Pentecost 10 (A) – A Mystagogical Sermon on the Body – Romans 12:1-8
Paul says, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.”
Are we really comfortable with that? I remember being a child, and learning in Sunday School that our bodies are “temples of God,” another sentiment right out of St. Paul. The explanation that went with it usually didn’t make much of why our bodies are temples, and it ultimately came down to an imprecation to treat your body well. As a small child, that meant eating all your vegetables, and as a teenager, it became a reminder not to smoke or to drink in excess–preparing us, of course, for when we were old enough to do those things.
But that’s not quite what Paul is saying, is it? He’s pushing us deeper into an understanding of who we are, of our bodies, and it’s one I’m not sure we like to hear. Present your spirits as a living sacrifice, sure. We get that. After all, the spirit is the realm of faith, we think. That’s the place where God abides in us, and we in Him. Present your minds as a living sacrifice: Lutherans can generally get behind this one pretty well too. Since we wrote the Augsburg Confession, trying to describe exactly what was different about our belief, Lutherans have been pretty good at thinking about faith, about God. But our bodies?
No, no! Bodies are these shameful things it seems, things we carry around with us but that are really strange, foreign objects. Things that need to be hidden away. It’s funny–maybe you feel like I do. Every time I go to the doctor, something I try to do as infrequently as possible, I’m cognizant of the fact that this doctor sees dozens of bodies every day, and mine is not much different from the others. That I’m there for the express purpose of having my body looked at, analyzed, diagnosed. And that even so, just taking off my shirt so the stethoscope can find its way carries with it the greatest sense of shame and embarrassment. Like I should be apologizing for baring a shoulder.
When did we get like that? When did we get obsessed in our culture about having some perfect body, aspiring to some ideal that is completely unattainable? When did we start being ashamed of the bodies that we have? Much of our world wants to blame it on a media that lifts up that ideal, and think that has something to do with it. But it doesn’t help that our bodies aren’t perfect. Far from it, in fact.
Because we watch as things start to fall apart, not work as well as they used to. My mother tells me that when she was a teenager, her parents used to complain of their aches and pains, and she’d think they were being just a little ridiculous. And now that she’s in her sixties, not old yet by any means, she admits there may have been something to all of that complaining… And of course, it’s not just age, but disease, too, that breaks things down, that harms, that even kills.
And God knows all this. God knows the ravages of flesh because He took on flesh, was made truly human, experienced embodied life. Jesus knew it himself, knew the difficulties of dealing with a body that doesn’t quite want to get going in the morning, that fights against you sometimes. He spent his days, his vocation, as a healer, going from town to town, helping the many people He encountered to find wholeness again. And of course, He gave up wholeness in his own body for each of us, dying on a cross.
And was resurrected. And through that resurrection, promised us everlasting life too. So when–and this is the thing that surprises me most–did we get this funny idea that our soul is separated from our bodies?
Because that’s what we’ve been taught to believe, isn’t it? That when we die, our body dies and decays and that’s the end of it. And our soul is taken away, to be with God in heaven. Except that’s not the fullness of what Christ has promised us. It’s not what happened to Him, and it’s not what will happen to us. It’s not even what we confess every week. That’s not what we gather here and affirm, when we say in our creed, “I believe…in the resurrection of the body.” We insist that our bodies are good, holy, blessed things, and that even though we see them decay, they will be perfected and reunited with the soul, and will live forever. That, in Job’s words, though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh will I see God.
It’s a strange thought to us, and yet, it’s the first thing that we’ve covered here that matches everything we know about faith. We have that beautiful vision in Genesis 2, of God gathering together dirt and mud, and shaping out of it a human being, the first, Adam. And then into this lifeless body, God breathes… and there is life. We are more than just a shell. We are made alive by God’s spirit.
And alive means ALIVE. Our whole selves are engaged in the godly lives we live. This takes expression in our outward selves. Jeremiah’s prophecy was frequently spoken through actions he took, physically. When Jonah spoke God’s Word to the people of Nineveh, the people didn’t just repent; they covered their bodies in sackcloth and sat down in ashes as a sign of their repentance. And when King David saw the Ark of the Covenant brought into Jerusalem, he danced in the streets behind it. In fact, we believe that the most ancient words found in our Bible are Exodus 15, Miriam and all the women of Israel went with tambourines, singing and dancing at God’s work at the Red Sea.
These prophets and pray-ers were engaged with their whole being–soul, mind, and body–directed toward God. And we can be too. There are so many ways you can pray with all your senses. While you walk. While dancing. While sitting in the dark. While following a labyrinth, like the one our teens built at St. Francis Church. Or like we will today, in our worship.
And of course, by coming forward to receive the body of Christ, here around His banquet table. God’s gift of communion is really the only time when we worship that involves all of our senses. We hear the words of God’s promise. We touch and taste and see and even smell the bread and wine. We encounter the real, living Christ with our whole body, our whole selves.
And in that encounter, Christ who gave his body for us makes us into His own body, living and active in this world. This is what Paul is insisting in today’s reading. That each of us, as members of Christ’s body, has our own gifts to share with the world. And that engaged together, we can do so much more than we could alone, and make real change, bring real healing to God’s kingdom.
Rosa Parks was an incredible woman. Her courage changed the world. But it didn’t do it alone. Alone, she would have been one person, sitting on a bus, refusing to give up her seat. But her arrest sparked a large-scale boycott of the bus system in Montgomery. And as the movement grew, it was hundreds and thousands of women and men, walking instead of using the buses, sitting in at lunch counters, tired of giving in to the injustice they lived with, that changed the world. Without their courage, their faith, our society would never have come this far. And we would never be able to take the next steps on our journey. And only through God’s Spirit, inspiring them, could this change happen.
That same Spirit inspires you, in your gifts, to be part of Christ’s body. But it takes real, bodily, physical action. It takes breaking free of just thinking about faith, and going and answering the call for which God freed you. God, who formed your body, who breathed life into it, who loves and nurtures you, and who saved you, your whole self, all of you, forever and ever. Amen.