by Marcia Mount Shoop
Luke 4:1-13
“The invitation is for us to trust ourselves with how we are made. We are invited to stay with our big S self–with your adult, integrated self–the Self who knows that grief is love. Your Self is the one who can tend to the other parts of you who are afraid of the pain or ashamed of the pain or angry about the pain that we all have to feel.
Jesus is the model for that integrated Adult Self–the one who knows himself and his own dignity. He is the model for love, and therefore he is the model for grief. Jesus gave it all up for love. Bread, Riches, Dominion.
Jesus gives us a kind of cosmic “attunement” in the psychic sense–he understands, acknowledges, affirms–he’s been there and so he honors the emotional depth and pain of being human.
Jesus was trauma informed–he understood the intricacies of how humans work–we need this “attunement,” this mirroring, to not languish in trauma, but to find a new depth of life in our proximity to death. That’s the part that can build our collective confidence and consciousness. Jesus teaches us not to fear death, but to know the power that it death has to actually be life-affirming and enlivening. The closer we get to this life-force, this flame of Christ that is within us and at the center of who we are collectively, the more we can truly thrive together.”
Watch the full GCPC service on 3/9/25 here
(Scripture and sermon begin at 58:58)