Shalom Mennonite Church
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Body & Soul Series, Part 1
Our Bodies, God's Image
Texts: Genesis 1:26-31, Psalm 139:1,13-18, John 1:14
Eric Massanari
“what the body knows”
I want to begin this time of reflection
by inviting us to join in a time
of listening to our bodies:
First, I invite you to find a comfortable
position that you can sit in for a few minutes.
I recommend sitting as upright as possible,
not stiff or rigid, but in that position
you might sit in when you are paying
deep attention to someone in conversation.
You might also find it helpful to
rest both of your feet on the floor
rather than crossing your knees –
this is more of a balanced position.
And your hands might simply rest
on your knees, with your palms open
and facing upward, in a position
of receptivity and openness.
For this time of meditation
you might also find it helpful
to either close your eyes
or simply let your gaze rest gently
on the floor in front of you.
Take a few deep breaths.
Instead of lifting your shoulders as you breathe,
feel these breaths arise from deep in your belly.
Now, allow your breathing to find a relaxed rhythm.
Simply notice your body sitting here in this place.
What are the sensations in your body at this moment?
If you notice places of discomfort or tension you might
take a moment to draw your breath into those places,
imagine the breath bringing relaxing, healing energy there.
What labor has your body done recently?
How has your body helped you play?
What pleasure have you known in your body recently?
What pain or discomfort have you known in your body?
This body is your oldest possession.
It has been crafted by God,
and God has called it “very good.”
Offer a silent prayer of gratitude
for your body.
Listen to these words of the poet of the Psalms . . .
You created my inmost self,
knit me together in my mother's womb.
For so many marvels I thank you;
a wonder am I,
and all your works are wonders.
You knew me through and through
my being held no secrets from you,
when I was being formed in secret,
textured in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes could see my embryo.
In your book all my days were inscribed,
every one that was fixed is there.
How hard for me to grasp your thoughts,
how many, God, there are!
If I count them, they are more than the grains of sand;
if I come to an end, I am still with you . . . .
Amen
Psalm 139:13-18 (NJB)
A wonder am I,
and all your works are wonders.
A wonder is our body
and all God's works are wonders.
How did we get from a theology of such wonder
to such wanton disregard for the blessing of embodiment?
How did the people of God get from
such deep insight into the union of spirit and body
to such dismemberment of these integral
parts of the human being?
How did we fall from such connection
with our bodies and the earth,
to such separation from these things that give us life?
We may be terribly advanced as modern people,
proud of where we have come,
yet it seems there is wisdom we must reclaim
so that we can re-member
the fullness of who we are
as beings created in the image of God.
Our modern medicine and sciences of the mind
are telling us what ancient peoples once
knew by experience and intuition:
that body, mind and soul are woven
into an integral whole as we live this human life.
We are wonders!
All God's works are wonders!
Genesis
In the beginning . . .
The ancient Hebrews,
like many other tribes of ancient people,
had their tales of how all things began.
The first two chapters of Genesis
tell two stories of creation.
These are not scientific or historical accounts,
they are mythological stories—
which, we might remember, does not
make them less true.
This story of creation may not be true in the sense of
recounting events that happened in time,
but it is true in the sense that this story
contains the seeds of our being in God.
We learn something of the truth of our
relatedness to God and to all life.
The story suggests that human beings—
created male and female in the image of God—
are the culmination of the creative act of God
and we are, at the same time, very much
interconnected with and dependent upon
everything else that God has made.
And what's more, human beings
are asked to join in God's creative action,
to “be fruitful and multiply.”
God calls all of this “very good.”
The goodness of what has been made
lies not only in the simple fact that it exists,
but also in its potential for relationship and growth.
Our capacity to join God in the creative act
of communion with all that has been made
is part of what is very good in us.
The Psalm
The psalmist speaks of
the intimacy with God that is experienced
through our embodiment.
It is God who “knit us together
in the womb of our mothers.”
The frame of our body and being
has not been hidden from God,
an in fact our relationship with
God is so close that we were
known and beheld by God before
one of our days came into being.
For the psalmist, each one of us,
is a wondrous work of God,
treasured by God in our singularity
and as an integral part of the vast and diverse
expanse of creation.
Your body is treasured by God
the One who wove all your parts together.
When the ancient Hebrews thought of a human being
they did not see parts, as in:
body, soul, spirit, mind...
They understood the human being as a whole,
textured and knit together by God.
The Gospel
John, the writer of the fourth gospel,
lived and wrote in an era when
this more unitive understanding
of the human being was encountering
a much different perspective in
the Greek and Roman cultures.
Greek philosophy was much more
dualistic in its understanding of the human being—
body and the spirit were distinct entities.
In this worldview the spirit within us
is what is considered most god-like and sacred,
and the body is at best a holding vessel
and at worst a trap for the spirit.
The spirit must seek release from physical confines
in order to arrive at full union with the divine realm.
As Keith Graber Miller writes in an essay
on sexuality and the scriptures,
The Hebrew Scriptures had no concept of this division, nor did Jesus, as he is depicted in the New Testament: the person is unified, body and spirit. We are embodied beings, not dismembered ones. The Christian Scriptures more generally fight against this dualism, though the body-spirit split no doubt influenced some of the New Testament writers. However, the fundamental tent of Christian faith—that God became flesh in the incarnation of Jesus Christ—militates against such dualism.
(Sexuality: God's Gift, 2nd ed., p.43)A Greek philosopher reading
the first verses of John's gospel might
have been right with him up until verse 14.i
They would have resonated with
this notion of a “Word of God,” the Logos,
which exists before and beyond the human realm.
They might have also resonated with
John's language of being born
not of “blood or the will of the flesh...but of God.”
But then they would have come to verse 14:
And the Word became flesh
and lived among us . . .
And this would have seemed strange.
Why would the perfection of the Divine
seek out the limitations of embodiment?
Why would that which is heavenly,
desire the muck and mess of the earthly?
And a Greek philosopher reading to the end
of John's gospel would have been all the more
stymied by what happens with the resurrection.
Here at what should be the long-awaited
release of the spirit from the body,
Christ appears once again in fleshy form;
Thomas and the disciples can still touch him.
Even in this more “spiritual” gospel,
as John is sometimes called,
embodiment is blessed,
it remains “very good.”
It is is the channel through which
God's love is revealed and experienced in the world.
In the biblical scriptures we
encounter, overall, perspectives that
are affirming of our embodiment
and our wholeness as beings of body and spirit.
However, Christianity, as it evolved in the West,
was more and more influenced
by the Greek and Roman worldviews.
Classical Western Christian theology
increasingly separated the divine
and human realms, and the incarnation of Christ
came to be seen more as a bridging act of God,
meant to join God's heavenly realm
with the “fallen” earthly realm
in order to raise up all who had fallen.
Therefore, “spiritual things” have been interpreted
to mean non-bodily things and non-earthly things.
We have witnessed the impact of this view
through the centuries, and the way it has contributed
to a sense of separation from the earth,
mistreatment of our bodies,
a devaluation of the life that sustains our own,
the degradation of women
and sometimes people of other races and culture
who this theology has typically associated
more with the “lower” earthly realm
than with the “higher” the heavenly realm.
Gratefully, this is beginning to change.
We are coming to understand that there
are very different ways of seeing
the incarnation and the work of God in the world.
We are coming to remember a very old wisdom.
James B. Nelson, a professor of Christian ethics
puts it in the form of questions that I believe
are worth our reflection:
What if the body isn't merely a subject of concern for theology—theology which emerges from some superior, non-physical vantage point? What if the incarnation is pervasively true? What if God is met bodily if God is met at all in this world?
What if it is through our bodies that we come to understand God's own hunger?
What if it is through our bodies that we experience God's own language?
What if it is through our bodies that we experience God's interrelatedness with all of life?
What if it is through our bodies that we experience God's pleasure and God's pain?
(Nelson, Between Two Gardens, p.30)
We are relearning in these times
what people knew long ago,
that our bodies have wisdom, they know things.
If you've ever learned a musical instrument, or a sport,
or a craft or trade that requires regular use of your body,
you know that there are things the body learns and remembers.
If you've known wounding, or a great loss or grief,
then perhaps you've come to know the way
the body holds these experiences as deep
as the marrow in your bones.
Certainly we all come to know the myriad of ways
our bodies help us interact with our world and one another.
Our bodies are channels of relationship
with one another, with the earth, with life.
Why would this not be true of our relationship with God?
Might we consider the possibility that
our deepest impulses and longings for
relationship with one another,
that our most profound energy for life and communion,
are part of the image of God we bear?
Are we ready to accept these bodies of ours
as channels for our relationship with God?
Are we ready to believe that this is indeed “very good”!
These wondrous bodies
are what allow us to
“taste and see that the Lord is good.”
I want to close with the words of a 14th century
mystic, Julian of Norwich, who remembered this
wisdom during a season of the church's life
when traditional theology held the body and soul
in distinctly separate categories.
She wrote:
I understood that
our sensuality is grounded
in Nature, in Compassion
and in Grace.
This enables us to receive
gifts that lead to
everlasting life.
For I saw that in our sensuality
God is.
For God is never out of
the soul.
i This image is borrowed from an article written by Leonard Beechy in the Adult Study Guide for the Body & Soul worship and educational materials printed by Menno Media (2011).
No comments:
Post a Comment