Sermon-The Way to the heart is through the stomach?

Anxiety by Edvard Munch, 1894

A sermon given at the Harvest Festival at St Barnabas Pimlico on Sunday 29th September 2024 and at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 6th October 2024 based on readings from 1 Timothy 6.6-10 and Matthew 6.25-33. At St Giles-in-the-Fields the sermon was preached following the baptism of James Roberts and took place in the week leading up to World Mental Health Day. 

This Harvest Festival Day the scriptures are packed with food for thought about how each of us might best grow by nurturing our "felt sense" - engaging both our rational brains and our 'gut' feelings....

I’ve got a gut feeling Jesus knew that the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach. He spent a lot of time at parties - eating and drinking. He had a great deal to say about food, feasting and fasting. Lord! - he even taught us that the way we should take to heart the sacrifice he made for us is by blessing, breaking, sharing - and eating - bread!

‘Take, eat; this is my body.’

 

I wonder if the disciples got “butterflies in the stomach” when they heard Jesus say those words? 

 

Do we? 

 

Those “butterflies” are a response of our autonomic nervous system. Which is also the reason we get goosebumps, or why our mouth goes dry rendering us speechless, or why our heart rate increases or we might feel the need to go to the toilet more than normal in times of stress.

 

A critical element of this system is the vagus nerve. Spelt v-A-g-U-s, it comes from the same Latin root as the words vagrant or vagabond and means ‘wandering’. The vagus nerve is the longest in the body. It connects our gut to our brain and links up with every vital organ in between. Our larynx and trachea. Our heart. Our stomach. Our liver. Our kidneys and bladder, adrenal glands and bowels.

 

The wandering vagus nerve affects virtually every part of our bodies.

 

Curiously, the upload and download speeds along this biological information super-highway are not equal. 80% of the fibres of the vagus nerve transmit information from the gut to the brain. Just 20% of the traffic flows in the opposite direction. 

 

It’s designed like this so that in times of stress, our gut feeling takes over - for our own self preservation. But even in moments of calm, it means that most of what we know about how we are at any given time comes from our gut and not the brain. 

 

The next time someone says that you “think with your stomach” they are not entirely wrong. 

 

In fact, some have described our gut as our “second brain” because it contains somewhere between 100 and 600 million neurons. That’s the same number of neurons as the brain of a Yorkshire Terrier - in our guts.

 

In the time of Jesus, people were well aware of this “felt sense” - this connection between the gut and the brain. In those days, the gut was regarded as the principal centre of our emotions.

 

A concept that we find embedded not just in phrases and sayings like today - but in the very meaning of words themselves. 

 

When we read in the Bible of mercy or compassion, these derive their meaning from a Hebrew word that is linked to the term for the womb or gut.

 

So when we hear that Jesus was moved with compassion, in Hebrew, the phrase could literally mean that Jesus’ guts - or bowels - were moved or warmed. 

 

We find this idea most clearly expressed in translations of the Old Testament - Joseph’s bowels yearned when he saw his brother Benjamin. When a baby was brought before wise King Solomon by two women both claiming to be its mother, we are told that the bowels of the real mother yearned for her child. 

 

A word of caution though - this sort of direct equivalence between the movement of our bowels and our compassion doesn’t really work in polite conversation today!

 

While our understanding of this connection may have diminished in a linguistic sense with the passage of time, in a somatic sense it is still as strong as ever. In other words, we feel it. Here in our gut, the words of Jesus, scientific understanding and our own personal experience all very much align.

 

Have you ever looked at the papers or the news on your phone and read or watched or heard about a situation somewhere in the world that makes you feel sick to your stomach?

 

That’s compassion. That’s mercy. That’s the connection - between our gut and our brain - which is made by the vagus nerve. That’s the connection which is at the heart of what I think Jesus is talking about in our gospel reading today. 

 

A connection that is critical in enabling the seed of new life planted in us at our baptism to grow and flourish.

 

But this connection doesn’t always work as it should. There are times when the vagus nerve becomes over-active. When we become trapped in the fight or flight - or flop and drop responses that are intended to protect us. 

 

At times like these our gut instinct is in charge - sending adrenaline and cortisol to stimulate the oldest part of our brain (evolutionarily speaking). The bit at the base of the brain stem that works intuitively to do whatever it takes to ensure our survival. The outer, rational, thinking part of our brain becomes disconnected. We literally flip our lids. 

 

In time, the two normally reconnect. Slow, deep breathing - as in many forms of meditative prayer - can help encourage the vagus nerve into a state of rest. 

 

And there’s a growing body of research that suggests simply being alongside others who are not anxious or worried can have a similar calming effect. When we’ve flipped our lids there’s no use attempting to rush in with rational strategies for support. We ain’t listening to reason at times like that! But the natural calming rhythms of another person alongside us somehow speak for themselves.

 

Jesus is our exemplar in those situations too. 

 

When our vagus nerve starts to rest we might begin to question the way we acted when our gut instinct was in charge. Perhaps we ran away or lashed out either verbally or physically. We might experience intense feelings of anxiety or worry at this point. When we do that’s because our ‘rational’ brain is kicking back in. Usually, these feelings pass as our systems reset and we forgive ourselves for acting on instinct.

 

But while the vagus nerve remains overactive - the signals from our brain to our gut are limited. And so we remain out of alignment - our body stuck in anxious self-preservation mode long after the event which triggered it has passed.

In times like this, as our readings from scripture explain, we exist in a state of unending discontentment. Dissattisfaction. Constantly on edge or withdrawn, feeling as though we are perpetually in need. Food, money, clothing, our careers – can all become the object of compulsive desire. Sometimes we can’t fathom what we need and this sense of emptiness and inertia becomes self-perpetuating. 

 

And as Paul’s first letter to Timothy explains this pattern of life impacts our spiritual wellbeing. Leading to self-destruction. To its death. 

 

We wander away - or err - from the faith. 

 

We lose sight of who we became at our baptism. What it is we really depend on for our survival as children of God. The compassion and mercy of divine love - made visible through the person of Christ Whose life, death, resurrection and ascension made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world. 

 

 

We need both brain and gut to be operating in harmony to be effective disciples. 

 

 

Deep down I think we know that everything - even the most difficult things that Jesus said about how to live our lives - how to interact with each other and the world - “feels right” to each of us. 

 

But it’s so easy for that truth - those gut feelings - to become distorted or drowned out by fear and anxiety - we find reasons not to love our neighbour or ourselves.

 

On this Harvest Festival Day, the scriptures are packed with food for thought - revealing how each of us might best grow and bear fruit. How each of us might be the disciples we are meant to be: to live righteously; to live with brain and gut attuned so we feel and act on that divine love that we have so generously received. So that when the final harvest arrives at the end of our days, Jesus will find the seed planted in us at our baptism has flourished as God intended. And then he’ll invite us to join him at a feast like no other. There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment. 

Today we are encouraged to embrace – and nurture our “felt sense”. To recognise that we have been created to act on those pangs of compassion and mercy we feel towards others - the love on which we ultimately depend on for our survival. And to ask ourselves when we have those feelings, whether we do act on them? Or whether our gut and our brain have become disconnected and we need help to reset.

Perhaps that's why we're all here?

Because we have a gut feeling that The Way to the heart of Jesus and his teaching really is through our stomach?!

 

 

Amen. 

Image : Anxiety by Edvard Munch, 1894

Links : This book was an invaluable source in the preparation of this sermon: Tragedies and Christian Congregations: The Practical Theology of Trauma by Hilary Ison, Christopher Southgate, Megan Warner, Carla Grosch-Miller (2021)