by: Pastor Isaac Collins
I want to start my sermon today in an unusual way. In my sermon today, I’m going to talk about bodies and the church. Our bodies can be the site of great harm. The mix of religion and bodies can bring up great shame or fear or anxiety in us. This is a trigger warning for anyone that might be upset by that. If something that comes up triggers you, it’s okay for you to get up and leave. We have a prayer room just around the corner. You’re welcome to go there. I’d be happy to talk with anyone after the service about stories that this sermon may bring up for them.
In our New Testament lesson today, Paul compares the Christian community to the body of Christ. We never hesitate to use this bodily language about the church, and yet, we are not always comfortable acknowledging our bodies in church. Well, at least, predominantly-white, mainline Protestant churches are not entirely comfortable with it. We are hesitant to clap after a solo or during a song or verbally respond to a sermon or a prayer. Now not all of us are totally silent during church. I do hear some amens now and then. But, a good portion of the people in this room were probably raised to stay silent in church. Raise your hand if that’s you and you are feeling brave. Did you grow up being taught that it was wrong or disrespectful to clap or say something out loud in church? This is how many mainline churches got the nickname, “The Frozen Chosen.”
I’m going to challenge you right now, let’s just spend 90 seconds making noise with our bodies. I don’t care what kind of noise you make, just make some kind. Clap, sing, shout, stomp your feet. Start now.
Doesn’t that feel good? It feels good to notice our bodies in this space. The life of faith is not a purely intellectual pursuit. We are flesh and bone, and God made us that way. We are called to honor that in this space. God wants us to make a joyful noise when we worship. Not a joyful movement of the intellect. A joyful noise!
But our discomfort with the body in church doesn’t stop there. Many of us were taught that issues about the body were not appropriate for discussion at church. We have been told that sexual desires were not an appropriate topic for our faith, unless someone was telling us that having desire, being aroused by someone else’s body, was sinful and wrong. As young people, we were made to feel ashamed by the things we felt. We were told that sex was only for straight people who are married. If you do it any other time or any other way, you’re going to hell. Yet, many of us felt the first stirrings of sexual desire in social groups that were formed by going to church. I don’t know what to tell yall, but youth groups are just a sea of hormones. Not too long ago, I was a youth myself, and after that I was a youth director, I don’t have to tell yall what happens at lock-ins or on youth retreats. Kids get together and explore their desires and each other’s bodies. It’s a natural, beautiful thing to do. Yet, the message that we were all taught is that our bodies are sinful sources of temptation. Somehow, there’s supposed to be a switch that we can flip on our wedding nights that takes our thoughts from: sex is wrong to okay, sex is good now! The thought is that after decades of being told that our bodies are sites of shame, young Christian men and women are supposed to have a healthy relationship to their bodies and the sexual desires that come with them.
All of that is to say nothing of the even worse relationship that queer bodies have with the church. If straight, cisgendered people are told to ignore their bodies in church, LGBT people are told to keep their bodies away from church all together. God doesn’t want those bodies, or so, queer people have been told over and over again. As a reconciling church, part of our task is to witness to the fact that God loves queer bodies. LGBT people, you are not a mistake! However, you identify, whatever relationship you have with your flesh, God sees it and thinks that it is good.
There are other realities about bodies that bring us shame besides our sexual desires. We can be ashamed of our bodies as they age. We lose our hair, our skin wrinkles and sags, our joints ache, we lose the power of our senses. We spend a lifetime relying on our bodies to do the things we love. What happens to our sense of identity when our bodies are too weak to do those things anymore? It can be an alienating experience. We can feel anger and grief about the things we lose when our bodies get older. Yet, we are also told not to bring those issues to church. Often times, instead of talking about how our needs are changing, or creating a space where people can discuss how their needs are changing, we just step away from a community instead. How can we do a better job of articulating how our needs change as we grow older? How can we be more accommodating of those that struggle to hear? See? Or move? Most importantly, is there still a place in the church for a person that can no longer contribute through their physical effort? Sometimes we think that if we can’t bake food anymore or can’t fix a broken toilet that God has no more need of us. Yet, there are so many spiritual gifts that do not require the body of a young person to do.
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul tells us that God arranges the body so that the most vulnerable parts are the most important parts. On a purely physical level, Paul’s statement makes total sense. The most vulnerable parts of our bodies are typically our penises or vaginas, our eyes, our hearts, or our internal organs. By the way, it’s incredible that the penis word never gets spoken in church when half of the Bible is taken up by debates about circumcision. We recognize the importance of our vulnerable parts, right? All of our greatest artistic and cultural achievements are songs and stories about sex, or heartbreak. We call the eyes the ‘windows to the soul.’ When we are distraught we talk about feeling sick to our stomachs or having our guts ripped out. These are our most vulnerable parts of who we are, and we have dedicated millions of hours to honoring them and enjoying them. On a purely literal level, Paul’s statement that our most vulnerable parts are our most important parts rings true. If that’s so, then why don’t they play a positive role in our faith? They should and can! If only we would bring our bodies with us into worship, into prayer, into discussion with our brothers and sisters.
I know this is a difficult topic, so I want to open up the floor. What has your experience of bodies and Christianity been?