Human Bodies: Week 1
Trusting Our Bodies
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Capable Flesh
The tender flesh itself
will be found one day
—quite surprisingly—
to be capable of receiving,
and yes, full
capable of embracing
the searing energies of God.
Go figure. Fear not.
For even at its beginning
the humble clay received
God’s art, whereby
one part became the eye,
another the ear, and yet
another this impetuous hand.
Therefore, the flesh
is not to be excluded
from the wisdom and the power
that now and ever animates
all things. His life-giving
agency is made perfect,
we are told, in weakness—
made perfect in the flesh.—Saint Irenaeus of Lyon (c.130-c.202) [1]
God knew that only humble vulnerability could be entrusted with spiritual power—and so God hid it like a treasure in the simple, largely anonymous body of Jesus. “God’s power is at its best in weakness,” Paul tells us. “For it is when I am weak that I am strong” (see 2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
Unfortunately, much of Christianity has been negatively and uselessly trapped in guilt about being “flesh,” while the great messages of the Gospel—grace, healing, and restorative justice—have largely gone unheeded. Obsessive guilt about our embodiment has too often kept us “from the greater matters of the law: justice, mercy, and good faith,” as Jesus says to the Pharisees (Matthew 23:23).
We must begin by trusting what God has done in Jesus. We cannot return to a healthy view of our own bodies until we accept that God has forever made human flesh the privileged place of the divine encounter. We have had enough of dualism, enough of the separation of body and spirit, enough over-emphasis on the body’s excesses and addictions. We must reclaim the incarnation as the beginning point of the Christian experience of God. We are not followers of Plato, but must return to the Hebrew respect for this world and for all the wisdom and goodness of the body. The embodied self is the only self we have ever known. Our bodies are God’s dwelling place and even God’s temple (see 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
In some ways it may seem simpler to obey usually arbitrary rules about diet or sex than to truly honor the living incarnation we are. Show me a single ascetical or anti-body statement from Jesus. Yet, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) said, “Avoiding the risk of a transgression has become more important to us than carrying a difficult position for God.” [2]
I believe God has given us permission to learn wisdom and humility from our bodies and not just to repress them out of fear. Remember, the steps to maturity are necessarily going to be immature. God is an expert at working with mistakes and failure. In fact, that is about all God does. Mistakes do not seem to be a problem for God; they are only a problem for our ego that wants to be pure spirit. We first tend to do things wrong before we even know what right feels like. I am not sure there is any other way.
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The Upper Room
April 3, 2018
Not Growing Weary
Gary A. Miller (California)
My soul clings to the dust; revive me according to your word. – Psalm 119:25 (NRSV)
I remember a time when my body, mind, and spirit were completely drained. My mother had recently passed away; our church was experiencing some serious leadership issues, and my son’s hereditary illness had flared up. Some of these events were sudden, but others had lingered for many months. I went about my daily life, automatically putting one foot in front of the other. Life was drudgery, and I plowed through it painfully.
For some of us, weariness seems to be a way of life. I found my antidote to weariness in two places: in trusting that God would revive me and in serving others in tangible ways. I vowed to spend more time meditating on the Psalms, and I began to mentor a young man who had serious family problems. Soon my spirit was revived, and my soul was nurtured.
I’ve seen that God often provides relief from our weariness as we focus on the Lord, not on what we expect to receive. God can shift our focus away from our problems and toward helping those who are also struggling — bringing peace to ourselves and to others.
Dear Lord Jesus, renew us with your peace as we face challenges. Fill us with a desire to serve others. Amen.
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