This morning’s sermon is my last sermon on our theme, Looking in the mirror and paying attention to our bodies, individually and corporately. Today I will address us one more time – locally.
Next week Tim will preach a sermon about the Body of Christ globally to conclude our series.
Do you recall in your early years of Christian education or formation ever being taught that your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit and it matters how you treat it? Most of us in the Preaching team circle could remember such an injunction – usually related to sexual ethics, but smoking and drinking and any other perceived sin against the body would have been included.
as we age we become more sophisticated in the ways we mistreat our bodies – like not paying attention to our bodies’ signals that we are under too much stress, over-eating, under-eating, too much screen time, over-working, too much alcohol and/or caffeine or any other form of self-medication – frankly – over-indulging in anything.
As I list these things I feel like your health segment on CP24, Doctor Phil, Oprah, or 680 news. These shows or segments often list ways we mistreat our bodies and usually in their wisdom offer ways to fix or improve our health. It’s all very simple really – diagnose the problem – then fix it with whatever latest scientific evidence gives us the solution (even though the solution changes every few years). However all of these messages – that diagnose the problem and outline a straight-forward fix – presume that our body is an object to be tweaked, tuned up and cleansed. It’s like getting the oil changed in your car, making sure the tires are properly inflated, running it regularly, making sure we don’t put the wrong kind of fuel in the gas tank, making sure we don’t run out of fuel in the gas tank etc. With this paradigm, our bodies are treated like machines that can serve us well if we take care of them and that won’t serve us well if we don’t. While there is some truth to all of this, I’m not sure it’s very biblical, nor does it always work very well – as we move in and out of times when we are somewhat successful at body care and times when we aren’t.
Okay – I’ll speak for myself – sometimes I exercise regularly and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I eat properly and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I over-indulge in things that aren’t good for me like too much screen time and I start to experience “nature deficit disorder” a new phrase I heard recently that can only be remedied by a walk in the sun or the wind or the rain or along the lakeshore or through a garden or park.
And so we might ask, “Is there a way to get off this ‘sometimes I do sometimes I don’t’ treadmill?” On the one hand, I think the answer is quite frankly “no.” On the other hand there is a way to view ourselves biblically that has the potential to change everything, even how we view the treadmill. What if we stop viewing our bodies as objects or machines? God didn’t create machines. God created human beings, breathed into them the breath of life and called them very good.
Created in the image of God from mud and the breath of God we are animated by “the wild holiness of wind.” This is what separates us from cars and laptops. If we take this wild holiness out of the equation we are left with mechanized objects.
What does it mean to take this combination of mud and wild holiness seriously?
I will let our passage in Corinthians be our guide, “Aren’t you aware that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If you destroy God’s temple, God will destroy you – for the temple of God is holy and you are that temple.” 1 Corinthians 3:16.
First an important correction to the way this passage is sometimes viewed and used; both this one and another one like it in 1st Corinthians chapter 6:19,20. In Greek, the word “you” in both cases is plural. These statements by Paul are directed at the entire community and not at individuals or at least not primarily at individuals within the community. “You must know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is within you – the Spirit you have received from God. You are not your own. You have been bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” This is a really important distinction. We hear it very differently when we hear ‘you’ as plural. “Aren’t you, all of you, aware that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in your gathering?” The Spirit is also inextricably linked to the whole gathering and named the temple of God.
This metaphor of the church as temple had huge significance for the Corinthian church. Paul wrote these words when the 2nd Temple still existed, and so saying that the early church was that temple within which the Spirit of God dwelt rather than the temple at Jerusalem was profoundly radical in a way that we have trouble appreciating today.
But what else does this passage say? If you destroy God’s temple, God will destroy you, for the temple of God is holy and you are that temple. Keeping in mind the premise that mud and holy wind are inextricably linked, and that the Spirit of God dwells in our midst; keeping in mind that the church is Christ’s body. What does this imagery of destruction of this temple really mean?
Could it mean that God’s destruction of the body is also God’s destruction of God’s self-expression on earth? And if so is destruction the last word or simply a necessary step towards life? I think that there is something to this. It appropriately brings to mind Christ – crucified and raised. There is death before life, there is destruction before new life and God is intimately involved in both the dying and the rising.
In the verses before the “you are the God’s temple” verse, Paul warns that all builders who build on the foundation of Christ who died and rose – should be careful with how they build – whether with gold, silver or precious stones on the one hand or wood, grass or straw on the other. The Day will come when the quality of the work will be tested with fire. We know in this image that the wood and grass and straw will be burned away. The verses continue – “if your building survives, you will receive your reward. If it burns down, you will be the loser. You will survive, but only as one who goes through fire. Destruction of what is superfluous or unable to stand the heat of the flames is core to this message – not to be glossed over or ignored.
The Corinthians knew what Paul was talking about when he talked of the destructive effects of fire. In 146 BCE, their town had been sacked and burned by the Romans. In Paul’s time they had newly rebuilt their city and were well known throughout the empire for their artistic work in bronze. Because of these things they knew about both the de
structive and purifying effects of fire. Paul was drawing on a powerful metaphor that they would understand intimately.
But now he wanted them to realize that the immoral behaviour among them and the divisions in their young church caused by jealousy and wrangling about leadership (are they of Paul or Cephas or Apollos?) also needed to be burned away in order to reveal the precious stones of the gifts of the Spirit they had also received. They would ultimately survive, Paul says, in verse 15, but only as those who had gone through fire. And God through Christ as their foundation and the Spirit that dwells within them goes through that fire with them.
Here at TUMC, what does all this mean for our gathered body and our bodies? First, the body corporately and our bodies individually are this mysterious inextricable mixture of mud and Holy wind; clay bricks and Holy Spirit if you will.
Over the decades TUMC corporately has had certain self-understandings that have evolved. Walter Friesen has put together an excellent historical slideshow that he showed recently in the Adult Ed Newcomers class that delineates some of the different phases in this congregation’s life. There were the initial formative stages, early searches for leadership, a mission board that had oversight for this fledgling group that openly admitted that they didn’t know what to do sometimes with this independently minded sometimes-troublesome group of people that were in the process of forming the Toronto United Mennonite Church. After its initial founding and eventually a more stable period of leadership the church went through a building stage, the church also sponsored a lot of refugees over the years, helped found the St. Clair O’Connor Community, went through another re-building stage and then a challenging theological struggle about a decade ago. Each stage in the life of this congregation had its growing pains, trials by fire so to speak, and as one self-understanding gave way to another, not without pain and hurt at times, TUMC has survived and precious stones remain. Our Dying and Rising Christ has accompanied the church all the way and will continue to do so today.
As for our individual bodies and how we treat and understand them; as I said earlier in this sermon we are not machines, we are living and breathing, dying and rising bodies, like the Christ Jesus we follow. Each time we get close to burning out, or the stress that so permeates our lives pushes us close to depression or into depression, so that we forget how to or are unable to apply self-care techniques (that we learn so well from a “fix it model”) maybe if we remember that we are mud and Holy wind we will allow what is superfluous in our lives to be burned up, so that with Christ we can then rise again. This is not about being fixed. This is about being healed, or being made whole or ultimately about being saved. In this cycle of dying and rising we are being healed or being saved rather than being fixed. And the Christ to whom we belong dies and rises with us in order to effect that healing and that salvation and in the process destroying that within us which does not bring life.
This type of cycle is not a treadmill cycle of successes and failures though it may seem that way at times. This is a life that in all its reality and fullness draws us closer and closer to the abundant life that we are promised in Christ and that abundant life will include a final earthly death and the resurrection towards which we all move.
In the meantime let us as a church and as individuals in these mud and Holy Wind bodies practice this resurrection life.
A poem from Wendell Barrie comes to mind. The title of the poem is Manifesto, the Mad Farmer Liberation Front. And these are some of my favourite lines from his poem.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand.
Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power,
please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
This poem is not about fixing our lives or our bodies, but rather it gives us glimpses of how to live in our body the church, and in our bodies individually that respect the processes of healing and salvation made possible by living with a Christ who dies and rises again. Amen
