Warren McDougall Richmond Hill United Church May 30, 2010 Our Bodies, Our Faith Genesis 1:26-31 I think we would all agree that one of the most spiritual of all human experiences is to hold a newborn baby. To hold a baby in our arms is to know both the sacredness AND the vulnerability of the human body. To hold a baby is to know [beyond the shadow of a doubt] that there is a strong and intimate connection between sacredness and vulnerability between our bodies and our spirituality. It s relatively easy to sense that connection at the moment of birth [and even perhaps at the moment of death] but between those 2 defining moments, come days and months and years of great confusion and ambiguity about the value of our bodies. flesh: The poet Jane Kenyon, in her poem Cages, speaks of her struggle with the And the body, what about the body? Sometimes it is my favourite child, uncivilized And sometimes my body disgusts me, filling and emptying it disgusts me this long struggle to be at home in the body, this difficult friendship. Part of our difficulty, I think, is that any practice that honours the body s sacredness can also be used to demean it. Adorning our bodies with attractive clothing (for example), can shape our identities as individuals, help us delight a lover, and mark important passages in our lives. But it can also be practiced in ways that perpetuate limited ideas of beauty. Our sexuality can nourish relationships and lead us into an intimacy that speaks of God s presence. But it can also be used in selfish or violent ways. Ascetic religious practices (like fasting, or celibacy) can awaken a desire for God in our bodies, and bring us into solidarity with our suffering neighbours. But they can also be used to deny the goodness of the human body and its needs and desires. The practice of honouring the body challenges us to remember the sacredness of the body in every moment of our lives. And we can t do this alone. 1
Because our bodies are so vulnerable, we need each other for protection and care, and for pleasure. A woman giving birth needs others to help her a partner, a midwife. An adolescent struggling with issues of sexuality needs a community that insists on the value and autonomy of bodies made in God s image. People living with physical illness need others to care for them and touch them in comforting and healing ways. Our fragile and precious bodies need communal attention. So honouring the body is a shared practice, one that requires the commitment and participation of all. Although it seems to me that the Christian Church has spent the better part of 2000 years denying the value of the body [dividing us into body and spirit, with the body always being bad, and the spirit always being good] what I want to say to you today is that embodiment is central to the Christian faith. The Christian emphasis on the incarnation [God becoming flesh in Jesus Christ] along with the Christian understanding of community [which describes the church as the body of Christ not the mind or the spirit or the soul or the heart of Christ, but as the body of Christ] both put embodiment at the centre of Christian meaning. Jesus command that we love our neighbour as we love ourselves, his affirmation that whenever we feed the hungry and clothe the naked, we minister to him makes it clear that our faith has everything to do with our bodies and how we live as embodied people! In his ministry [his words and his actions] Jesus is frequently shown as someone who provides for bodily needs. Respect for human dignity (for Jesus) includes provision of basic human needs. If bodies matter, justice has to be concerned about concrete, tangible realities like food, shelter and clothing! When we gather for worship, we do things that bring Jesus command to life: in Communion, we eat and drink real bread and real wine in baptism, it is our bodies that are bathed and anointed with real water and real oil in the passing of the peace, we touch one another in love and hope. Sadly, from the beginning of Christian history, it seems that the strongest voices have been those who have found the human body to be scandalous and repugnant. Some early Christians even believed that Jesus own body must have been an illusion, since (for them) a mortal human body surely could not bear within it something as precious as divinity. 2
But in fact, just the opposite is true! Part of the appeal of Christianity is the scandal of the Incarnation that God became flesh in Jesus Christ. God s incarnation is not confined to Jesus alone. God s is incarnate also in us. Our bodies are the vehicles of God s presence and activity in the world today. Ours is an incarnational spirituality. We are people of the incarnation, and yet so often we have been embarrassed by God s embodiment and our own! And because we have difficulty accepting the goodness of our own bodies, we find it difficult to really embrace Jesus humanity. In the words of James Nelson, in his book Between Two Gardens: Reflections on Sexuality and Religious Experience (this is not for the faint-of-heart): Jesus (to the horror of squeamish Christians) was a laughing, crying, sweating, eating, drinking, digesting, urinating, defecating, orgasmic, sensuous bundle of flesh just as we are. And if we have trouble accepting that (he continues), then we ll also have trouble believing in the holiness of our own bodies. We have just finished what always seems to me to be a very long annual journey through Lent, Holy Week and the Season of Easter, with its emphasis on the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, a journey in which we see Mary anointing Jesus feet with expensive ointment, and wiping them with her hair. In Luke s gospel, we have her kissing Jesus feet as well! Jesus host is embarrassed by this display of affection, and wonders what kind of prophet Jesus is who doesn t resist this woman s sensuous touch. And then we have Jesus on his knees, washing his disciples feet again, a shocking act, one normally required only of servants or slaves. When Peter protests, Jesus responds by explaining that their community must be shaped by such acts of generosity. And then we have Joseph of Arimathea, pleading with Pilate for Jesus dead body lovingly wrapping it in a clean linen cloth, and laying it respectfully in his own new tomb. And then we have the women, on Easter morning, bringing spices and ointments to anoint Jesus battered dead body. And in a final act of generosity and grace, we have Jesus offering his wounded hands and side to Thomas ( Doubting Thomas ) [ touch me and see, Jesus says] - so that he would believe.. all beautiful and generous and gracious expressions of respect and love and care for the body both before and after death. 3
Like Jesus body [both before and after his death] our bodies are deserving of honour and respect. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, asks: Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you? You often hear people say [especially around the time of a death] that our bodies are just shells. Well, our bodies are NOT just shells they are temples temples of the Holy Spirit. Paul doesn t say that our bodies are shacks of God s Spirit, or hovels of God s Spirit, or even quaint cottages of God s Spirit but temples, sanctuaries of God s Spirit. In contrast to the anti-body messages that we have too often received through the church, listen to the positive body-language in Brian Wren s hymn, Good Is the Flesh : Good is the flesh that the Word has become, good is the birthing, the milk in the breast, good is the feeding, caressing and rest, good is the body for knowing the world; Good is the flesh that the Word has become. At last, I thought, a hymn that celebrates the human body, rather than being ashamed of it! At last, a hymn that counters that notion of dualism, in which spirit and body are separate, the spirit always being good and the body always being bad! At last, a hymn that invites us to honour our bodies as gifts from God, intended for pleasure and enjoyment! I asked Brian Wren about this hymn when I met him several years ago, and this is what he said: Inspired by James Nelson s book, Between Two Gardens, this text was written in August 1986 and reached its revised form in January 1987. The ancient mis-diagnosis of the human condition that sees sex and the body as disgusting is still with us, and needs to be dislodged from Christian piety. This hymn nudges it aside by celebrating the logical consequences of believing that the Word became Flesh, and that God loves matter and affirms it as good. The incarnation is seen, not as distancing God-in-Christ from everyone else, but as the beginning of divine indwelling in us all. To put it another way, if the Word became Flesh, it follows that flesh is good just as all creation is good, because God says so! The hymn tries to get us singing the logic of that choice, not just affirming it. And since the Word became Flesh, then to quote one of the Beatle s earliest hits, Well, you know that can t be bad! And I am also reminded that C.S. Lewis says somewhere: God likes matter. He invented it. 4
There are so many forces in church and society that dishonour the body. In the face of that, I believe that we are called, today, to shape a way of life that honours the body in every moment, a way of life that helps us to glimpse the sacredness of the body. Human beings are bodies and souls! In life, we are one [a whole being] body and soul, flesh and blood and spirit and we are charged with the care of both. The message of the Bible [from the creation myth in Genesis, where all of God s creation is declared to be good to the focus on the Incarnation in the New Testament where God becomes flesh in Jesus Christ to Paul s claim that the body is the temple of God s Spirit] supports and affirms the centrality and the goodness of our bodies. Our bodies [with all of their wrinkles and funny noises and smells] are precious and valuable and deserving of protection and care and, yes, of pleasure. The sacrament of Baptism welcomes the body along with the spirit into the community of faith, in an act that cherishes the body as part of God s good creation. Thanks be to God! Resources: Between Two Gardens: Reflections on Sexuality and Religious Experience, by James Nelson Cages, by Jane Kenyon 5