January 14, 2024 Text: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Dear Friends in Christ,
What is our identity? Who exactly are we? Does our body play any role at all? Robert George claims we live in an age of “Gnostic Liberalism.” According to this worldview, “You and I as persons, are identified entirely with the spirit or mind, or psyche, and not all with the body that we occupy and use.” The soul is merely the ghost in the machine. The body is merely the container for the inner-self.
The pro-life movement points to bodily DNA, a beating heart, and the ultrasound picture. Biology is on our side. But a Princeton Professor Peter Singer can still say, “The life of a newborn baby is of less value to it than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee is to the nonhuman animal.” A body is not enough to claim personhood. People claim we need more.
St. Paul says in our text, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (v. 13b). Paul then offers this, “and God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.” (v. 14). If the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and the resurrection is real, then the destruction of the body will be dealt with in the age to come.
In our funerals we have less casket and burial and more urn and cremation. We celebrate life after death in our local bar but neglect to talk about the life to come. We talk less of death as falling asleep, for if we did, we would be reminded we are going to awaken and see Jesus face-to-face. If the body is gone, judgment day will never come, and the things I do today are inconsequential. But let us not lose hope. St. Paul encourages us . . .
“AT HOME IN THE BODY”
Jesus is King. Even as we fight these different worldviews, we are still about seeking and sharing the message of the Gospel. We see and know those who have no hope. We have something to live for and something worth dying for. Children of divorce long for identity. Those mutilated by transgender surgery, those who have found the gay lifestyle depressing, and those raised in same-sex marriages have come to see that the pot at the end of the rainbow flag was fool’s gold. I read more and more about those on the road to Damascus.
We are not chastising others for their mistakes. This is a bodily sickness that affects our whole society. As the body of Christ, we are in this together. While we don’t need to justify ourselves, we can give people a chance to start over.
What might the church have to offer? We have a message of affirmation. A way for our people to be at home once more in their physical body and in the body of Christ. We don’t teach a means of escape, we proclaim forgiveness and recovery, a re-creation, a new Genesis. We speak a message of a fallen nature meant for better things, a humanity created in God’s image and redeemed by Christ’s blood.
The life to come should make us all courageous. We anchor our hope in Christ’s resurrection. We fear no one, except God. As we recover the sacredness of the body, we will no longer be flippant when a baker or florist is driven out of business. We can’t just stand idly by as a teacher is fired for wrong pronouns. They are fellow members in the body of Christ. St. Paul writes this, “If one member suffers, all suffer together.” (1 Cor. 12:26). Their burdens are ours.
We can’t just fast forward to the resurrection. We must speak of the crucifixion, the body on the cross. As we look at that man, himself scarred and abandoned, we say, “Behold the Man.” In that crucified body, we view the hope of the world, the one who invites us into the home of His Father. A return to the crucifix, so we can see our wounds have been sanctified. This means a return to our Baptism into the body of Christ. This means a return to the altar, where we eat true body and true blood. There is no spiritual worship apart from bodily worship, whether it is the body of Christ or ours.
In Christ, we reclaim our identity as men and women, husbands and wives, members of God’s family, so that we might feel at home in the body of Christ, His Church. We have a message that heals wounds and helps body and soul. Remember this: the body matters, it belongs to Christ like our text tells us, “You are not your own for you have been bought with a price.” (19b-20)
In our age of scattering, this brings us together. Blest be the tie that binds us to the Lord. These are the ties that bind husband and wife as one, that bind parents to their children and grandchildren. As people go their separate ways, we offer a homecoming, a seat at the family table, a place of belonging, a place where we matter to others and to God, a place where we know who we are as Christians. At Home In The Body.
Amen.