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Click to hear this sermon sermon080511
In the beginning God covered the
earth with broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and green, yellow and red vegetables
of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives.
God and My Physical Self - Genesis 25: 27-34; I Corinthians 6:
12-20 - May 11,2008Cicero United Methodist
Church - Everett J. Bassett
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In the beginning God covered the
earth with broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, and green, yellow and red vegetables
of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives. Then, using
God's bountiful gifts, Satan created Ben and Jerry's and Krispy Kreme. And Satan
said, "You want hot fudge with that?" And Man said, "Sure!"
and Woman said, "I'll have another with sprinkles!" Lo Man and Woman
gained 10 pounds. And God created the healthy yoghurt that Woman might keep the
figure that Man found so fair, and vice versa. And Satan brought forth white flour from the
wheat, and sugar from the cane, and combined them. And Woman went from size 2
to size 10. So God said, "Try my fresh green salad." And Satan
presented Blue Cheese dressing, and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman
unfastened their belts following the feast.
God then said, "I have sent you heart-healthy
vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them." And
Satan brought forth deep fried coconut shrimp, butter dipped lobster chunks and
chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man's cholesterol
went through the roof. God then brought forth running shoes, so the His
children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan came forth with cable TV with
remote control so that Man and Woman would not have to toil changing the
channels. And Man and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering light and
started wearing stretch jogging suits. Then God brought forth the potato,
naturally low in fat and brimming with potassium and good nutrition. So Satan
peeled off the healthy skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and
deep-fried them in animal fats and added copious quantities of salt. And Man
put on yet more pounds. God then gave
lean beef so that Man and Woman might consume fewer calories and still satisfy
his appetite. And Satan created the Whopper and the 99-cent cheeseburger, and
said, "You want fries with that?" And Man replied Yes! And Satan
said, "It is good!" and Man said, "It is great!" And Man
failed his stress test. God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery. And
Satan created HMOs...
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This morning I am continuing a sermon series I began a few
weeks back about loving God with your whole self. I am basing it on the words
Jesus quoted when he was asked which is the greatest commandment. He said,
"You should love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul
and all your mind and all your strength." I've already talked about heart
and soul and mind - our emotional, and spiritual, and mental selves. This week I
am talking about strength. And maybe considering 'strength' is the best time to
talk about our physical selves.
The last words of the New Testament
lesson bring us right to the point: " ... you were bought with a price;
therefore glorify God in your body." The price, of course, is Jesus' life
given on the cross for our salvation. There is a strong tendency in
Christianity to think of salvation in spiritual terms - something waiting in
heaven after we die and are released from these corrupt and fallible physical
bodies. There are verses in the Bible that seem to point in that direction. The
strongest expression of this anti-body thinking was called Gnosticism, and
almost immediately the Church recognized it as heresy.
It is simply unthinkable to imagine that God wants us to hate
our bodies; we are too wonderfully made. Here's just a couple numbers about
your body. You are made up of about ten thousand trillion cells; I think that's
16 zeroes. And every one of those microscopic cells contains a coil of DNA
that, if it were uncoiled, would be about six feet long. If all the DNA coils
in your body were tied together into a long string, that string would extend from
here to California and back over 2000 times. That is almost as amazing to me as
the fact that someone actually sat down and figured that out. But my point is
that God put too much work, too much beauty, into the creation of the human
body for us to simply say that the body is a corrupt and sinful thing to be
tossed away.
Certainly Mother's Day is a good
time to think about that. Because, with all the other things represented by
this day, today is a reminder that every one of us - you, me, Jesus the Son of
God -- came into this world by a very physical event called birth. We came as
physical beings, filled with physical needs. And, in the best of cases, those
needs were tended to by our mothers. Motherhood, as we witness it in all of
nature, is a gift to all of us that reminds us of how God honors and loves our
physical selves as we walk and talk and live and breathe here on this earth.
The fact that Jesus gave up His physical life for us on the cross wouldn't
matter much if physical life wasn't precious and beautiful, and something to be
honored. Therefore, said Paul, "glorify God in your body."
But what does that mean, exactly?
Glorify God in your body? I want to leave you with three words about that this
morning. The first is 'discipline.' By this word we are reminded that while we
honor and appreciate our bodies, we are not ruled by them.
Enter Esau. In our Old Testament story from Genesis, Esau is
described as a physical
presence - a man of the field, rugged and strong. And he comes
in from the field, and he is famished. And his brother Jacob has cooked a stew,
and it smells so good. And Esau goes for it, but Jacob, crafty and greedy,
says, "you can only have some if you give me your natural rights as the
first born of the family." In those times, being the firstborn of the
family was money in the bank -- you inherited double portion, and all the
family honor. But Esau - only aware of his physical need -- says, "If I
don't eat, I'm going to die!" And he gives away his birth rights for a bowl
of soup. How foolish is that?
But before we get too judgmental,
let's remember that opening Power Point, and Ben and Jerry's and Krispy Kreme,
and the Whopper. Isn't Jacob simply an embodiment of the advertising that says,
"You must get in your car and come and buy this food." And isn't Esau
simply the embodiment of our insatiable physical appetites that say to us,
"I'll simply die if I don't eat that doughnut. If I don't eat that Danish
right now, I will fall over right here and now and not have strength to get up."
This is really getting autobiographical. We sell our precious gift of healthy
life for a momentary taste of sugar.
What does it mean, then, to glorify
God in the body? Certainly, first of all, it means taking care of this precious
gift. It means getting enough sleep; it means getting enough exercise; it means
eating responsibly; it means not harming ourselves with destructive substances.
And Americans, as a people, score lower than most any people on earth in every
one of those categories. We are sorely lacking in that kind of discipline.
The second word I want to raise is
'compassion.' Several times in the Bible we're told that Jesus looked at the
struggling crowd of people around him, and was filled with compassion. That
word for compassion in the Greek is a very physical word - it means that his
sorrow over the physical struggle of these people was like a kick in the
stomach. To say that we want to glorify God in the body means that we are
mindful of the physical pain that is widespread in this world. For Jesus,
feeling compassion for the people around him meant that he was active in
addressing physical needs - he healed the sick, fed the hungry, lifted the
lonely. And so we as followers of Christ are just as concerned about the
healing of those around us; we are concerned about the physical destruction of
lives and livelihoods in Myanmar, and the Sudan, and Iraq; we are concerned
about the homeless and the addicted, the tortured and the discriminated. That's
part of glorifying God in the body - praying and working for physical justice
and well-being in this world. Any form of Christianity that tries to say that
we can ignore those physical needs because we're just concerned about heaven,
isn't following Jesus. We as a church put a lot of focus on those physical
ministries of mercy and healing, as part of loving God with all our strength,
and helping others have strength to live as well. That's why we so cherish the
ministry of our Care Committee, our Missions Team, and other groups.
The third word I want to raise is
'perspective.' And here is where the message of Pentecost comes in, I think. On
the one hand, we honor and celebrate the miracle of the human body - it is
nothing short of a divine miracle. On the other hand, we need to keep a
spiritual perspective. And in these secular, material days in which we live, so
much of the human spirit is being squeezed out by the unhealthy physical
obsessions so strong in today's world. What we learn from Esau's story, and
from Paul's writing, is that physical obsession is not a new thing. Esau sold
his birthright for a bowl of soup. Paul is clearly writing to people who can't
control their sexual lusts - another arena where we desperately need
discipline, compassion and perspective in our society. And in that context,
Paul says, "... do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit...?"
The Spirit that came down at Pentecost intends to live within us, and that
changes how we treat ourselves, and gives perspective to who we are and how we
live - not only as spiritual beings, but as physical beings. It keeps things in
perspective.
Because for all that I believe about
how God has created us as physical beings and created the human body as a
beautiful vessel - the fact is, we age and we slow down and we die. Our bodies
are a temporary vessel. In a world that places so much emphasis on physical
appearance and longevity, the spiritual perspective lifted up by the Bible is a
reminder that we are more than our bodies, and there is more to the story after
death.
Someone once said that we are
spiritual beings having a physical experience. If so, then both the spiritual
and the physical are God-given aspects of who we are. As with all things,
either can be crushed, abused, or used for destructive purposes. Or they can be
beautiful gifts that we nurture and cherish. We have come to a strange paradox
in our society: we are obsessed with our bodies, and yet we don't take care of
them. But with the right approach - marked by things like discipline,
compassion, and perspective - our physical strength can give glory to God, and
great pleasure and joy to ourselves and others around us. Surely that is more
than worth the effort.
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