Easter III B Incarnation

I don’t know what happened to Christianity that we have such a wrong attitude about our bodies.  For centuries, Christians have looked at the body as something to be ignored at best, or seen as dirty and disgusting, at worst—and if we read the works of St. Paul in a certain interpretation, all the evils of sin come from the desires of our bodies that lead us astray.

I believe this is even more the case for women than men. Women in Jewish and other cultures were considered contaminated and unclean.  Is it any wonder that women have such negative feelings about their bodies? Back in the 1980s, the era of Jane Fonda workouts, a survey found that 75 percent of women surveyed felt they were too fat, and more than 60 percent said they were dissatisfied with or ashamed of their stomach, hips and thighs. Taking such negative information, many groups have worked to change women’s attitudes, and today, there seems to be a healthier confidence about and acceptance of our bodies just the way they are.  But we still spend millions a year on cosmetics, lotions and crèmes, clothes, and a growing number of cosmetic surgeries.

If you have ever been to a foreign country, you will also see that Americans seem more ashamed of their bodies than do most Europeans.  There are more strictures here than there that I think has been influenced by our Puritan heritage.  Some American Christians believe that alcohol itself is evil, for instance.  A trip to most European countries without enjoying the local wine or ale with the residents would be unthinkable to the rest of us. 

So we seem to have a push-pull attitude about our bodies and what’s good about them.

But this is not what God intended.  First with creation, God pronounced all that was made Very Good.  Jesus fought the attitudes of the chief priests and scribes that his disciples didn’t ritually wash before eating, that he ate and drank, and did not abstain from enjoying these gifts of God.  And God made sure that the Messiah given to us was embodied in every way. Like the rest of us, He enjoyed quiet time, got tired of the crowds, played with children who came to him, prayed, he was sometimes sad and angry, and he mourned the death of his friend Lazarus. Finally, He was cruelly executed, not forgoing the pain of death on a cross.  In every way, Jesus felt our humanity as we do, with friends to help him along, and with friends who abandoned him in his hour of need.

Even after his death, the Son of God does something new that is also very embodied.  He rose from the dead, not as a ghost, but as a fully fleshed-out being.  He comes to his disciples to show them this risen body, a real thing they could touch and see, as real as their own bodies.  God made the body of Jesus live again, made its flesh alive, made this Messiah one who conquered the death of the body.

That God would choose this particular embodied way of bringing about new life makes us know that God has a very high opinion of our bodies. The human body is worth bringing new life to. The human body carried the Messiah into the world in the woman Mary. The human body gave a home to the Son of God, not as an angel, not as a spirit of God, but as a flesh and blood man.  That man Jesus lived as a human being, fully in the world of people, celebrating, ministering, having all the emotions and experiences of his friends.

As Christians, we should embrace our bodies as parts of the creation that God called good, that God saw fit to bring back to new life.  Just as Jesus embodies the grace of God for us, we too can bring that grace to others.  Jesus lived his life showing us that food and drink are given to nourish us, that you can live a life in the body that glorifies God, and that you can be close to God even in the throes of bodily ills and even death.

Jesus taught the disciples that it wasn’t what went into the body that defiled it, but what came out of it—hatefulness, spite, envy, and negative thoughts about others and ourselves.  Those are the evils Jesus asked his disciples to curb when they asked who would be first in heaven. Those are the evils he called his followers to give up, when they could not imagine their messiah being persecuted and brought to death on a cross. 

Constantly Jesus calls those he healed to be part of their healing—“Do you want to be healed?” he asked and he asks us now, by showing his own feet and hands and side.  Do you see where he underwent death? And if so, can you now participate in his resurrection?

Jesus eats some broiled fish with his disciples, again being centered in his body, being human in new life.  Jesus totally accepts his body, but his body does not forget the evil done to it, as it continues to carry the scars.  Our bodies carry the wear and tear of our lives too, as we age.  God does not ask us to forget where we have been, but to remember, and then to go on.

Can you accept your body as part of God’s creation, loving it as God loves it?  Can you bring the love of Christ to your body, as Christ loved his own body?  Can you be resurrected in your body to a life of new creation?