Imperfect Bodies, Holy Bodies

August 4, 2009

As I move toward tomorrow’s surgery my thoughts have understandably turned now and again to thoughts about my body and in a broader sense that we humans are flesh, blood, bone, sinew, fat, muscle and organs. And we are spirit. In Christian theology that traces back to the Apostle Paul that traces back to Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, the flesh and the spirit are viewed as in constant tension with one another; raging a war for control of the individual. But when Paul wrote in Galatians 5 that “the flesh lusts against Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another,” it wasn’t the physical flesh (or body) he had in mind, but the nature within all of us toward self-seeking desires, often at the expense of all others, including God and ultimately ourselves.

But despite Paul’s intention regarding the duality of flesh (human nature) and spirit, there’s been a literal rendering through Church history that the human body and its desires are bad, while the things of the spirit are righteous and good. Deny the one, exalt the other. As GLBTQ Christians we’ve often been treated to a double-dose of the churches inappropriated admonishment to “deny the flesh and pursue the spirit” as though the battle between flesh and spirit is engaged in a World Wrestling Federation level free-for-all in queer folk.

But as I think about my body, this fleshy capsule that serves as my earthly container, I’m finding something holy about it. Touch your skin. Right now. Touch the skin on your arm. What you feel through your fingertips; the warm of the skin, the hair, the muscles underneath, were the very same sensations Jesus felt when he touched the skin on his arm. God had flesh, blood, muscle and bone. God lived in skin. God lived in a body. Christ’s body. God’s body. It was just a standard issue human body but the Spirit of God inhabited that one flesh and blood body and it was holy. It takes no stretch in my mind to jump from there to the conclusion that my body is holy and your body is holy. The Holy Spirit of God is joined with our spirits and in that union held together in our bodies, it is holy holy holy. The temple of God with skinned knees and pimples.

Wrinkles, extra folds of fat and skin, protruding bones, weak limbs, ears that hear and ears that don’t, eyes that see and eyes that don’t, each strand of hair, our arms, our legs, our feet and yes, I’m going to say it, even our genitals are holy. Does any of that make you uncomfortable? Why? Could it be because of shame you carry that part or all of your body holds for you? Has shame that never rightfully belonged to you from sexual abuse rendered your body used and defiled in your eyes? Has being heavier or thinner than society has deemed the ideal made your body loathsome to you? Do you carry scars from an injury? Is there any residue reminders of an illness that ravaged your body? Are you physically challenged somewhere in your limbs? Do you see your body as spoiled and ruined because of places you once took it and things you once did? What is it that keeps us from accepting that the body you see in the mirror is anything less than holy?

God loves you and that includes your body. Every flake of skin and curve of your silhouette is loved by God. God traces the lines of those scars you carry and looks at them in love. God sees you naked from top to bottom and delights in the vessel that He designed and if time and life have caused some wear and tear; God loves all that too because God was there when they happened. He knows the stories each rough edge and crack holds and His heart is moved with compassion and tenderness for it all. A holy God created your body and spirit and soul and all of it, without exception is holy and all is for God’s glory and all this body does is a song and dance of worship to its Creator.

So tomorrow a little extra skin that served me well for many years but no longer is needed will be cut away and what will remain will be a line of stitches that will become a scar that will fade but never fully go away, and that’s okay. My body need not be perfect. There will always be other bodies that are more muscular than mine, more curvaceous than mine, more slender than mine. There will be prettier faces and straigher teeth and more cooperative hair. But there will never be another body that is more holy.

If you aren’t able to love the body you have, if you aren’t able to envision it as the holy vessel it is, then just remember until the day when you can that God is loving it and calling it holy and delighting in it and in you.

My summer reading has included two books; one by Barbara Brown Taylor and the other by Frederick Buechner and their writing and God’s own poking around at my heart, have been shaping my ideas and wonderings around body and holiness and embodying our faith. Below is a relevant excerpt from each but please, do yourself a favor, and get both books. They’ll feed your soul like a ten course meal.

An Altar In the World: A Geography of Faith, by Barbara Brown Taylor. This excerpt is from her chapter on “The Practice of Wearing Skin: Incarnation”

“Duke ethicist Stanley Hauerwas finds most Christians far too spiritual in the practice of their faith. Christianity ‘is not a set of beliefs or doctrines one believes in order to be a Christian,’ he says, ‘but rather Christianity is to have one’s body shaped, one’s habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable.’ In our embodied life together, the words of our doctrines take on flesh. If one of our orthodox beliefs has no corporeal value, if we cannot come up with a single consequence it has for our embodied life together, then there is good reason to ask why we should bother with it at all. The issue Hauerwas raises is not whether there is any such thing as purely spiritual holiness, but ‘whether there is anything beside the body that can be sanctified.’

In far more pungent language, Daniel Berrigan once said, ‘It all comes down to this: Whose flesh are you touching and why? Whose flesh are you recoiling from and why? Whose flesh are you burning and why?’

Such questions strike below the radar screen of the intellect, where far too many quesions of faith are both argued and answered. When I hear people talk about what is wrong with organized religion, or why their mainline churches are failing, I hear about bad music, inept clergy, mean congregations, and preoccupation with institutional maintenance. I almost never hear about the intellectualization of faith, which strikes me as a far greater danger than anything else on the list. In an age of information overload, when a vast variety of media delivers news faster than most of us can digest – when many of us have at least two e-mail addresses, two telephone numbers, and one fax number – the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned as dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God.”

Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith, by Frederick Buechner. The  excerpt below is from his mini-chapter on “Incarnation.”

“‘The Word became flesh,’ wrote John, ‘and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14). This is what incarnation means. It is untheological. It is unsophisticated. It is undignified. But according to Christianity, it is the way things are.

All religions and philosphies that deny the reality or the signficance of the material, the fleshly, the earthbound, are themselves denied.  Moses at the burning bush was told to take off his shoes because the ground on which he stood was holy ground (Excodus 3:5), and incarnation means that all ground is holy ground because God not only made it but walked on it, ate and slept and worked and died on it. If we are saved anywhere, we are saved here. And what is saved is not some diaphanous distillation of our bodies and our earth, but our bodies and our earth themselves. Jerusalem becomes the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven like a brdie adorned for her husband (Revelation 21:2). Our bodies are sown perishable and raised imperishable (I Corinthians 15:42).

One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.”

Posted in Devotionals, Human Sexuality