Bodies R Us

"Bodies R Us"
1 Corinthians 6:19-20


I don't know why God made my body so tall.  It would be nice to be of "average" height, whatever that would be.  6'5" would be a nice height.  That way, I'd have average sized feet and hands, and not worry about being able to find size 16 shoes.  I'd be able to blend in, in a crowd, rather than stick up above everyone like a palm tree.  I can't get away with anything--I'm so visible.

I'm an anomaly in my family, as far as this body goes.  No one is even close to being this tall.  My father was only a short guy at 6 feet.  My mother about 5'7" or 5'8".  My father used to tell his friends I wasn't only the tallest in our family tree, I was the family tree.  So I'm not sure how it is that I got this body.

I used to be averaged height, up until 8th grade.  At the start of eighth grade I was 5'5".  By the time I started 9th grade I was 6'5".  When I got to school at the start of 9th grade, which was the last year of junior high when I was in school, the basketball coach thought I was a new kid who had transferred in.  I had to tell him I was there all along.   Before, I was invisible.  Now, at 6'5" I was highly visible.

I am very self-conscious about my tall body.  It’s one of the reasons I preach down here and not up there.  A couple of people told me I make the pulpit look small.  My body just doesn’t fit there.  There’s even a step up that makes me even taller in there.

When I was in seminary, the church I attended was pastored by Jim Catham.  He’s a tall guy, 6’7” or 6’8”.  When he preached, he’d lean down, and over the pulpit. (demonstrate)  I tried that a couple of times in my first church, but just wasn’t comfortable.

I usually get down, almost on my knees when talking to children because I don’t want to overwhelm them with this tall body.  Every time Shirley Elder goes out of worship, she looks way up, reminding me how tall I am.  A little girl in the grocery store, being pushed in the grocery cart by her mother, looked up at me and said, “Mom, look, a giant!”  Her mother was so embarrassed she raced off pushing the cart clear to the other side of the store.

I remember my mother being disgusted having to take me to the shoe store for new shoes every two months. I was afraid my feet wouldn't stop growing and I'd end up with huge clown feet.  Hearing the line that I had a "firm understanding in life" didn't help.  Neither did hearing the poem from my grandfather whenever he visited,

You're a poet
and don't know it--
you have Longfellows!

My favorite thing to do at the end of the day is take my shoes off.  It feels like I've been walking around with a couple of aircraft carriers all day.  Although, it is nice when I get a new pair of shoes.  I use the boxes for a storage shed, or an extra garage.  I always hated to go bowling, because my shoe size was right there on the back of my shoes for everyone to see.  *16* *16* *16*

But, I have to confess, my body changed my life, growing as it did that year, and continuing to grow through high school.  I started playing basketball.  All of a sudden I was a jock.  I was in with some of the cool guys--a group I only looked at from afar.

My coach, in that first year of my basketball playing gave me the nickname, "Big Dumb Kid."  It stuck.  But it didn't bother me because I had a whole new place in the social order of junior high and then senior high the next year.  All thanks to my body and it's amazing growth spurt.

Like most people, I've had a love/hate relationship with my body.  As I said, I wished I was shorter.  In my bathroom, in most bathrooms, I never get to see my face, just my chest, since the mirrors are for "average" people.  When I fly out to see Kristin and Nic, I hate being shoe-horned into airplane seats, waiting for the person in front of me to recline into my already jammed knees.  Dating has been problematic being so tall.  But it's just what is.

None of us gets to decide what kind of body we have.  Maybe in the future, as they unlock more and more of the human genome, mothers and fathers will get to decide what kind of body their children will have.

But as I get older I have begun to wonder how much of our bodies, especially as we age, is a result of genetics and how much is a result of our own choices.  That is, what we have done to our bodies in terms of eating habits, exercise, etc.  It all accumulates, and I discovered it gets harder to change things on the body as those accumulations pile up.  All in all, my body has served me well in these 61 years.

For girls and women, bodies and body image is such a difficult relationship between psyche and the body.  In one study, it was found that teenaged girls start getting depressed 45 seconds into looking at a clothing catalog or teen magazine.  The depression comes not from the articles, but from the advertisements and the models that wear the sassy clothes, or tout the lipstick on pouty lips, or flounce their hair.

Glamour magazine did a study of women and their attitudes toward their bodies.  The study found that 97% of women are "cruel to their bodies" every day.  Women think or say an average of 13 brutal thoughts about their bodies each day.  97%!!

Our relationship to our bodies is one of the most basic relationships we have.  It is more basic than our relationship with each other.  Our bodies are one of the main gifts God has given us in this life, if not the main gift.  Nobody does anything without a body.

The first thing God did, in creating humans, was to create a body.  Then blow the breath of life into the nostrils of those bodies (Genesis 2:7). There was a time, as was read in Genesis, that people were "naked and unashamed."  Now we're naked, and full of shame.  I would guess there aren't too many of you who can stand in front of a full length mirror, in the buff, for longer than 15 or 20 seconds.  The shame just creeps in.  That shame leads to self-judgement.  And for some the self-judgement leads to self-loathing.  And it's all about your body.

At some point in our lives we have to come to terms with our bodies.  We have to accept our bodies.  We have to be reconciled with our bodies.  We have to be friends with our bodies.  Maybe even forgive our bodies.  But most of all, as Paul says here in 1 Corinthians, we have to "let people see God in and through your body."  See God in your body.  Which means, that if you are letting people see God in your body, that you are also seeing God in your body.

Letting people see God in your body is entirely different than having a positive body image.  I think they feed each other.  But I think there's a difference.  Knowing that people can see God in your body, no matter what kind of body you have, is the ultimate positive body image.  Plus, it should free you from thinking you have to have a specific kind of body in which to bear witness to God.  There is no specific body type that God requires to be seen in.  It takes all the worry and self-judgement away.  The only qualification from Paul is, "your body"--let God be seen in YOUR body.

Paul was speaking to the Gnostic heresy in his day, that still has its claws in some Christian's ways of thinking today--especially as that relates to our bodies.  The Gnostics were a weird, off-shoot brand of Christianity in Paul's time.  One of their main beliefs was that the spirit and soul of a person was the most important, over against the body.  They believed that the body was so tainted by sin and corruption that God didn't even care about bodies.  They believed that Jesus, as the sinless Son of God, couldn't have had a real body like we do.  They decided Jesus had a different kind of spiritual body, with no physicality to it at all.  That when he walked, he didn't make footprints.

Therefore, to the Gnostics, it didn't matter what you did to your body.  A believers main concern, in their mind, should be their soul.  There was this soul/body split in the Gnostic way of thinking, that totally discounted the body and valued the body as pretty much worthless.

You see that way of thinking when you hear someone, in evangelistic fervor, ask someone if their soul has been saved.  My answer has always been, "Well, yes, and so has my body."

So Paul asks the Corinthians some basic questions that would steer them away from any Gnostic misbeliefs:  Do these Gnostic type of believers not read Genesis and realize that God made our bodies?  That if bodies didn't mean anything to God, God wouldn't have made them in the first place?  That the Savior coming into the world was called the Incarnation, which means "in the flesh"?  Do they not read the book of 1 John, that starts out:
Our ears have heard,
our own eyes have seen,
and our hands touched this Word.  (1 John 1:1)

Robert Morris wrote in his article, "Reclaiming the Body's Soul,"  "...bodies don't have a soul; they are souls-in-action"  (Weavings, XXII:5, pg. 32).  I like that.  I think St. Paul would have liked that too.  Our bodies are souls in action.  I got to see that this past Sunday.  Carrie Harrold did the devotion at the nursing home service last Sunday afternoon.  She had some great thoughts about the stories our Bibles tell.

But there was another devotional that happened before that.  Carrie brought Trysten along.  Deb was playing "Jesus Loves Me" as a prelude, and Trysten danced.  She whirled, and swayed, and hopped to the music.  Trysten has definitely picked up her mother's love of the full bodied expression of faith.  Trysten was a beautiful example of how the body is the soul in action.  I'm so glad I was there to witness it, and now bear witness to it to you all.

Think of all the other ways we can use our bodies as our souls in action in forms of worship.  We bow before The Lord in all things.  Some lay prostrated on the ground before The Lord in prayer and obedience.  Some whirl in ecstasy.  Some stand with arms raised in prayer and praise to God.  We fold our hands in prayer.  We kneel.  And like Trysten and her mother, people like King David danced before The Lord as the Ark of the Covenant was brought into Jerusalem.  Bodies, as souls in action.  That is one way to "let people see God in and through your body."

But that's not all Paul was getting at.  Just before that statement, Paul wrote:
You surely know that your body is a temple where the Holy Spirit lives.  The Spirit is in you and is a gift from God.  You are no longer your own.  God paid a great price for you.
Then comes his statement, "So let people see God in and through your body."

We hear and use statements like, "Accepting Christ into your heart," or "Make Christ a part of your life."  Your heart and your life has to do with your body--taking Christ into your whole self, a major part of which is your body.

As Paul said, our bodies are that temple into which the Holy Spirit enters.   To look upon our bodies with a disdainful eye, means disdaining the temple in which the Holy Spirit lives.  To harbor at least 13 brutal thoughts about your body each day, is to think brutally about the temple of the Holy Spirit.

But on the flip side, to look upon our bodies with awe and wonder, no matter what kind of body we have, how intricately each of our bodies are designed, is to look the same way upon this temple of the Holy Spirit.  To harbor nothing but thankfulness to God for our body, no matter what kind of body we have, is to offer God that same kind of thanks for the temple which is the abode of His Holy Spirit.

That's the best form of body image.  That's the best way to "let people see God in and through your body."