God's got Ink.

A sermon for the 8th Sunday after Epiphany on Isaiah 49 & Matthew 6.

Just last week my brother-in-law, Josh, and his wife had their first child, a baby girl named Cyprus. It was upon her birth and filled with the excitement of those first breaths of fatherhood that Josh almost instantly ran out of the hospital and did what I assume every neophyte parent does: he went directly to the tattoo parlor. Josh has always been into tattoos and when he was married he got two bear claws (one for him and one for his wife), tattooed onto his left forearm. So last week when their daughter was born Josh went out the same day and had a smaller bear claw, trailing just after the first two prints, tattooed on his arm to represent his newborn daughter.

Here in California the constant thrum of the tattoo artist’s brush reverberates out the open doors of the ink shops on nearly every street. Tattoos, I have learned, are synonymous with SoCal. While I’ve never really been into tattoos [a position strengthened by a lifelong fear of needles], as I’ve begun to make my way in California, in the land of milk and honey and LA Ink, I’ve thought more and more about the possibility. 

So where is my ink? If I’m honest, my table rasa has much more to do with my tendency to worry than it does with my fear of needles. Based on extensive research into the topic tattoos are, like, forever. Sure, there is the possibility of removal, but according to Wikipedia, and I quote, “The expense and pain of removing tattoos will typically be greater than the expense and pain of applying them.” Again, I’m not in any way cool with needles and their requisite pain. So for me, a tattoo is forever. 

And I just don’t know, I worry about how I’ll feel about any one piece of art on my body when I’m much older. I don’t know with any degree of certainty that in 20 or 30 years I won’t massively regret the decision. I mean, how will I know I won’t regret it in just 20 or 30 minutes? So, hemming and hawing, I am stuck in a rut of constant motion without movement, always considering the possibility, but never actually doing anything about it.

It is in the midst of a similar paralysis brought on by fear and anxiety that God finds the people of Israel this morning. Against the rosy picture of well cared for birds and flowers, the people of Israel’s future seems fixed in Babylonian exile, held fast by the hand of a foreign oppressor. Looking across an inhospitable landscape and separated from the homeland their God had promised them, they say to themselves and to one other, “The Lord has forsaken me, my God has forgotten me.” 

In response to their exasperated prayers Yahweh replies, “Can a woman forget her nursing-child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? And even if she can, if a woman can forget her child, I will not. See! I have your names inscribed on the palm of my hands.”

Yes, that’s right, in our reading from the prophet Isaiah we find out that God’s got ink. God has our names tattooed on the palm of her hands. Like an overzealous high school student prepping for a Spanish test, God has tattooed our names on her hands to remember each one of us and the future God has promised us.

This week I invited people to post pictures of their tattoos on my Facebook wall and the response was overwhelming. You can see some of the pictures here in this post and on my wall. Each picture was fascinating, but it was particularly interesting to learn the stories behind the ink that ended up on my wall. As I scrolled through the pictures I caught a glimpse of the multitude of motivations that lie behind tattoos. 

I think one of the most common and moving reasons people get them is to capture a particular moment or experience and hold onto it. Some use their tattoo as a way of not losing that moment into the clutches of the past. The hope is that in capturing the moment and inscribing it onto our bodies themselves, we might not only be able to preserve it, but to take it with us wherever we might go. For my brother-in-law, Josh, I imagine each day as he rises and bathes his tattooed body, when he first catches a glimpse of a slight, trailing bear claw on his left forearm those first, effervescent breaths of parenthood might go rushing through him once again and send him into the day with a renewed sense of God’s call to fatherhood. 

Another common motivation lies in the memory of a deceased loved one. For many the tattoo not only keeps alive their memory, but it preserves the hope that at some point in the future the tattooed and the loved one might both experience the new life that is to come. In a sense, these tattoos beg a longed for moment in the future into the present.  

I do feel compelled to warn you all that this week’s gospel text from the Sermon on the Mount, like the decision to get a Justin Bieber tattoo, is particularly risky. At first it is seductive. Jesus assures us we don’t have to worry, and who doesn’t want that? But the trouble is that seduced by this carefree claim we are tempted to follow up the words “Do not worry” with the gospel according to Bobby McFerrin [the ‘Don’t worry, be happy’ guy] rather than with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Dissolving into our anxiety-free day dreams we risk the possibility of missing Jesus’ powerful proclamation; “Do not worry. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” 

It is tempting to kick back and relax with our umbrella’d drinks and wait on God to take care of all our problems. But the trouble with throwing up our hands and saying, “We’ll just sit back and God will provide.” is that our God becomes a mañana God. God and God’s life transforming love become separated from us, always waiting on the horizon of tomorrow that never comes.

Fortunately, God’s tattoos, our names inscribed across the palms of her hands, are tattoos of both the past and the future. On the one hand, it is more than our names scrawled across God’s palm, it is our stories. God’s sleeves, filled in and illustrated in vibrant hues, tell the story of the relationship between God and her people. They tell the story of the God who led the people out of slavery in Egypt, who moved them through the wilderness to life, and who again brought them out of exile in Babylon. God’s tattoos, just like Jesus’ worry free assurance, lean on all that has come before. 

And on the other hand, God’s tattoos proclaim the promised future of all God has in store for us. They proclaim the promise that the mourners shall be comforted, the exiled returned home, and ultimately the promise that in Christ death has been put to death, that life will have the final word on us all.

For God there is no lasered removal. Our names are inscribed on her hands and God is bound by them in the now. As our tattoos strive to do, our names on God’s hands and the stories of what God has done and what God promises to do, are powerfully brought into the present and become our reality here and now. More than a refreshing breath or a gentle reminder of parenthood, our names on God’s hands bring the life of Christ from ages past and promised tomorrow to us in this place, in this moment. 

It is in God’s promises for a tomorrow rooted in our past of redemption, that we are freed to be God’s tattooed people.  In this moment God engages us in the work of being the resurrected and tattooed body of Christ, people whose lives are shaped by these same marks of promise. In this moment we are freed to feed not only the birds of the air, but also our neighbors with aching bellies. In this moment we are freed to ensure not only the flowers of the field are clothed, but also our brothers and sisters shivering in these cold nights. God tattoos us in the waters of our baptism, the ancient waters of promise and our only hope for the future, with the sign of the cross, so that we might be God’s people of the story, of the promise, of the ink, and of the now. Amen.