Rhythm 4: Honoring The Body (Trinity Sunday)

Romans 12:1–8 NRSV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Intro

In this season, we are journeying through a study on Sacred Rhythms, disciplines that form us in the way of Jesus. We’ve looked at Solitude, Scripture, Prayer, and now, today, we’ll explore Honoring the Body. To name physical, lived spiritual disciplines as a core component in our sacred journey is to acknowledge that we are embodied people — soul and spirit, yes, but also flesh, blood, bones, hair, muscles, organs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. ;)

And while it’s maybe more comfortable to keep our spiritual journey in the realm of…the spiritual or ethereal, we have to root down into this physical reality. To ignore the body and its value in the work of God is to fall for one of the great heresies and struggles of the church — disembodiment. We are tempted to disconnect our relationship with Christ from this lived reality, instead focusing on what is unseen, what is beyond, special revelations or spirit-filled ecstacy. In some sense, today’s topic is a counterpoint to the spirit-filled encounters of Pentecost, which we looked at last week. We need the one, but must have the other, too.

Trinity Sunday

And so, on this Trinity Sunday, when we remember the Divine union of God, we remember that God, as well, is embodied. This is the good news and reality of Jesus — that the Divine, the Holy One, becomes human, knowing all our aches and pains and the glory of flesh and blood and bone. God is not distant, God is up close. It is Christ’s humanity that we remember as we devote our lives to him. It is Christ’s body which feels the struggle of sin upon the cross, Christ’s body which bears the scars of suffering, Christ’s body that rises from the grave upon conquering death. God dwells with us, in the story of Jesus, but now also in us, in our physical bodies, with us.

In fulfillment of this Divine embodiment, it is through Jesus that we, embodied people, become participants in the Divine dance, the Divine union. As God dances with the members of the Trinity, so God invites us to join in, here and now, with our bodies.

God loves us and our bodies.

Sadly, the glory of our embodied nature has often been silenced in the church and distorted in our culture. Bodies are shamed for not being the right shape, size, or color. Bodies are expected to be a certain way, presented with particular, defined methods. To be a body is to have an immense burden of stereotypes, myths, and expectations cast upon it.

I don’t need to list examples of all the ways we demonize and denigrate the body in our culture. But it is important, as people of Jesus, for us to acknowledge that the church has been complicit in such things. We must be especially mindful of how we represent the body to our children, as they grow up to act and believe what we teach them. Will we tell our young ones that their bodies are temples of the Living God, holy and blameless before God through Jesus Christ. Or will we hold them to unreasonable expectations of image and glamour, size and weight?

As the church, we can honor the body by helping each other to recognize our collective beauty.

Your body is beautiful. It is the dwelling of the Most High God. As Christ was the embodiment of God here on earth, so now Christ lives in us, moves through us, our physical bodies in this physical reality. To love God, we must learn to love the body and care for it, honor it, celebrate it.

We must also stand up against injustices against the body. Sadly, our society has done so much to harm the body, to askew our sense of beauty, to warp it and distort what the flourishing of the human body can be. We don’t have to look far in popular culture to see this. And sadly, we have a national history of demonizing and harming particular kinds of bodies, while uplifting others.

Four years ago this week, we saw one of the most brutal forms of this harm perpetrated upon the body in our nation. On May 25, 2020, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck as he lay on the ground, gasping for breath. We know this horrific story. The white body of a police officer knelt on and killed the black body of Mr. Floyd, until his dying breath. One kind of body, one with power, brutally murdered another body. Both men are children of God, made in the image of their Creator. But because in our nation we elevate one kind of body over another, or should we say diminish and damn certain colors of bodies…because of this, we have a stark picture of what dishonoring the body can be. This is the antithesis of our calling as people of Jesus. This is the face of evil, demeaning the body, harming the body.

And we know that this is not an isolated incident. In our nation, Black bodies are under threat, at the very least.

How can we remark that humanity is made in the image and likeness of our Creator, while also watching these realities unfold? The dishonoring of the body must be reckoned with, repented of, and healed from. We have much work to do.

Let’s sit with that for a moment: If we are going to authentically honor that each one of us is made in the image of God and bear Christ in our bodies, then we cannot accept this brutality towards the body. We cannot have both.

May this be a call to repentance and healing.

We know this reality of some bodies holding greater societal value is not an American disease, but a worldwide problem. Which bodies matter more, Israeli or Palestinians? Ukrainians or Russians? Straight or Queer? Old or young?

To truly honor the body must include honoring the body of the one who does not look like us. Honoring the body transcends race, societal class, gender, or any other category we want to create. If we are to be a complete Body of Christ, like Paul speaks of in his beautiful words to the Roman church, we have to celebrate the many members that we are.

Let’s turn and put this good reality of the blessings of the body into view.

Whole Body Worship

Let’s hear this again: God loves our bodies. Before anything is spoken of in the Scriptures about suffering or sin or pain, we hear God calling creation, and in particular, the human form, very, very good.

Friends, you are beautiful in your body. I wonder if we’ve heard this in church before — God loves you and your body.

You might squirm a little or feel uncomfortable with me saying that again and again. But hear it — God loves you and your body. Sadly, the church has not valued this or championed this very well. But that doesn’t mean we can’t. We, as the people of God who join in the Divine Dance, we can celebrate the body. We can tell a different story, old and young, tall and short, big and small, we can say this: the body is good. And the body is what we offer in wholehearted worship. Our whole selves are welcomed by God as we sing and dance and live out our faith in this love.

When the Apostle Paul talks about offering our bodies as living sacrifices to God, what we need to hear is that God is blessed, praised, glorified, by how you bring yourself in worship. Alive, we come to give our self in worship, letting go of all the cultural stigmas or stereotypes. We accept the body, our bodies, as divinely made and beautiful.

Let’s make this awkward for a moment.

Look around. Look at all of these bodies here with you right now. Slowly, look around. Take in the faces you see. Take in the beauty. The smiles. The eyes. The ears. Take in all the beautiful shades of hair, so many from deep dark brown and black, then fading slowly in infinite shades of gray and white. Glorious hair!

See one another. See the beauty of all these different bodies. These bodies are indwelled with the Christ, the Spirit of God. These bodies make up the One Body, the Body of Jesus that is the church. These bodies are made by the same Creator who knit you together.

Look upon one another in this glorious light. You are beautiful and beloved.

Now, turn back and close your eyes. Now, know that you, your body is looked upon in love. Hold this good news — you are beautiful and beloved.

Ok, as you’re ready, you can open your eyes and we’ll continue on. But even in this simple exercise, I hope you’ve recognized something of the beauty of the body and how we can share in honoring the body before Christ, together.

Honoring the Body

We have to build this honoring of the body into our practices and our worship. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we are blessed bodies crafted by our Creator. Because there are so many other narratives that will undermine this truth, this goodness.

So how do we honor the body?

I’ll offer a few ways I think about it. But, also, if I’m completely honest, I feel a bit hypocritical talking about honoring the body. I don’t often do very well at this myself. In many ways, I’ve been taught to hold certain standards of the body higher than others. I grew up as a boy in America in the 80s and 90s, when sexualized or overly-muscled bodies were supposedly better bodies. I struggle to take good care of my own body, often neglecting my health to instead numb out these concerns that my body isn’t good enough.

But when I truly remember that my body and our bodies are images of the Invisible God, when I can own that reality for myself and for others, I know that the body is glorious and a worthy offering to God. Honoring the body looks like:

Doing what I can to be healthy, eating right, exercising, sleeping

It looks like receiving our bodies as a gift, unique to us, a blessing to be explored, nourished, and appreciated.

It looks like accepting and respecting our limitations. It looks like knowing we are enough, even when we can’t run as fast or jump as high as someone else.

It looks like entrusting our body to others in loving relationship. In intimacy, friendship, partnership, connection, we honor our bodies by giving them away in love.

I know we each approach our bodies with unique stories and pains and struggles and hurts. I cannot make you believe you are beautiful, especially after what has perhaps been a lifetime of thinking or being told otherwise.

But what we can do, collectively, to honor the body, is to welcome and accept each other as we are. Is your body strong and healthy? You are welcome here. Is your body weak or tired? You are welcome here. Do you have limitations? Good, so do I. We live and work and serve and love God together, regardless. Is your body wearing out? Has your body been harmed? Then let’s take care of each other, make this place safe for your body to heal. It will be ok. You are a child of God and the way your body interacts in this community, well, it makes us more whole that you are hear.

Are you still figuring out what it means to be in your body? That’s ok too. We’ll journey with each other through that. A couple of years ago, when my niece came out as transgender, the first steps I had to take were to reconfigure my perception of her, but also respect, love, and honor all that she had always been, to honor her as a body and to see her anew.

So how will you honor the body? How will you receive the glory of God’s goodness upon your embodied self?

I pray that we each will catch a glimpse of the Good Creator as we see one another and ourselves this week. This is our spiritual act of worship, to fully own our bodies, inhabit them, and share the goodness of God’s gifts with one another. Amen.