January 16, 2006 (David Hyers)

1 Cor. 6:12-20

12 You may say "All things are lawful for me," But I say to you “not all things are beneficial”. You may say "All things are lawful for me, or I am free to do anything," but I will not be dominated or mastered by anything. 13 You may say that "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and that God will destroy both one and the other. So you are free to do anything. But I say that the body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
16 Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." 17 But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18 Shun fornication! Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Fornication is one of those delightful biblical words that you’re not quite sure what it means but you know it must be bad.”
--Will Williman, Pulpit Resource

Money, sex and religion aren’t the most comfortable of topics for a sermon. Yet sex and spirituality often headline the news and not in a good way. How long has the church and in particular the Presbyterian Church (USA) struggled to find a consensus on issues of human sexuality?

And so again, I think I find Paul in today’s epistle reading to be negotiating this familiar ground if in a very different time and context.

Some would say Paul is addressing a problem rooted in a conflict of cultures -- Greek philosophy butting up against Hebrew theology and affecting the newly forming Christian culture. All are mixing and melding. And in our epistle text, we see that it is producing for Paul less than desirable results.

I am, as always, wary of drawing too many prescriptive connections today because so many seem so ready to make sweeping truth claims. Such confluence of ideas is rarely as clearly defined as they would have us believe.

Regardless of questions we have about some of the harder sections of this scripture, I think Paul’s rhetorical dialogue with the Corinthians provides a creative landscape for us to consider and think about what it means for us to be in our bodies.

At work in Corinth was an idea alien to Hebrew theology. It was an idea of a hierarchal duality of body and soul. Some say it was Greek. Others say it was a Gnostic take on the Greek philosophy. They saw a separation of our bodies and our souls.

In its extreme form, it stressed the dual natures of our humanity. The higher soul is encased in a lesser body of flesh. While on earth, the two were connected as water in a cup or as a peanut in its shell, the purity of the soul was not being dirtied or tainted by the lesser flesh surrounding it.

In its most extreme form, some Christian sects rejected the humanity of Jesus. To them, how could the divine be in such weak surroundings?
So, as Paul speaks again those wonderful words about freedom in our text and in Romans and as he does later in First Corinthians (9:19): “For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them.”

I can see how people batted those ideas around. Their ideas of freedom became mere slogans, manipulated by the men of the Corinthian church, used and abused to rationalize and justify their participation in the casual and sometimes ritualized prostitution common in the Greek culture around them.

They believed they had freedom from the bounds of covenant life, stemming from a feeling that the actions of their bodies did not affect their souls and most certainly did not affect the relationships around them.

Maybe they did not feel that they were ultimately defined by their bodies. An understanding of humanity that says you are not your body -- your soul, your spirit and your true self isn’t your body.

And so “Woo Hoo!” Let’s go have some fun!

The idea itself that we are not defined by our bodies isn’t without merit, despite the behavioral actions of the men in Corinth.

Saying that you are not your body is not always a bad thing.

How much damage is done in our culture that often says you are only your body? This is a culture that says we are defined and confined by our beauty or lack thereof, by our abilities or inabilities and that we only have value, worth and importance because of our age and our ability. You can come up with your own categories. These external criteria treat our bodies as a commodity.

How much damage is done when we say we are only our bodies? How much damages is done when we say we are only what we experience, do and see or take and make?

Saying that you are not your body can be good news to this kid who can’t throw a softball to save his life, good news to this balding associate pastor more than he is really bothered by it, good news to many who don’t meet the standards of Vogue magazine or Gentlemen’s Quarterly or who will never make the cover of Sports Illustrated.

While such an idea doesn’t always lead to the problems of the Corinthian church, it can lend itself to problems in the other direction.

Such disassociation from our bodies can also result in puritanical reaction against our bodies. It is said that a puritan is someone very concerned by the notion that somewhere, somehow, someone is having a good time, and they’re going to do something about it.

How many of us good Calvinist children feel just a little bit guilty about laughing too hard, especially laughing at a joke you shouldn’t laugh at?
How many of us are taught to feel guilty about responsible, sacred embodiment because we have such a low view of the body?

Our own religious traditions as Presbyterians struggle deeply with the meaning of our bodies. Some times we take total depravity so far out of context that the very image of God is not merely marred, as Calvin says, but absent entirely. Absent as any sacred enjoyment of our bodies.

Taken to the extreme, I am drawn to the fictional account of a real practice in “The Da Vinci Code.” This is the practice of corporal mortification -- punishing the body for the seeming enlightenment of the soul.

These powerful, poignant and disturbing images are fictional, but they point to a perspective taken to the extreme that is unpleasant and unfaithful to scripture.

Such perspective also misses the point Paul tries to make in today’s epistle reading. If we take today’s scripture and our tradition seriously, we cannot hold to a slogan that you are not your body just as we cannot hold to one that you are only your body. We cannot abandon our flesh and blood just as we cannot worship our flesh and blood.

Paul’s words for me provide creative space, then, to imagine our bodies as something else. There is space to try, however impossible, to hold our total depravity, our fallen state, while also asserting powerfully that we are created in the image of God. Through an incarnate God, in Jesus Christ, the good news is embodied within and around us.

This Imago Dei. Paul urges us to see our humanity in the light of God’s activity in Jesus. Paul asks us to move beyond the idea that we are only our bodies and to reject the idea that we are not our bodies, merely souls encased in flesh.

Through Christ in our humanity, we are more than our bodies. We are so much more that just body or encased soul.

This is an understanding that sees the hand of God upon our souls and well as our heads, hands and hearts. God is active in our smiles, in our struggles and in our bodies.

God’s claim on us is total -- the good, the bad, the beautiful, the bald, the humble, the tragic -- we are all recipients of a hope that as God became embodied as Jesus Christ, we are more than just our bodies.

Paul makes his appeal in many ways. Paul says while we may be free to do anything, not all things are good for us. We have both freedom and responsibility. He goes on to talk about our bodies in relation to the body of Christ. He talks of the mystery of bodily resurrection.

Even if he speaks later in Corinthians in unclear terms of spiritual bodies, there is an understanding of this Aramaic idea (?) that body and soul are together. Paul speaks of our bodies as temples, inhabited by the Holy Spirit -- our bodies as members of the body of Christ.

The whole of our embodied beings belongs to God, We are to enjoy God’s gift of bodily life. We need to be responsible with such gifts in caring for our bodies in all our frailty and fear.

We need to encourage each other as sister and brother, parent and child, human to human that, thanks be to god, we are more than our bodies.

What good news this is for me who can’t throw a baseball to save his life.

What good news this is for the young and old, the fit or not so fit, those with hair and those who are bald. We are more than our bodies. We have been given a great gift.

This is the good news of Paul’s word to us this day. You are more than your body. You as a community are more than a body. All of us are created in the image of God. We are more than our bodies. In the love of God, we are the very body of Christ.

We are for ourselves and for each other with our gifts, blessing and responsibilities to be enjoyed, to be cared for and to be cried over.

These are gifts that in the wonder of God’s creativity we have been given.

These are gifts that in the mystery of God’s mercy even now are being redeemed as we strive to live faithful lives.

These are gifts embodying the hope of God’s incarnate love in Jesus Christ.

Friends, you are more than your body. You are the body of Christ.