Embodied. Lee Ann M. Pomrenke

each and every one of his disciples. Yet he would not always physically be there to hold them together. “Come and follow me. I will make you fish for people,” he invited. Perhaps all some of them heard was “follow me.” When we are new to the family, tuning into that primary relationship until it is firmly established is critical. Until we can trust the One, we are not much good at radiating the loving purpose of our family out to others. I bet Jesus’s followers functioned as if Jesus was the “president.” They may not have depended on him for everything, with meals and lodging likely arranged by the women, but for advice and reassurance and settling disputes and empowerment to do hard things and validation of being special and beloved, they likely turned to Jesus. He was the center of the family, like a mother.

      A lot of a mother’s time building trust is spent doing not much at all, or what seems like not much. We spend an inordinate amount of time meeting basic needs: feeding, dressing, and soothing. Yet while we are doing these things, are we silent? No, of course not. We are talking, making eye contact, noticing things about our children’s bodies, asking about what is going on with them. We are practicing the care we hope our children will someday give others and teaching them how members of our family respond to hurt. Jesus’s early followers—men and women—had lots of time with Jesus. The most notable incidents were remembered, retold, and eventually written down. Yet there were most certainly many mundane ordinary days that strengthened their bonds of trust. We like to focus on Jesus as otherworldly and therefore perfect, but he was also fully human, so his “children” in the faith probably also saw him cranky, tired of being needed by everyone, really looking for some help over here, and frustrated that they hadn’t become independent yet.

      There is so much touch involved in caregiving: carrying, holding hands, embracing, and rubbing someone’s back as they calm down or fall asleep. It is astonishing how abruptly after reaching Mama’s arms an infant can turn off the tears. Getting a couple to hold hands for mutual support during marriage therapy may change the dynamic significantly. Jesus uses the potent balm of touch among his closest “chosen family” and many others, all children of God. If Jesus feels the power go out of him as a hemorrhaging woman touches his garment, then he probably—like a mother accustomed to small hands reaching for her—recognizes that touch is a caregiving superpower. Jesus takes a young girl’s hand, and thus raises her from the dead (Mark 5:41–42). He commands his disciples: “Let the little children come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs,” and by embracing them smashes cultural norms that devalue children until they are of an age to help support the family. Jesus hands Peter the fish he has cooked himself, on the beach after his resurrection. I imagine Jesus supporting the hand that takes it with a lingering touch, pressing the wounds from the nails into Peter’s own flesh. When Thomas needs proof that the One in that locked room is indeed his beloved Jesus, he readily shows his scars, taking Thomas’s own hand to place it in his side. Like a mama showing her C-section scar, the body cannot lie: I am yours. The power of touch works in both directions. To feel our hearts beating together while we hug can build attachment within the caregiver too and strengthen our mutual sense of loving and being loved.

      Another way to interpret that incident with the bleeding woman—depending on Jesus’s tone—might be exasperation: “Who is touching me now?” Clergy women talk among ourselves about being “touched out” from all the clinging of small children, hand-holding of elders, the handshaking/hugging line, and huddling up for youth group community-building exercises. When there are worshipers who give off sexually inappropriate vibes and insist on moving in for too-long hugs instead of taking the handshake offered, our bodies, with which we do our ministry, are at risk of feeling violated. Our bodies do not feel like our own, in real and vulnerable ways. This loss of personal space is magnified during pregnancy, when people might feel it is permissible to touch our expanding midsection. That identification with pastor as “part of our family” blurs their sense of decorum. Yet clergy mothers know that our availability builds the congregation’s confidence in the Word we preach and the love we are attempting to fortify in our faith community and family. Sometimes it is too much. We want nothing more than to get on a boat and float away from the crowds for a little regrouping. (We know they’ll be there whenever we get to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, but for just a little while, can we have a moment with fewer bodies reaching for us?)

      Jesus’s powerful touch and ours are not just about granting miracles. Sometimes it can seem that way. People ask me to pray for them, although I know their prayers are just as effective as mine. I want to believe that miraculous healing is not why people are drawn to Jesus, or why they return to church during crises. The power of being trustworthy is holding people, witnessing and participating in their pain during the non-miraculous times. Remember when Jesus said, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”? He lived an itinerant, uncertain life in solidarity with our precarious lives. His physical body was touched to the point of death, until he was lifted up by God to new life.

      Jesus’s body was a significant part of his ministry of presence, building trust. But his words are most certainly trustworthy, too. They tell the truth about us, both painful and reassuring. When speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), Jesus earns her trust by telling the truth about her marital history, which turns her into an evangelist for Jesus, the “living water.” In the upper room during Holy Week, Jesus honestly identifies which of his disciples will betray him, then delivers to even Judas Iscariot his life-changing words that Jesus is giving up his own body and blood for us. His words do more than communicate; they establish a way people may come into direct contact with God on earth. His words are also actions, which can be trusted and should be repeated by us in remembrance of him.

      From the start, caregivers telling the truth to us, about us, matters. Before we become teenagers trying to define ourselves against our parents, the trustworthiness of our central parenting figure sets the stage for how our relationship can recover from that inevitable defiance. For example, it matters that we talk to our kids about sex and how babies are made in age-appropriate ways from a young age, using the correct name for body parts. It is not the stork. If we are honest from the beginning, sharing bits of truth in matter-of-fact ways as they grow, what they are not able to process will go over their heads and what they need to hear, they will. What the children will most certainly understand is that they can talk to us about anything, especially the subjects that become fundamental parts of our identities.

      For our children and within our congregations, two of the most crucial topics to be honest about are death and grief. Death is coming for us all, and even though we hope for the resurrection of the dead with Christ, grief is mighty powerful. We will all experience many kinds of loss, some of it accompanied by guilt, some by the pain of victimhood. More than anything, we need a God who will tell us the truth about that, weep for real, beg for that cup to be taken from him, and demonstrate that, even on the other side, wounds are still there. That is truth telling I can trust. Children of God do not need empty promises or the stifling attempts at comfort that prove the other person is uncomfortable such as, “Don’t cry” or “God will make something good out of this.” We need caregiving that tells the truth and is comforting because someone is in solidarity with us.

      I was a teaching assistant for a freshman core class that encompassed Theology 101 among other subjects. I witnessed college freshmen who were so disturbed by reading the Bible and realizing for the first time that there are, in fact, two different creation accounts in Genesis that one young woman actually developed a kind of tic, a shiver. We talked about the different sources in putting the scriptures together. The assertion that those words were written in a way other than by holy dictation broke her. The faith community that raised her had reinforced repeatedly that the Bible was the unquestionable Word of God, so to read it as literature or more specifically as a compilation of multiple faithful sources raised serious questions about her home congregation’s trustworthiness.