I will sing of the Lord's unfailing love forever! Young and old will hear of your faithfulness. Your unfailing love will last forever. Your faithfulness is as enduring as the heavens. Psalm 89: 1- 2

"You Have Given Me a Body"

". . . when Christ came into the world, he said to God, "You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer. You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. Then I said, 'Look, I have come to do your will, O God--as is written about me in the Scriptures'" (Hebrews 10: 5 - 7).

"You have given me a body to offer." I read those words again (for the first time, it would seem) a couple of months ago and they've come to mind over and over again since. There are so many things in this passage that I hadn't seen before.

First, God gave Jesus a body. Well, yes, but it struck me when reading the passage this time that apparently, he hadn't had one before. It kind of blows my mind to think about that. . . . So, at a specific point in time, God gave Jesus a body in which to enter into human history, and, ever since, we've marked the timeline of this planet as being either before (BC or BCE) or after (AD or CE) this event. Wow.

Humans are big on marking time. We mark time by celebrating birthdays and anniversaries and holidays. We assign dates to the first day of seasons. We track moon phases. We mark calendars, whether traditional or digital, to keep track of appointments and due dates and events we don't want to miss. We mark the end of an old year with celebration, and the beginning of a new year with resolutions to be better at. . . well, you name it. We like new beginnings. They're freeing and they give us hope. God gave Jesus a body. Now there's a new beginning, the most freeing, hope-giving new beginning of all time.

Secondly, I was intrigued by Jesus' response to God the Father giving him a body. "Look, I have come to do your will, O God."  Plain and simple, Jesus was given a body so he could do God's will.  Like Isaac on the mountain, when his father, Abraham, bound him and placed him on the altar of sacrifice, Jesus did not argue or complain. What was God's will in Jesus' case? Why did God give Jesus a body? For one reason:

"For God's will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time." (Hebrews 10: 10)

Ah. So it was all about us, this giving and accepting of a body to do God's will.

And then it hit me. I, too, have been given a body. Obviously, not to do anything that would affect all of humankind, and though the year of my birth is momentous as it marks the beginning of the space age (as my brother likes to point out, with emphasis on the word "space"), no one is marking time by my birth. And yet, this principle of having been given a body for a purpose larger than myself does apply to me. This is an idea I haven't been able to get out of my head since reading that passage in Hebrews a couple of months ago.

So, when I was in the grocery store on a recent sub-zero day, and a thirty-something woman wearing a sock cap, worn, patched jeans, and a dirty gray coat with a button dangling from a thread, approached me while I was in the paper products aisle trying to decide between Kleenex or Puffs, and asked me, "Can I talk to you for a minute?" that principle was at the surface of my thoughts.

I chose to listen. She was about to be thrown out of her room into the cold, she said, because she couldn't pay for another night. Could I help? "I'm not asking for money," she said. No, I don't think she was. I saw fear in her brown eyes.

I was in a grocery store aisle, not on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, yet the parable of the Good Samaritan came to mind, and I realized this was a time of choice for me. Was I the person who passed by on the other side of the road? Or was I the person who stopped to help? This was my opportunity for an intersection of faith and action. The words, "stay warm and eat well" came into my mind. They're from the following passage:

What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don't show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing and you say, "good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well"--but then you don't give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? (James 2:14-16).

"Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well." The words echoed in my mind. Who am I, I wondered--the person who says empty words, or the person who does something?

I told the woman that I didn't think she would be put out of her room. She asked how that would happen, and could she meet me somewhere? Or have my number? No, and no. "I'll wait for you at the front," she said. I told her calmly and firmly not to wait for me. She finally walked away.

I talked with my husband (who'd been in another part of the store), then put in a call to Lafayette Urban Ministry to ask the best way to go about helping the woman. Or should I help her? Would it be enabling her bad choices if I went to her hotel (I'd asked for her name and room number) and paid for another night so she could be warm? In a world of scams, was I just being scammed? The woman at Lafayette Urban Ministry said something I hope never to forget. "You have to go on faith. If we think everyone is scamming us, then we don't trust anyone and never help anyone. And if she's scamming you, then it's on her, not you. You will have done the right thing." Yes, and yes.

            God gave Jesus a body. Jesus used that body to do God's will. God gave me a body. He gave you one, too. How would the world be different if we, too, each saw our bodies as being given to us to do God's will? Maybe, in this new year, this new beginning we've been given, we should try to find out.

Daye Phillippo

January 2018