Destined for
Destruction
I’ve noticed a certain pattern in my life. When something is nearing the end of its existence—it could be anything, a shirt, a car, a couch—I tend to care for it less.
I worry less about getting the stain out of an old shirt because what’s the point? It’ll be transformed into a wash rag or thrown out with the trash soon enough.
I neglect to get an old car washed or to clean its interior because what’s the point? It’ll be beyond repair soon enough.
The couch that sits right now in my living room, which is already a hand-me-down, is currently being torn to shreds by two cats who have yet to learn it is not a scratching post. But I’m not too fussed about it because what’s the point? It was already on its final leg before the cats took to it.
A Discardable Body
and an Eternal Soul
Today’s scripture is like the fossil of a conversation. If you look at the insert in your bulletin, you’ll notice the use of quotation marks in verses twelve and thirteen. The original texts did not make use of quotation marks, but readers have long recognized that Paul is playing out an imaginary conversation with his Corinthian audience.
Apparently, he has heard them saying, “All things are lawful for me” (6:12), as a rationale for self-indulgent behavior, for doing whatever they want. Where they got this idea is uncertain. It could have been from Paul himself, who elsewhere declares, “Christ has set us free!” (Gal 5:1). Perhaps the Corinthians confused the freedom of Christ, which is a freedom to live well in any circumstance, with a license to do whatever one wanted.
But it is the next quotation that reveals what’s really going on. It reveals the roots of the Corinthians’ mistaken thinking. It shows the logic that fuels their self-indulgence. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy both one and the other” (6:13). In other words, this body is destined for destruction. It’s discardable. It’s a temporary shell, a sinful thing we’re burdened with in this life. When we die, we will finally be shed of our body, and our soul will depart to live forever in the spirit realm with God. “Therefore”—the Corinthians reason—”what difference does it make what we eat? How we eat? Or”—as we see later in the passage—“whom we join with sexually? This body is destined for destruction anyway.”
Does this idea of a discardable body and an eternal soul sound familiar? It does to me. As I grew up, I learned this idea about God and ultimate reality not only at church but in the wider world. I can still see Looney Tunes characters comically flying off a cliff and dying and their souls departing their body and floating up to some spiritual realm in the clouds. The irony is that, while this idea has found a home in the Christian religious imagination, it does not come from the Bible. It comes from ancient Greek thought, from philosophers like Plato, who thought that the material world was flawed and imperfect and temporary in contrast to the perfect and eternal world of the spirit.
God Don’t Make No
Junk
Paul is sometimes portrayed as a bit of a prude, a person who’s uncomfortable with the body and all its messiness. But I would like to suggest the opposite, that Paul is in fact a champion and celebrant of the body. Not in a shallow, if-it-feels-good-do-it kind of way. But in a God-don’t-make-no-junk kind of way. Paul had a firm foundation in the Jewish scriptures. He knew that when God created the world and humanity from the murky chaos of the deep, God saw that it was good, very good (Gen 1). So Paul responds to the Corinthians’ idea of a discardable body by saying, “The body is meant…for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (6:13). In other words, the body is good. If God meant it, then it is good.
In case there is any doubt about this, Paul points toward Christ and the resurrection. “God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power” (1:14). All of which is to say, the body is not destined for destruction. It is not a discardable shell. On the contrary, the body is how God’s Spirit becomes real (which is what we see in the incarnation); and the body is how God’s Spirit will endure and redeem everything (which is what we see in the resurrection).
The body is where God happens. God happened in the body of Jesus. God happened in birth and growth and touch and embrace and eating together. And when the cross seemed to put an end to this, God showed that actually the end was a new beginning. There is always more life. In the body. As Paul repeats across his letters, “We are now the body of Christ.”
Our Bodies Matter
Paul is not a prude about bodies. He is a proud apologist for them. He thinks bodies matter more than we know. What we do with our bodies matters. It either bears fruit or contributes to decay.
Now, to be clear, Paul is not being a health nut here. He’s not saying, “Eat the healthiest food and work out every day and keep your body in pristine condition.” There are many people who say this but with self-oriented motives, such as living as long as possible or attracting as much attention as possible.
What orients Paul’s glorification of the body is not the self but God and the common good. “All things are lawful,” the Corinthians are saying, but Paul responds, “Not all things are beneficial” (6:12)—or as he says elsewhere in the same letter, “Not all things build up” (10:23). “All things are lawful,” the Corinthians are saying, but Paul responds, “I will not be dominated by anything”—which is to say, we can become slaves through our bodies to all sorts of pursuits and behaviors and idols, including the body itself. If I’m honest with myself, I can usually determine a healthy thought or behavior by asking the simple question, “Does it build up? Does it bear fruit—for myself and ultimately for others?” If it does not, if it isolates me spiritually from others or myself, if it makes me less available to God and the world, then chances are that I am in danger of becoming enslaved—“dominated by” the thought or the behavior.
Revealing Christ in
Our Bodies
It is easy to read today’s scripture in a moralizing way, as though Paul were just saying, “Don’t have sex outside of marriage,” and “Don’t let your appetites rule you.” But reading in this moralizing tone would risk not only cultivating a culture of judgment and shame, but also missing the deeper point, which is radically affirming. Our bodies are good. Our bodies are not destined for destruction but for abundant life. Our bodies are where God happens in the world. The ultimate point is not what our bodies can’t (or shouldn’t) do, but what they can do.
Our bodies can smile and cry and embrace. Our bodies can walk and visit and sit together. Our bodies can eat and drink and enjoy life together. Our bodies can do all the things Jesus did that showed God’s love.
In this season of Epiphany, we celebrate not only how Jesus was revealed in the world two thousand years ago, but how Christ is revealed in us today. Today’s scripture invites us to reflect on the distinctive posture that Christ bore in the world, and that we might bear too. Christ did not regard the world as destined for destruction. He did not preach the good news of a fairy world in the future. Christ regarded the world and the people in it as infinitely valuable, worthy of care, worthy of touch and healing and hope.
In a culture that all too commonly dismisses the things of this world as merely resources to be used and discarded, we might reveal Christ. We might reveal a different way. We might live as though everyone—and every thing—mattered.
Prayer
Who looks on us and the world
With deep satisfaction
And calls us, good, very good—
Restore in us a sense
Of the holiness of all things
…
That we might, through our care
For others and ourselves,
Reveal Christ
And glorify your goodness.
In Christ, our brother: Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment