Epiphany 2B

“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial. All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? 19Or 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? 20For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6: 9-15a, 19-20)

That word just kind of jumps out of you, doesn’t it? You know which one I’m talking about. It’s starts with an “f.” That “f” word evokes images of forbidden sensuality and carnal escapades that we only dream about in our most savage imaginations.

It’s right smack dab in verse 13, staring at us. And the “f” word I’m talking about, of course, is...”food.”

Why? What did you think I meant?

Well, I suppose the “other” “f-word” will make my point just as easily, if more colourfully. Because as I’ve been reflecting on the theme of “stewardship” I feel that we often neglect to include our most valuable resource - our bodies - as something we need to “steward”. How we treat our bodies can be just as important to our stewardship mandate as how we sustain the land, clean the oceans, capture carbon, or manage our finances.

As you can see I’m not exactly a poster boy for healthy eating. If anything I’m a cautionary tale of how poor nutritional habits and a sedentary lifestyle can wreak havoc on one’s life.

I’m a stress eater. And let’s just say that the last few years have been VERY stressful. And my habits thus far have not helped me in dealing with the stresses of the last half decade. If anything my late-night encounters with the drive thru and Monday Night Football cans of beer have made my stress levels worsen. And by extension, the quality of my life.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t been warned. Information on diet and exercise, the stuff of a healthy lifestyle, isn’t exactly scarce. I fact it’s always in your face, waving a condemning finger, giving you the stink eye.

I knew that 30 minutes on the elliptical is just as effective at battling anxiety and depression as prozac. I knew that getting 5-10 servings of fruits and veggies a day is just as useful at elevating my mood and giving me energy as any high octane caffeine explosion I can get at Starbucks. I knew that the two of them together would help me put my life back on track better than many counsellors or life coaches.

But I chose other, easier, options. And it wasn’t until I had a recent health scare that I realized what I was doing, not only to my body, but to my life. And to those around me.

I began to realize why Paul asks us to honour our bodies. I realized that what I was doing to my body and to myself, was keeping me from living in the faithfulness that God wants from me. What I was doing to my physical self wasn’t allowing me to assert my best self. It’s like Paul looked me up and down, grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me, and said,

“Are you kidding me? 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? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

When I read that it was like Paul smacked me across the back of the head. And I knew something had to change. Status quo was not an option.

So, I’ve started making changes in my diet and exercise routine. I’m eating lots more veggies then ever, and I’ve been giving my Fitbit a good run for the money. And right away I’ve noticed my energy levels increase, my mood brighten, and my thinking become clearer. I’ve lost 20 pounds since arriving in Calgary.

And yesterday, I was given a terrible reminder of the consequences of poor lifestyle choices when my mom called to tell me that my sister’s husband’s brother, age 55, died yesterday of a heart attack while out for a walk.

Yes, choices have consequences.

So, eating healthily and exercising is becoming, for me, as important a spiritual discipline as prayer. It’s becoming clear to me that, as I shed unhealthy weight, I grow more fully into who God wants me to be.

“...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? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

But this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who knows their way around the bible. Bible stories tell us a lot more about life here on earth than it does about an eternity in heaven.

Right from page one, God creates a physical earth out of nothing, and God calls that physical earth “good.” And at Christmas, we celebrate a God who came to join us in our physicalness, as God came to meet us human beings as a human being in Jesus.

Somewhere down the line we forgot the point. And we decided that “spirit” was good and “flesh” was bad. And that has led us to mistrust what God has so lovingly created. We were born physical creatures to glorify God in our bodies. But we decided that we’d rather be “spiritual” without reflecting on what that might mean.

Having just finished a course on Spirituality and Music for my doctoral degree, I’ve become keenly aware how hard it is to define “spirituality” in a way that honours the biblical story by keeping it’s feet firmly planted on planet earth.

The temptation to think of “spirituality” as an escape from creaturely being is very real. Placing “spirituality” in the other worldly column may have started with the ancient Greek philosophers, but we Christians have taken up their cause and made it our own.

We sing more about heaven than we do about earth. Our songs are often for a longing for a disembodied future than they are about life with a God who is known through other people. We praise a God who is “high and lifted up” more than we join our voices with the God who became flesh in Jesus and shared our fragile limitations.

And not just in the church. It’s taken over our lives. We’re trying to escape out bodies.

Technology is created so we don’t have to use our bodies as much as we normally would. So-called “labour saving devices” reduce the amount of physical activity as much as they reduce the amount of time spent doing those chores.

While I’m delighted that I have a washer and dryer in my apartment, and I did a happy dance when I saw that my kitchen had a dishwasher, I also know that they are reminders for me, backward reminders of my physicality. Signs to remember to move my body because that’s what it’s there for.

And our newest technologies keep us better connected, I’m not denying the good. I am a text messaging fiend. While not nearly as much as my 13-year-old daughter, I text with friends all over the world.

I have maintained cherished friendships through words. It’s all that we have because we live so far apart. We keep up with each other’s daily lives in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before cell phones.

And apps like Skype, Facetime, and Snapchat can help bridge the distance, but as I’m sure you well know, an image on a screen is a barely adequate replacement for someone’s personal presence.

Technology is a constant reminder that we aren’t together physically, but it’s a connection nonetheless. And the danger is that words and images can’t be fully felt on the screen. Words can describe and express the moment, but they have limitations. And those limitations are deeply felt.

When we finally do meet in person, the words stop, or at least step aside for a moment, even when we’re speaking. It’s not the words that are communicating. But the physical presence. The energy we exude to each other. The facial expressions that enhance the meaning of our words. The tonality of voice. The movement of the body. The eye contact that says more than any word every could.

And in that moment of physical presence, we glorify God in our bodies even if we do not touch. We glorify God in our bodies because we are not alone. We are honouring each other by being fully present, knowing that this presence is a gift. And the longing for physical presence is God’s way of saying “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?”

You are a temple of the Holy Spirit, you are a sacred space, you are a holy sanctuary, where God lives with you and in you, so that you can best live with others, in that same kind of intimacy.

Spirituality isn’t meant to be an escape from the world, but a deeper engagement with it. To connect with the Spirit is to connect with the God who is redeeming the world, not destroying it. Spirituality is knowing that there is more to life that we can sense with our bodies, but also knowing deep within our flesh and our bones, that through the Spirit those lives merge. Heaven enters earth.

We glorify God in our bodies through exercise and healthy eating so that we can assert our best selves to others, and offer our gifts to enhance the world.

We glorify God in our bodies when our sexuality is primal, honest, intimate, life-giving in the best and broadest sense of the word, where two people unite to lose themselves in order to find themselves.

We glorify God in our bodies when we respect the earth’s fragile abundance, which God says that we honour and care for, taking from it that which need to live and thrive, but ensuring that the cycle continues for the generations to come.

We glorify God in our bodies by creating and maintaining strong relationships, because we were not meant to be alone, we have been created to connect, to share, to offer, to receive, to be together.

We glorify God in our bodies when together, as the Body of Christ, we love others and we care for the world God made, being God’s hands, feet, and heart in a world that needs God’s healing power and presence.

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? 19Or 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? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.”

I didn’t know that before. But I know that now. I know that good news isn’t just spiritual, but it’s also physical. In fact, the two can’t be separated. Heaven came to earth in Jesus. And we are his living body in the world.

In a moment we will receive Christ in the physical expression of bread and wine, Christ’s own body and blood, so that, as we receive him, our body joins with his. And we are nourished in order to feed others in our body.

It all starts with ourselves, and the Spirit who takes up residence inside of us, making our bodies Holy, the very dwelling place of God. The temple out of which God changes everything.

Congregation repeat after me:

“My body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.”

“I have been bought with a price.”

“I will glorify God in my body.”

May this be so among us.

Amen.

Pentecost 12C

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

I don’t know what you hear in this passage, but sometimes such promises increase my blood pressure. Mainly because of the second half of Jesus’ statement where Jesus fleshes out what he means:

“Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

No doubt Jesus is right. We spend money on things that are important to us. Economists tell us that all spending is emotional spending. Heart spending. It’s not rational. It’s a personal expression of our deepest selves. No matter how much we tell ourselves otherwise.

And I’d rather not have Jesus poking around in the most personal areas of my life. I’d rather keep Jesus at a safe distance when it comes to my money. In fact, Martin Luther once said that the last part of a person to be converted is the person’s wallet. And when I look back at my own financial history, I’m uncomfortable with how right he is.

I’m reminded of this passage each month when my credit card bill arrives. I dutifully check each item to make sure that there’s nothing on there that shouldn’t be. Or that I wasn’t charged twice when Amazon.ca made me click two times to complete my transaction. I confirm each purchase.

I don’t know if this happens to you, but every so often (more often than I’ll admit in public) I’m surprised by where I’ve put my treasure. I’m staggered by some of the stuff I’ve bought after sober reality kicked in. But I know, at the time, such purchases must have seemed like good ideas.

A subscription to a magazine that I could easily flip through at the library. The extra book that gave me free shipping, but which I might not get around to reading, at least not this year. The organic olive oil in the fancy bottle to class up my kitchen. And a few other items that shall remain...um....private.

They were all emotional purchases. I handed over my treasure to where my heart was.

And Jesus clearly tells us where he wants our hearts to be. “Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses form yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”

Jesus is talking about fear here. The fear that Jesus is talking about is the fear that the stuff we have will be taken from us - stolen or destroyed.

Or worse, that our stuff will take over our lives, and that’s a position that Jesus wants to fill.

Jesus said that it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, and the kingdom apparently does not include the things we jam into our garages. The kingdom is everything that which God alone can give us, and which cannot be taken away. It cannot be stolen or destroyed.

Our relationship with the material stuff of life is conflicted at best. After all, most of our purchases keep the economy’s engine humming. My magazine subscription and book purchases provides royalties to the authors and keeps the publishing industry afloat. The organic olive oil helps the farmers and processors make a living, and encourages sustainable agriculture. My purchases were a source of some good.

But that can go too far. We can pay a high price for our accumulations. We neglect our health, our families, and friends.

We may find ourselves in debt, which imperils our economic futures.

We can become defined not by what we produce or what we create, but by what we consume. We can become the product of other peoples’ work.

We spend too much time at our jobs, giving too much of our time and labour to those who may not deserve it, but thinking that we’ll get a worthwhile return.

Retail-therapy blasts endorphins into our pituitary glands providing a momentary sense of well-being and all around grooviness, but that sense of well-being and grooviness evaporates once the bank statement comes at the end of the month, sending us out for another hit.

So what do we do about this over-striving, over work, and over accumulation? What do we do about the trap that many of us find ourselves in? How do we regain a sense of who we are beyond what we buy?

The church says that we can put it on the altar. We can take this morally ambiguous money - the root of all kinds of evil, and the source of so much good - and offer it back to God. And in doing so, our daily work is redeemed. We are freed from the traps that others lay for us. We remember who we really are.

What we are doing, in our offering, is transforming our days from the mere making of a living to the living of a life - God’s life.

Whatever we do for a living, we now do for the glory of God and for service to others. We offer our gifts for the work of Christ’s church. And the work of Christ’s church is the kingdom of the God.

The offering is probably the most counter-cultural act we do as a church. It’s at that moment that we take a stand against the consumerism that tells us that we are what we buy.

When the plate is passed around we put our beliefs into action, the belief that God’s kingdom has come in Jesus.

When the offering is taken our hearts begin to transform from being self-centred to God-centred and other-centred.

It’s a minor sport to make fun of churches who ask for money. And for good reason. Occasionally, I sit down and watch the Miracle Channel re-invent indulgences for today’s troubled consciences as they go about their fund-drive appeal.

And we know of sham-preachers who lie, cheat, and pilfer folks out of their hard-earned paycheques to pay for their air-conditioned dog houses.

Or we hear of the pastor in the $2000 suit who flies around the world by private jet, sharing the message of the poor wandering preacher from Nazareth. There’s a lot to answer for.

But this congregation seems to know in its bones what kingdom work looks like. I see it all around me. I see where your heart is.

I see your heart in our building in how it’s so lovingly maintained. I see your heart in the priority worship has in this church.

I see your heart in the relationships you have with each other, building a strong community in Jesus’ name.

I see your heart in how you so quickly open your wallets to generously meet the needs of those who are hurting, and who ask for our help.

I see your heart in how much of our offering goes out, rather than stays in. To Lutheran Campus Ministry, to Canadian Lutheran World Relief, to the work of the synod and national church, and to other important and life-giving ministries.

The list could go on. This is kingdom work. This is where you place your treasure. This is where your heart is. This is stuff that cannot be stolen or destroyed.

So watch as the plate goes around. You will see the church at its best. You will see a confrontation with the world’s priorities. You will see who you really are, and the hold God has on you. You will see how we take the stuff of our labour and our lives and we give it back to God, for God’s kingdom work.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Indeed, as I look around, I can see that God has given you the kingdom.

May this be so among us. Amen.