The Gift of Belonging

This Lent we are talking about the Gifts of Jesus. One of the most beautiful gifts he shared was the gift of belonging.

For this message we read the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman and the twelve-year-old girl in March 5:21-43. Now, you may be asking yourselves what a scripture reading about two healings has to do with belonging, but I assure you it does.

If we take this story at face value we might say that it is simply about Jesus’ ability to heal people, or about believing and having faith. I’d like to look a little deeper. Let’s ask this question: whether or not these events actually happened, why did Mark include these two healing stories? From what the gospels tell us, there were a great many healing stories, why these? What do these stories tell us about Jesus, God and us?

Before answering that question, let me remind you that to “belong” in Jewish society in the first century meant that you were following the laws of what it meant to be Jewish, all 613 of them. This included keeping kosher, following cleanliness regulations, restricting contact between the sexes, among other things. It was also much easier to “belong” if you were a man because you held the power in any given circumstance, but especially in religion.

Now, the author of Mark clearly saw Jesus as a man with power within him, power that came from God. The centurion who witnesses Jesus’ death at the end of the Gospel of Mark is said to have exclaimed, “Clearly, this was God’s Own.” For Mark, Jesus came from God, was an extension of God’s power, was the Messiah or Anointed One, the one to save the Jews from oppression.

Yet, Jesus doesn’t concern himself with only the Jews, or only the “in group” the ones who “belong.” Jesus, through these stories in Mark, pushes the boundaries of who is within God’s care and concern. It is not just the men in power, it is not just the Jews… it is also women and children. Specifically, here, a woman who may not have even been Jewish (text doesn’t say), and who was bleeding, or hemorrhaging (and had been for many years). In Jewish cleanliness code, this made her unclean and so therefore to be avoided at all costs. This poor woman had likely been an outcast for years. And, Jesus heals a girl child who essentially held the lowest rank in any Jewish family, she would inherit nothing and would cost the family a dowry to get her married one day.

I believe Mark told these stories to reinforce that, for God, everyone belongs, everyone is part of the circle, everyone is sacred and has worth.

Brene’ Brown talks about belonging as an “innate human desire to be part of something bigger than us.” Typically, that means belonging to a group of people. Most likely the first place the majority of us felt like we belonged was in our families. But can you remember the first place you felt like you didn’t belong, where you couldn’t safely be your authentic self and be accepted?

I remember being called names, or being made fun of on the playground at recess, or not being allowed to play with certain groups. Those young experiences sting. But even when we’re older and wiser, it can still hurt to feel like you’re being left out when you’d like to belong.

When I first attended a church at the age of 17, it felt like a coming home experience. I felt like I belonged, like that was where I was supposed to be. Twenty-eight years later, I left the United Methodist Church because I no longer belonged as I was. I tried to “fit in” by hiding my sexual orientation and taming my theology for a couple of years, but that just hurt my soul.

When we created Sacred Journeys, we wanted this to be a place where everyone belonged. We didn’t want there to be any obstacles to feeling fully accepted, wanted and cared about. We didn’t even want to have members and non-members, but the IRS sent our application back and said, basically, if you’re going to be a church, you have to show us what you’re going to require for membership. So, we came up with a very basic formula of what it means to officially belong to Sacred Journeys.

So many churches want you to believe a certain way and behave a certain way in order to belong. Here, it is belonging that is most important, and while we’re all on the journey together we’ll continue to work out what we believe and how we behave. Here at Sacred Journeys, there are no creeds or beliefs you need to profess, no hoops you have to jump through, including baptism, no type of person you need to be or not be (gay, divorced, perfect) in order to be a member. And, if you don’t want to be an official member, that’s fine, too. We may never be perfect, but I’d like to think we’re following the example Jesus set about being inclusive, open and accepting.

Let me push the concept of belonging one more step. Brene’ Brown, in Braving the Wilderness, said:

True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.

True belonging, in a deeply spiritual sense, “is not something we negotiate externally, it is what we carry in our hearts.” True belonging is being so at home in our own shoes, so ok with who we are (with all our faults and failings), so centered and grounded in our own sacredness that we belong, as Maya Angelou said, “everywhere and nowhere.”

In other words, we’re not looking for affirmation or acceptance from anyone else to be comfortable in whatever place or group we happen to be in. True belonging simply requires us to show up authentically and not place the burden of belonging on what someone else thinks, says or does. We all know people like this, who simply belong everywhere as they are.

Belonging nowhere means that to truly belong to ourselves is about being at home when we are alone. We belong in our own company. We don’t need anyone or anything else to complete us or to affirm us.

Honestly, I think all of this, again, describes the person Jesus was and the gift of belonging he shared. He was authentically himself wherever he went, and with whoever he was with. And he belonged with himself alone in the wilderness, or speaking to a crowd, or on a cross. This, I think, is a big reason he could extend belonging to anyone and everyone. He had it within him to give. Far beyond the woman and girl in our story today, there were all the other myriad of people who were drawn to him. All of them belonged… even if he disagreed with them!

The challenge is that it is hard to maintain an interior feeling of belonging. When I feel most whole, most confident, most “good” about myself is when I feel the deepest sense of belonging to myself and so it feels easy to belong wherever I am and with whomever I am with.

When I feel down on myself, unworthy and unlikeable, I can be in a group of my best friends and still feel like I don’t belong.

It is for those times that we especially need places like this. Places we can go to be reminded that we always belong to God, and to one another, even when we don’t feel like it.

Lenten Blessings,

Kaye