Preached by the Reverend Canon Durrell Watkins at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, November 12, 2006, at the 9:50 am service.
The Phoenix Affirmations: # 11
The Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers care for their bodies as temples of the holy and take time to pray and play, to worship, and to reflect, as essential parts of their vocation.
Eileen Caddy
Stop sitting there with your hands folded looking on doing nothing. Get into action and live this full and glorious life NOW. You have to do it.
Mark 2:18-22
18The followers of John the Baptist and the Pharisees often went without eating. Some people came and asked Jesus, “Why do the followers of John and those of the Pharisees often go without eating, while your disciples never do?”
19Jesus answered:
The friends of a bridegroom don’t go without eating while he is still with them. 20But the time will come when he will be taken from them. Then they will go without eating.
21No one patches old clothes by sewing on a piece of new cloth. The new piece would shrink and tear a bigger hole.
22No one pours new wine into old wineskins. The wine would swell and burst the old skins. Then the wine would be lost, and the skins would be ruined. New wine must be put into new wineskins.
I’m so upset. Last week, I received my first obscene phone call. I was so embarrassed, mostly because I was half-way through it before I realized it was an obscene phone call. I heard heavy breathing; I thought someone was hyperventilating. I said, “Who is this? And why did you call me? Hang up and dial 911!” I thought someone was having an asthma attack or something. Who thinks “obscene phone call?” I mean, it’s so passé, isn’t it? So circa 1983.
Well, after my anonymous prankster figured out that I was not smart enough to be offended by heavy breathing, he finally asked the give away question – the trite, cliché, tired old line, “What are you wearing?” Now I’m up to speed. So I said, “Not a thing since I came out of my girdle; it was cutting me in half.” Strangely, that ended the conversation.
Bodies. I think the Church has historically done a poor job of getting us to be at home in our bodies. For too many of us, being religious meant ignoring or distrusting, even sometimes hating our bodies.
Why? Why have we been so fearful of our physical selves? Maybe because we have misunderstood passages in our bible. We failed to notice that the people of our first testament were earthy, lively, people who lived passionately and sometimes in ways that would get us arrested. There are feasts and celebrations and singing and dancing and romance and aphrodisiacs and healing and weeping and laughing and all manner of physical expression throughout our bible, especially in the first three dozen or so books. But in spite of all that, we have focused on a few strange sentences, mostly in the New Testament.
One such sentence is when St. Paul says, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God .” Another one is the Apostle Paul’s claim that some unpleasant situation was a thorn in his flesh, put there, he believed, by God. He was quoting and adding his own interpretation to a verse in the book of Numbers. Paul said at another time, “we put no confidence in the flesh.”
And so, fleshly, carnal things came to be viewed by some of us as bad. We forget that God looked at all that God created and called it very good. We forget that collectively we are the “body” of Christ. We forget that at our sacred altar we call our consecrated bread, “body”. We forget that Paul wasn’t writing gospel narratives; he was writing letters to particular communities. He never had any idea that you and I would be reading his mail.
In Paul’s day and even more so at the end of the first century when the gospels are being written, the Roman Empire is all pervasive. The Emperor is all powerful; his word is law. His legions make up the world’s only superpower. In that context, our New Testament writers often talk about a divine Kingdom, a counter-empire, over against the rule of Caesar. Caesar had a good bit of control over their physical lives, but there was a spiritual kingdom that Caesar could not touch. Rome could imprison, even crucify you, but it could never touch the ultimate part of you that would live forever in the presence and glory of God.
In that context, “flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom” isn’t an indictment against physicality, it is an affirmation that God’s love isn’t limited to or by our physicality. The Kingdom of God is not a religious condemnation, neither is it a threat of some future doomsday, it is an immediate hope, a consolation, and word of comfort that God is with us and will remain with us beyond the limitations of physical experience. That right there is good business; it’s almost enough to make an Episcopalian shout!
Religious conservatives in Paul’s day insisted that men be circumcised. Circumcision was a sign of the covenant and many people believed that sign was absolutely necessary for the faithful. Paul, a bit of a radical in spite of his legalistic reputation, thought it was silly to argue over what we today call elective surgery. And in response to the religious conservatives, Paul said, “we put no confidence in the flesh.” In other words, it isn’t what we do to our flesh that sanctifies us; it’s how we love and how we hope and how we live. He went to say in response to those who insisted on circumcision, “We are the circumcision.” We are the sign of God’s promise. We are the sign of God’s goodness. Not what we do ritually to our bodies but how we live our lives.
I don’t believe the bible condemns our bodies. I don’t believe a compelling case can be made from the bible that our bodies should not express love and tenderness and attraction with other bodies of ANY gender!
Our physical bodies make up the assemblies that we euphemistically call the body of Christ. We touch bodies with oil as a sign of God’s healing love when we pray for healing of our bodies. We groom our bodies. We medicate our bodies. We nourish our bodies. Our bodies are part of the creation that God has called very good, and it is good that we lovingly take care of these bodies. Grateful for our physical selves, we honor God by caring for our bodies.
The flesh isn’t bad; AND the flesh isn’t the whole story. Mind, Body, Spirit – a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, that’s what we are. No part of the whole is bad, and the integration of the parts make up something that is made in the divine image and likeness and is filled with the very breath of God.
I like today’s Phoenix Affirmation. It reminds us that our physical lives are good. Our bodies are good. Our environment is good. The physical way that we navigate this life isn’t bad or disordered; it’s part of the miracle of life and we ought to care for our physical selves so that we can enjoy this human experience. The Path of Jesus is found where Christ’s followers care for their bodies as temples of the holy…
How do followers of Christ care for their body-temples? They connect to them. They live abundantly in them. They laugh. They cry. They play. They think. They gather faithfully together for worship. They share their resources. They celebrate. They rest. They love. They love themselves. They love God. They love others.
It was St. Paul who told the Corinthian Church that their bodies were temples of the holy spirit. Well, guess what? Temples are lively places of expression and symbol and celebration and reverence and community and love and hope and power and beauty. Temples and shrines and Cathedrals are pretty amazing. Your body is a temple of the holy.
Eileen Cady tells us to live this full and glorious life – NOW. That doesn’t leave much room for shame or fear. It’s a call to celebrate and live with joy, expressing that joy in these marvelous vehicles we call bodies; that Paul called a holy Temple . And even Jesus said, in essence, “when things are sad, you can mope around for a bit. But when things aren’t sad, try to have a good time.”
Eat well. Stay hydrated. Get a massage. Cooperate with your doctor. Play. Rest. Love. Worship. Take a vacation. Don’t ignore, abuse, or hate your physical self. Be who you are, knowing the Real and eternal you is housed for now in a holy Temple of flesh that we get to care for and enjoy. This IS the Good News. Amen.
I am a holy temple.
I am part of Christ’s body.
I care for my body.
I bless my body.
I love my body.
It serves me well.
And with it, I serve God.
And so it is!
