Jesus, before he is driven into the wilderness, before he returns full of the Holy Spirit, before He calls His followers and fulfills the Isaiah 42 passage, might be saying to us and might be saying to anyone in the world.

To start with, the study has been done, not by a sociologist, not by a theologian, not by a counselor, a human behaviourist or a relationship expert, but by a mathematician, a cool, calculating mathematician (OK maybe a warm-hearted mathematician) but someone into statistics. If you discreetly and respectfully mount a data-collecting camcorder in the homes of typical people, let it run for a long, long time, and then process and analyze exhaustively what goes on, looking at every facet of household life, here’s what’s been found: when everything is evaluated, when all is said and done, the only thing that stands out as a factor in lasting enduring relationships between people is appreciation.  It’s the only one.  Where appreciation is exhibited and expressed, it correlates with a sustained relationship. The question could be asked right here, how are each of us feeling in terms of receiving expressions of appreciation from others, and in making our own expressions of appreciation known to those around us, both those very close to us and those less closely attached to us?  Asked another way, like the way we began this explorations, how is your personal belovedness sense  (your P.B.S.) and how are you contributing to another’s personal belovedness sense?

A second point:  each one of us in this circle, and every person in our world, generally moves through life with a certain bonding and attachment style deeply embedded in their being. The estimate is that about 60% of people generally have a secure sense of attachment going back to a time prior to being verbal and prior to being really even conscious of self. Secure means that the caregivers are happy to be with you, welcome your feelings and thoughts, feel safe and responsive.  The other 40% of people attach and bond in ways that involve distracted (too busy to really care) caregivers, dismissive (get away from me, don’t bother me) caregivers, or disorganized (one minute I’m safe, the next minute I’m scary, it’s anybody’s guess what I’ll be next) caregivers.  In a powerful way, these attachment styles filter and determine the “metabolism” of a lifetime of experiences from about 4 years of age onwards. I happen to feel that often our attachment style has blends of the above, and our own ways of parenting and relating have blends and mixtures of these styles as well.  I have no doubt that my parents were delighted in me from a young age, that they gave me joy strength, and that they appreciated me.

Were they ever distracted, dismissive or disorganized or am I ever these as well?  Probably yes.

My father once shared with me that it took until he was in his mid to late twenties until he got the sense that his father seemed to really approve of him or think he was something, maybe just after he became a doctor.  GULP!   But I come from a cultural and religious group that had some strong leanings this way which included tremendous fear of pride, a good dose of false-humility, with solid sprinklings of perfectionism and underexpressiveness of emotion (which is of course very different than feeling emotion).  This leads to a question about our coming to God and what sense of God we have as we approach – do we often see God as secure, always happy to be with us, safe, approachable, welcoming us with all that we bring, or do we more often expect that God is busy, preoccupied, has more important matters to deal with, is likely to say “get away” “don’t bother me now” or turn angry and scary in unpredictable ways? Has Jesus changed the way we perceive God and has God sent Him because we’ve often had it all wrong going way back in history to the children of Israel?  Has God sent Jesus to show really, really clearly “I have taken you by the hand and kept you.”?  ( That’s Isaiah 42 again)

No less a gifted writer, thinker, and caregiver of the least of these, than Henri Nouwen wrote a small book called  Life of the Beloved, back in the early 90’s, round about the time when Grain of Wheat almost came apart. Attempting to convey the deepest word that he could share with the average secular person out there, he settled on the word ‘Beloved.’  From reflecting on Jesus’ experience at baptism, Nouwen tried to bring across to a Jewish reporter and his friends that “You are the Beloved.”  That is the deepest truth I can share with you. “Yes, there is that voice, the voice that speaks from above and from within and that whispers softly or declares loudly: ‘You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.’ It certainly is not easy to hear that voice in a world filled with voices that shout: ‘You are no good, you are ugly; you are worthless; you are despicable, you are nobody –unless you can demonstrate the opposite.’ These negative voices are so loud and so persistent that it is easy to believe them. That’s the great trap. It is the trap of self-rejection.”  Nouwen goes on to say “self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence…though the experience of being the Beloved has never been completely absent from my life, I never claimed it as my core truth…That voice has always been there, but it seems that I was much more eager to listen to other, louder voices saying: ‘Prove that your worth something; do something relevant, spectacular or powerful, and then you will earn the love you so desire.’” After Nouwen completed the book, his friend Fred responded that it seemed the book was written for the converted and not for truly secular people, that before starting to speak about being the Beloved, questions as fundamental as Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here? How can I give my life meaning? How do I get faith? needed answering, or the meditations on Belovedness would remain dreamlike.  So this answers why Jesus could receive God’s expressions of Belovedness and pleasedness, favor could alight on Him and make sense because perception of relationship and connectedness, identity, faith and meaning were already growing in Him.  Clearly Belovedness, as good as it sounds, is an abstraction without feet and hands, face and heart to go with it, to demonstrate it.

We are left with a few things to ponder.  Truly God is happy to be with us, Jesus is delighted in us, the gentle favour of the Holy Spirit is there to alight on us whenever we quiet to become aware.   Are we happy to be with ourselves?  Have we reached any contentment and satisfaction there?  Can we be happy to be with others and convey belovedness before we appreciate our delightfulness in God’s eyes, God’s voice, God’s Spirit?  When is the last time you have felt the thrill of God’s delight in you, course through your being?  For Jesus, the Belovedness experience wasn’t the start of a tingly, prolonged series of hot yoga sessions. Rather, it proceeded straight into wilderness and temptation days, rejection by the home crowd, calling His followers and getting down to work. Undoubtedly the “My favor rests upon Him” experience was transmitted to Him in just the way He needed to get Him going and to see Him through all of what was to follow. And so it will be with each of us as we receive “You are my Beloved” in our own personal way – for some it will alight, for some it will envelope, for some it will embrace with tender strength, and for some it will rock us down to our socks.  Ask yourself, each morning, or, each evening, or maybe morning and evening:  how is my Personal Belovedness Sense (my PBS);  can I hear “my favour rests upon you.?”