SPEAKER_01: Well, good morning.
SPEAKER_01: If you would like to take your Bibles out and turn with me to John chapter 16, I'm going to read verses 28 through 32.
SPEAKER_01: The words will be on the screen as well.
SPEAKER_01: And when I finish reading the scripture, I will say the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're so inclined, you can reply by saying, thanks be to God, just kind of in keeping with the Anglican tradition that Maddie and Josh just talked about.
SPEAKER_01: So here now the reading of God's scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This is Jesus speaking to his disciples from John 16, 28 through 32.
SPEAKER_01: I came from the Father and entered the world.
SPEAKER_01: Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.
SPEAKER_01: Then Jesus' disciples said, Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech.
SPEAKER_01: Now we can see that you know all things, and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions.
SPEAKER_01: This makes us believe that you came from God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you now believe?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus replied.
SPEAKER_01: You will leave me all alone, yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
SPEAKER_01: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Most merciful Father, bless the reading, the hearing, and the doing of your word this day.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: For the last three weeks, we've been exploring what it means to have our minds transformed by God, such that we come to share in the mind of Christ and to possess his mind as our own.
SPEAKER_01: And more specifically, we've been looking at what it means to have these embodied minds, minds that are inescapably connected to and shaped by our brains, our bodies, nervous systems, even our heart and our gut.
SPEAKER_01: We've explored what some of the barriers are to the transformation of our minds and how we might cooperate with the work of the Holy Spirit to overcome those barriers.
SPEAKER_01: And each time we've gathered for this series, we begun our time by reading Romans 12, 1 and 2 from a couple of different translations, and these verses serve as a kind of anchor points for this series.
SPEAKER_01: So I'll read first Romans 12, 1 and 2 from the NIV.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
SPEAKER_01: This is your true and proper worship.
SPEAKER_01: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
SPEAKER_01: Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.
SPEAKER_01: And then from the New Century version.
SPEAKER_01: So, brothers and sisters, since God has shown us great mercy, I beg you to offer your lives as a living sacrifice to him.
SPEAKER_01: Your offering must be only for God and pleasing to him, which is the spiritual way for you to worship.
SPEAKER_01: Do not be shaped by this world.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, be changed within by a new way of thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Then you will be able to decide what God wants for you.
SPEAKER_01: You will know what is good and pleasing to him and what is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Two weeks ago, John Benda talked about uh embodiment and what it means to have these embodied minds.
SPEAKER_01: And last week, Pastor Nate uh preached about mindfulness.
SPEAKER_01: If you haven't had a chance to listen to those sermons, I encourage you to go back and do so.
SPEAKER_01: And today I have the privilege of sharing with you how our relationships actually shape our brains, which in turn shapes the kind of mind we possess, and how the Holy Spirit can and does work in line with our embodied brains and our relationships to transform our minds into the mind of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And I want us to do this by actually looking at Jesus' own mind with the understanding that Jesus didn't just show up on earth with a fully formed mind that just automatically trusted God because Jesus was the co-eternal Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: We simply can't chalk up the mind Jesus had to him being fully God.
SPEAKER_01: Because for nearly 1700 years, the church has affirmed as orthodox belief that Jesus had a fully human mind as well as a fully human body.
SPEAKER_01: Luke tells us in his gospel that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.
SPEAKER_01: We know God doesn't grow in wisdom because God himself is the source of all wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: But the fully human Jesus, with his fully human mind, did grow in wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: So you see, it's not enough for us to believe that Jesus had a fully human body, but not a fully human mind.
SPEAKER_01: A guy with a really cool name, Apollinarianus, Apollinarius.
SPEAKER_01: I would be a way cooler person if I had a name like that.
SPEAKER_01: He taught this view that Jesus had a fully human body, but not a fully human mind.
SPEAKER_01: And the church universally said, eh, try again, Apollinarius.
SPEAKER_01: His view was condemned not once, but twice by two different church councils.
SPEAKER_01: And it was the church father, Gregory of Nasienzis.
SPEAKER_01: Again, if I could introduce myself as Kevin of Nazienzis, you all would think entirely differently about me.
SPEAKER_01: I think anyway, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: But Gregory, when he was condemning Apollinarius's view, he famously said, What Jesus did not assume is not redeemed or healed.
SPEAKER_01: And Gregory's point was that if Jesus did not possess a fully human mind, then our fully human minds cannot be redeemed or healed or transformed by Jesus' healing and redemptive work on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: So for 1700 years the church has said, don't follow Apollinarius.
SPEAKER_01: Trust that Jesus had a fully human mind, just like you and I have, as well as having a fully human brain.
SPEAKER_01: And that means if our brains are shaped by our relationships, which in turn shape the minds we have, then Jesus' brain was also shaped by his relationships.
SPEAKER_01: And his mind was shaped by that brain.
SPEAKER_01: According to Dan Siegel, professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine, and the founding father of this field called interpersonal neurobiology, which is the basis of this sermon, but I'm really not supposed to say that, because if you hear that term, you're going to like disassociate.
SPEAKER_01: But the key insight of interpersonal neurobiology is this: relationships shape the architecture of the brain.
SPEAKER_01: And the architecture of the brain inescapably shapes the kind of mind we come to possess.
SPEAKER_01: According to joint research done by Harvard Medical School and Georgetown University School of Medicine, relationships profoundly alter the brain's physical structure and neural pathways.
SPEAKER_01: Social interaction and attachment trigger chemical releases that rewire neural networks, influencing brain areas involved in the regulation of emotions, executive functioning, and memory.
SPEAKER_01: You see, what we're learning is that the human mind emerges from or is the result of this dynamic interplay between our brains and our relationships with other people, especially our primary caregivers in early life.
SPEAKER_01: And what followers of Christ are realizing from all of this is that our minds also can and do emerge from the dynamic interplay between our brains and our relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: And I love how our own Laura Van Sickle Devers, who designed this series, put it when she said, our brains are to be, are created to be in connection with other brains.
SPEAKER_01: The way our brains are built depends upon being in relationship with caregivers.
SPEAKER_01: And to quote Dan Siegel again, the brain is designed for social connection and attunement to the needs of others.
SPEAKER_01: So in this series, we've talked about how the mind is embodied, and today we're talking about how the mind is both embodied and relational.
SPEAKER_01: And so the good news I want all of us to kind of grab hold of right now in all this is that because Jesus had a fully human mind, just like ours, and because Jesus' mind was inescapably connected to and shaped by his fully human brain and his relationships with people and with his heavenly Father, then the hope of us having minds transformed into the mind of Christ is not some hope that the Holy Spirit will do the work of transformation in spite of us having fully human minds, but that the Holy Spirit will work with the God-given grain of our humanity and the God-given grain of our brains and the God-given brain of our minds to transform them such that we come to share in the mind of Christ and possess it as our own.
SPEAKER_01: And today I want us to look at the mind of Christ specifically as it was on display in response to the reality that as Jesus approaches the cross, he is painfully aware that his disciples will abandon him, that they will forsake him, that they will leave him all entirely alone.
SPEAKER_01: And I want us to look at this specific aspect of Jesus' mind because what we see is that in the face of Jesus' abandonment by his friends, his mind remains a mind completely at rest and secure in the love of his heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_01: And it is this idea of knowing ourselves to be secure that is so crucial to the insights of interpersonal neurobiology.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'll say that term again, so we're good.
SPEAKER_01: So in the passage we read a moment ago from John 16, Jesus' disciples have been confused about what he's been saying.
SPEAKER_01: He's been kind of trying to teach them that he's going away, they can't go with him, they're confused what he means, they don't understand why they can't go.
SPEAKER_01: But then what appears to be something of kind of kind of a comical turn of events, Jesus' disciples all of a sudden say, Hey, Jesus, now we understand what you're saying.
SPEAKER_01: Now we believe you really came from God.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus does appear to be more than just a little skeptical of his disciples' sudden newfound understanding and belief.
SPEAKER_01: And he responds by saying, Wait, now do you believe me?
SPEAKER_01: Because they say Jesus was speaking clearly, but if you read what Jesus had saying, he was still speaking in a confusing manner the whole time.
SPEAKER_01: But his disciples seem to just be like, Yeah, now we get it.
SPEAKER_01: We're done.
SPEAKER_01: And what appears to be Jesus' attempt to help his disciples, you know, maybe be grounded in reality a little bit more, he tells them, okay, you say you understand, you say you now believe I came from God, but let me tell you what's about to happen.
SPEAKER_01: Very, very soon, all of you are going to be scattered.
SPEAKER_01: You are all going to hightail it out of here when the going gets tough, and you're going to leave me all alone.
SPEAKER_01: And in that moment when Jesus publicly acknowledges to his disciples that they are going to abandon him and leave him all alone.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' lower brain, his sympathetic nervous system don't kick in, they don't take over.
SPEAKER_01: There's no fight instinct, no flight instinct, no freeze, no fawning instinct.
SPEAKER_01: Still not sure what the heck that is.
SPEAKER_01: There is simply the astonishing claim of a mind that was completely at rest and secure in the love of his heavenly father.
SPEAKER_01: Yet I am not alone, for my father is with me.
SPEAKER_01: And don't get me wrong, I am certain Jesus would have gladly accepted his disciples staying with him.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm certain that would have been incredibly beneficial to Jesus, just like it would be beneficial to any one of us to have our friends stay with us as we face times of hardship and adversity.
SPEAKER_01: But he knows they won't.
SPEAKER_01: And his mind isn't focused on the fact that his disciples will leave him, but on the reality that his heavenly father won't leave him all alone, but will stay with him.
SPEAKER_01: And this isn't some untried, untested bravado on Jesus' part that will completely unravel once he begins to experience the humiliation, the shame, the torture, the indignity, the brutally painful reality of the cross.
SPEAKER_01: For on the cross we see Jesus display the exact same mind that he puts on display in John 16, 32, when he says, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And in order for us to get a sense of just how profound it is that Jesus' mind remained at rest and secure in the love of his heavenly Father as He was being crucified, we have to understand what the real point of crucifixion was in the Roman world.
SPEAKER_01: The point of crucifixion was not to kill somebody.
SPEAKER_01: The Romans were arguably the most ruthlessly efficient killers in the ancient Mediterranean world.
SPEAKER_01: If they wanted to kill somebody, they could do it in way more efficient, way cleaner ways than crucifixion.
SPEAKER_01: The point of crucifixion was to torture, humiliate, shame the victim, and inflict so much bodily pain on him that he would become convinced that whatever God he had worshipped up until that point, that God had utterly forsaken him.
SPEAKER_01: The point of crucifixion was to crush the victim's spirit, so that he had no choice but to admit there is no God but Caesar, and there is no kingdom but Rome.
SPEAKER_01: And the Romans perfected their craft.
SPEAKER_01: And yet we see in Jesus a mind that remains completely at rest and secure in the love of his heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_01: And I know what many of you are probably thinking, you're right to think it.
SPEAKER_01: You're thinking, but didn't Jesus say earlier, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, he did.
SPEAKER_01: And I wish I could unpack what I'm about to say more, but I can't for time's sake.
SPEAKER_01: But you're free to ask Pastor Nate all the questions you want when he gets back.
SPEAKER_01: But when first century Palestinian Jewish rabbis quoted the Psalms, they weren't like you and I.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't just lift a verse here and lift a verse there.
SPEAKER_01: When a rabbi quoted from a psalm, he would have had the entire psalm in his mind, and his hearers would have known that.
SPEAKER_01: So when Jesus quotes Psalm 22, one, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: He has all of Psalm 22 in mind.
SPEAKER_01: And what begins with that accusation, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: goes on to say, I will declare your name to my people.
SPEAKER_01: In the assembly I will praise you.
SPEAKER_01: You who fear the Lord, praise him.
SPEAKER_01: All you descendants of Jacob, honor him, revere him, all you descendants of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one.
SPEAKER_01: He has not hidden his face from him, but has instead listened to his cry for help.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus quotes Psalm 22, he is saying, Despite all appearances to the contrary, my father has not despised, my father has not scorned my suffering, my father has not hidden his face from me, but my father has listened to my cry for help.
SPEAKER_01: And please don't misunderstand me.
SPEAKER_01: In no way am I suggesting that Jesus didn't feel like God had forsaken him.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: I'm convinced that Jesus is saying, Father, I get it now.
SPEAKER_01: I get why David felt the way he felt.
SPEAKER_01: I get why David said what he said about being forsaken.
SPEAKER_01: Because if it is possible for you, Father, to forsake me, then this is absolutely what it would feel like.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus told his disciples that even though they would abandon him, he would not be alone, for his father would be with him.
SPEAKER_01: And his mind remained a mind completely at rest and secure in the love of his father.
SPEAKER_01: And when Jesus says, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, he is quoting from Psalm 31.
SPEAKER_01: And as I said a minute ago, if Jesus quoted one verse from a psalm, he has the whole psalm in mind.
SPEAKER_01: And in Psalm 31, immediately after the psalmist writes, Into your hands I commend my spirit, he goes on to say, As for me, I trust in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I will be glad and rejoice in your love, for you saw my affliction and knew the anguish of my soul.
SPEAKER_01: You have not given me into the hands of the enemy, but have set my feet in spacious place.
SPEAKER_01: How in the world can Jesus' mind be so fixed on something so painfully absurd?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has clearly been given into the hands of the enemy.
SPEAKER_01: How can his mind remain a mind so at rest and secure in his father's love that he trusts his father will still set his feet in a spacious place?
SPEAKER_01: And it's at this point that it is really tempting to take the road that Apollinarius took and kind of say something like, Well, you know, Jesus was the co-eternal Son of God, and you know, the Father promised the co-eternal Son of God he would raise him from the dead after three days.
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, because Jesus was the co-eternal Son of God, he just believed his father because, you know, that's what the co-eternal Son of God does.
SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus had to trust his father as a fully human person with a fully human body and a fully human brain and a fully human mind.
SPEAKER_01: And as Greg Lombard Ray likes to say, once we grasp how our relationships shape our brains and therefore our minds, we can't help but see this reality play out all over the pages of Scripture and especially in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_01: Because you see, when we read the Gospels, we see that Jesus' Heavenly Father shows up every time Jesus had a need.
SPEAKER_01: And his Father meets his son's needs in ways that communicate to his son, you matter, your needs matter, and you deserve to have your needs met in a way that shows you're loved and that offers you dignity.
SPEAKER_01: And because Jesus was fully human, with a fully human brain and a fully human mind, it's perfectly reasonable for us to believe that the way Jesus, his father showed up for him and met his needs shaped the architecture of Jesus' brain in such a way that the mind that emerged was a mind that trusted the Father would do what he said he would do, because from the very beginning the Father had consistently demonstrated his love for Jesus by caring for him in his time of need.
SPEAKER_01: To see what this kind of looks like, according to the insights of interpersonal neurobiology, I said one more time.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we're going to watch a little video.
SPEAKER_01: So, Isaac, do you mind playing the video for us?
SPEAKER_00: Child caregiver relationship models are formed through a pattern of interaction where the child expresses a need and the caregiver responds.
SPEAKER_00: How the caregiver responds to the child over time lays the foundation for the child's beliefs about themselves and others.
SPEAKER_00: These beliefs influence the child's capability to trust them.
SPEAKER_00: The attachment cycle starts with the child interlacing.
SPEAKER_00: And then a situation arises in which the child has a need.
SPEAKER_00: For example, the child becomes hungry and a need.
SPEAKER_00: Or act out to communicate distress to their carrier.
SPEAKER_00: The secure attachment cycle ends with contentment and connection.
SPEAKER_00: Developing trust.
SPEAKER_00: Disruption occurs when the child has a need.
SPEAKER_00: Expresses stress, but the need is not met.
SPEAKER_00: This character misreads or ignores the cue that the child is hungry, so they don't need the child.
SPEAKER_00: The child then remains distressed or anxious.
SPEAKER_00: They learn that they cannot trust their character to need that.
SPEAKER_00: Possibly leading to rage and happiness or anxiety.
SPEAKER_00: The disruptive attachment cycle ends with distress and disconnection.
SPEAKER_00: Over time, children express all kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: When caregivers do not attend to the child and leave their cues.
SPEAKER_00: Or when they are not able to respond to their child's needs.
SPEAKER_00: The attachment cycle is disruptive.
SPEAKER_00: And this trust and insecure attachment can be more.
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, when caregivers reliably and consistently meet those needs, trust and secure attachment are formed.
SPEAKER_00: Secure attachment lays the foundation for future self-worth in healthy relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine for some of you that was a trip down memory lane to like your psychology 101 or your human development across the lifespan course.
SPEAKER_01: And when I saw that video, I'm a Gen Xer, and that thing took me right back to elementary school in the 70s, man.
SPEAKER_01: That video is only like four years old, but it felt like it was made in 1978 to me.
SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's just me.
SPEAKER_01: Isaac, if you could pull up the attachment cycle just diagram, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: What I want us to, I want to unpack this a little bit more, and what I want us to see from this diagram is something that literally every single one of us experienced during the first three years of our life, even though none of us really have any memory of it happening.
SPEAKER_01: And I want us to have a little bit of fun.
SPEAKER_01: We've been talking about some pretty serious, heavy stuff, and I want to kind of bring an appropriate level, you know, of levity to it.
SPEAKER_01: So I want us to imagine that we're just one big, happy family, and we have a baby.
SPEAKER_01: And our baby has a need, and we're gonna go with the need of being hungry.
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna do the dirty diaper route.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, what does our baby do when he's hungry?
SPEAKER_01: He comes to us in a calm, rational, reasonable way and says, Mumsy, daddy, will you please give me some food?
SPEAKER_01: No, he cries because that's what babies do to make their need known.
SPEAKER_01: And in this scenario, we're kind of imagining in an ideal setting for a baby.
SPEAKER_01: So our baby cries, makes his need known.
SPEAKER_01: A caregiver shows up in a timely manner, is attuned to baby's needs, figures out baby's hungry, feeds the baby.
SPEAKER_01: But our caregiver isn't a 13-year-old boy, so he doesn't just shove food down the baby's throat, right?
SPEAKER_01: Because our baby needs more than just food in that moment.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Our baby, our caregiver understands that our baby needs to be met in a way that communicates to baby that he matters, that his needs matter, and that he is deserving of having his needs met in ways that are loving, nurturing, and dignifying.
SPEAKER_01: So our caregiver picks baby up, holds baby in a way that makes baby feel secure, loved, nurtured, feeds him.
SPEAKER_01: Baby is soothed, baby's belly is all fat and full.
SPEAKER_01: He's comfortable until 39 seconds later when he needs to be burped, and he makes his needs known all over again by crying.
SPEAKER_01: Attachment scientists and folks who work in the field of interpersonal neurobiology need to quit promising I'm not going to say that.
SPEAKER_01: Claim that in order for a baby to grow into a child and eventually an adult that has a secure attachment, that has a calm brain, body, nervous system, this cycle needs to occur a hundred thousand times in the first three years of life.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm no mathematician, but I know that three times 365 is 1,095.
SPEAKER_01: My calculator told me that three times, so I trust it.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that 100,000 divided by 1,095 is 91, which means that for three years, 91 times a day, this happens.
SPEAKER_01: So how many of you are currently the parent of or helping to care for a child five years of age or under?
SPEAKER_01: Just yeah, this is why you're so freaking tired all the time.
SPEAKER_01: This is why you're so exhausted, right?
SPEAKER_01: 91 times a day.
SPEAKER_01: And we know that the child's needs don't magically disappear when they turn three, right?
SPEAKER_01: They just look different, but this cycle continues to happen.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to understand that what happens every time a baby has a need and expresses that need is that someone either shows up and meets that need in a manner that communicates to the baby that he matters, that his needs matter, and that he's deserving of having his needs met in loving, nurturing, dignifying ways, or no one shows up at all.
SPEAKER_01: Or someone shows up sometimes, but not at other times.
SPEAKER_01: Or someone shows up, but everything about their body language, their posture communicates to the baby that they're not really interested in being there, meeting the needs of the baby.
SPEAKER_01: Or someone shows up, but everything about their body language, their posture communicates that they're angry for being put out for having to take care of this child.
SPEAKER_01: You see, one way or another, for good and for bad, attachment shapes our brains and our relationships.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the reality of the situation.
SPEAKER_01: This attachment cycle is actually at work throughout the entirety of our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Because as Dan Siegel reminds us, our brains are constantly changing based on our relational experiences.
SPEAKER_01: Dan loves to remind his readers, he does it about a hundred times every book he writes, of a significant truth about the architecture of our brains when he says that neurons that fire together wire together.
SPEAKER_01: Every time the attachment cycle plays out, either when we're babies or well into adulthood, neurons start firing in our brain.
SPEAKER_01: And when similar experiences happen, neurons keep firing together, and eventually they start wiring together.
SPEAKER_01: And as they wire together, they form neural pathways through our brains, and those neural pathways actually result in a brain, a body, a nervous system that is either conditioned to trust that they matter, that their needs matter, that they're deserving of having their needs met, or conditioned to trust that none of that is true at all.
SPEAKER_01: Neuroscientists now know that between birth and age three, roughly one billion neural connections develop per second.
SPEAKER_01: 80% of our brain development happens in the first three years of life.
SPEAKER_01: This is why we talk about the significance of those first three years, the significance of our relationship to our caregivers.
SPEAKER_01: But the good news is that even if those first three years don't go as they should, God has made our brains to where we are capable of changing.
SPEAKER_01: Our brains can change, and they do change, and they can change for the good, for the better.
SPEAKER_01: Babies who have caregivers who consistently, not perfectly, I want to stress this because I don't want to shame anybody.
SPEAKER_01: Babies who have caregivers who consistently show up and meet needs in a nurturing, loving, and dignified manner, even if you're having to fake it.
SPEAKER_01: And we've all had to fake it as parents, right?
SPEAKER_01: Those babies grow up to be what interpersonal neurobiologists call securely attached individuals.
SPEAKER_01: And securely attached individuals are people who are more trusting, more honest, less afraid of failure, more willing to take calculated strategic risks, more willing to be open and vulnerable in relationships, and therefore better able to achieve deeper degrees of emotional intimacy in their meaningful relationships.
SPEAKER_01: And securely attached individuals have brains that have been conditioned to trust that they matter and that their needs matter and that they're deserving of having their needs met in loving, nurturing, and dignifying ways.
SPEAKER_01: And so they are able to make their needs known in ways that are healthy, and they are also able and willing to do the exact same thing for other people.
SPEAKER_01: Securely attached people, because they believe their lives matter, that they are deserving of love, are people who are able to rest and feel so secure in that truth that they are capable of trusting that they are never really alone, even when they are alone.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just that their minds believe this in spite of their brains and their bodies and their nervous systems, but that their brains and their bodies and their nervous systems have been conditioned by the relationships to such an extent that a mind at rest and secure is what emerges.
SPEAKER_01: And this reinforces what was said earlier about relationships shaping the architecture of the brain.
SPEAKER_01: And so getting back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You see, when Jesus' disciples abandoned him and left him all alone, that wasn't the first time Jesus had faced hardship alone.
SPEAKER_01: In Mark 1 at his baptism, Jesus' Heavenly Father sends the Holy Spirit to be with Jesus and speaks directly to him, telling him, You are my beloved Son, and you I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_01: And we have to understand the implications of Jesus' baptism in the Jordan River.
SPEAKER_01: We know that when God told his people to go out to the Jordan River, it spelt trouble for whatever empire, whatever emperor was oppressing God's people.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus enters the water as Israel's Messiah, as her representative, he was, as N.T.
SPEAKER_01: Wright likes to say, picking a fight with Rome.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus knows where his baptism is going to take him.
SPEAKER_01: The father showing up isn't some sappy sentimental moment where the father is just giddy with excitement because his boy is being baptized.
SPEAKER_01: This is a moment when the fully human Son of God needs his father to show up for him, and the father does exactly what the son needs him to do.
SPEAKER_01: And I love how Mark describes it.
SPEAKER_01: The language Mark uses for the heavens opening is actually the language of the heavens being completely and violently ripped into.
SPEAKER_01: And Mark uses this language to communicate the weightiness of the vent, the tearing asunder, the old King James language being rent asunder of the heavens, means that things can never go back the way they were.
SPEAKER_01: There was a before Jesus stepped into the Jordan, and there is an after, and all of reality has been changed by his baptism.
SPEAKER_01: And it is in this moment of his son's need that his father shows up, sends the Holy Spirit to be with him, and speaks over him his true identity.
SPEAKER_01: You are my beloved son, and you I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_01: Immediately after his baptism, we know the Spirit took Jesus into the wilderness for 40 days, no food or water to be tempted by the devil.
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the 40 days, when Jesus' needs were at their greatest, his father shows up again, this time by sending angels to minister to him.
SPEAKER_01: Angels don't go where they please, they don't do their own bidding.
SPEAKER_01: Angels go where the Lord of hosts tell them to go.
SPEAKER_01: And this time the Father sent angels to minister to his son in his time of need to remind him he wasn't alone, even though for all intents and purposes he was alone.
SPEAKER_01: And later, before Jesus is arrested, forsaken by his disciples, in the Garden of Gethsemane, when his disciples can't stay awake to keep watch for him, his father sends an angel from heaven to strengthen him.
SPEAKER_01: The gospels paint a picture of the fully human Jesus continually retreating to be alone with his father in prayer, to make his needs known to his father.
SPEAKER_01: Every step of Jesus' earthly ministry, when he had a need, his father showed up and met that need in a manner that reaffirmed what he told Jesus at his baptism.
SPEAKER_01: You are my beloved son, and with you I am well pleased.
SPEAKER_01: And every time Jesus' father showed up like that, we can trust that because Jesus had a human body and a human brain and a fully human mind, that neurons were firing together.
SPEAKER_01: And those neurons kept firing together and started wiring together and formed neural pathways by which the Holy Spirit worked in and through.
SPEAKER_01: And the mind that emerged was the mind we see of Christ completely at rest and secure in the love of his Father.
SPEAKER_01: Dan Siegel has said that love is the most powerful force for healing broken minds and brains damaged by harmful relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Man has also said and taught and preached that we change our brains through intentional practices, and that as humans, our brains are made to change for the good.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us here may not have had caregivers who responded to us the way we needed when we were just little babies, and we've been living with brains that were conditioned not to trust anyone or anything for a whole lot of reasons.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us may have had exactly the caregivers we needed when we were younger, but along the journey we found ourselves in relationships that created new neural pathways that conditioned our brains to give birth to minds that were unable to be at rest and secure in the love of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: Some of us may believe the Father loves us, has saved us, but it hasn't really sunk into our bones.
SPEAKER_01: It hasn't become woven into the very fiber of our being.
SPEAKER_01: And so we possess minds that don't necessarily bear much resemblance to the mind of Jesus when we're faced with the hardships life frequently brings our way.
SPEAKER_01: And I count myself among that group.
SPEAKER_01: But when we look at Jesus' life and ministry through this understanding of how our relationships shape our brains and give birth to the minds we have, what we see is that Jesus did not need his father to remove all of the adversity and hardship from his life.
SPEAKER_01: What he needed was to have his father stay with him as he endured that adversity and hardship.
SPEAKER_01: What he needed was to know that his father had never and would never leave him alone.
SPEAKER_01: And his father proved himself to be trustworthy time and time again.
SPEAKER_01: And every time he did, you guessed it.
SPEAKER_01: Neurons fired and neurons wired and neural pathways formed.
SPEAKER_01: And the mind of Christ that we see on display is what the Holy Spirit brought out of all of that.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a hospice chaplain.
SPEAKER_01: I remember clearly the first time I was present when someone took their last breath.
SPEAKER_01: Guy wasn't much older than me.
SPEAKER_01: We'd had a long, hard time getting him comfortable, but we'd finally gotten him comfortable.
SPEAKER_01: He'd been asleep for a couple of hours.
SPEAKER_01: I was sitting vigil with him.
SPEAKER_01: His wife and family were in the other room.
SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, he wakes up, sits up with a terrified look on his face.
SPEAKER_01: He looks right at me and says, Save me.
SPEAKER_01: No amount of training prepares you for a moment like that.
SPEAKER_01: I instinctively did the only thing that I knew to do.
SPEAKER_01: I took his hand, I put it over his heart, I kept my hand on his, and I just gently pressed.
SPEAKER_01: And I told him, I'm not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_01: I'm here with you to the end.
SPEAKER_01: And more importantly, God's not going anywhere either.
SPEAKER_01: And God will be with you even when this is over.
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't what the guy wanted.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted to live, but it was what he needed.
SPEAKER_01: He closed his eyes, went back to sleep.
SPEAKER_01: A couple minutes later, he took his last breath.
SPEAKER_01: The reason I put his hand over his heart is because, and pressed gently was because I had been taught that when we put our own hands over our own hearts and press gently, we actually lower the cortisol levels in our body.
SPEAKER_01: We bring the stress down.
SPEAKER_01: We actually help to reset our heart rate and reset our nervous system.
SPEAKER_01: It gets us out of any fight, flight, you know, freeze, fawn, instinctive reaction.
SPEAKER_01: But even more amazing to me, when we put our hands over our own hearts and press gently, oxytocin is released in our brains.
SPEAKER_01: And oxytocin is the hormone and the neurotransmitter that is associated with feelings of relational connectedness, emotional intimacy, a sense of belonging, an emotional sense of feeling safe and secure.
SPEAKER_01: And all that happens in our brains when we just simply put our hands on our heart and press gently.
SPEAKER_01: God has made our fully human bodies, our fully human brains, our fully human minds to be conduits of his grace, to be means of his grace and mercy to us.
SPEAKER_01: So if you'll close your eyes and bow your heads, and if you're inclined, put your hand over your heart and press gently.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to, I'm not watching.
SPEAKER_01: And I'd just like to offer this blessing that I offer quite often for many of the people I serve on hospice.
SPEAKER_01: May the love of God the Father and His beloved Son Jesus Christ keep you and hold you, surround you and enfold you, carry you always, and give you his peace this day and forevermore.
SPEAKER_01: World without end.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.