St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, January 25, 2009

Loving and Honouring Our Bodies – Rev. David Mundy

Psalm 139:1-4, 13-18 Luke 7:36-50

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In 2004 the company that makes Dove soap began an interesting campaign to help challenge our society’s view of beauty. It is called the Campaign for Real Beauty and it has involved photos of women recruited from the street who are more representative of everyday people than the wafer thin models who so often are chosen to market products. Dove also sponsored a play and produced videos shown on Youtube demonstrating how women are not only “made up” for beauty, but can actually be subtly manipulated by computers to fit the image of the ideal woman.

The campaign has done a lot of good, some would argue, although an online poll from the website asked whether a full-figured woman was “fat or fab” and a slight majority declared her fat – not exactly the desired result.

We know that both men and women can struggle with body image and the sense of self-worth or worthlessness which our perception of the body creates. There are many people who develop a self-loathing if they are heavier than they feel they should be. We are now well aware that there are conditions such as anorexia and bulimia which distort people’s ability to see themselves accurately and which can actually be life-threatening.

Even those who achieve the desirable shape and size don’t always enjoy the outcome. Not long ago one of the women from our family was in the gym change room with a slim, attractive woman who had finished her workout. She was snacking on next to nothing and muttering to herself as she jotted down in a notebook what she had just eaten.

Of course our body sense isn’t just related to size. We can bemoan the fact that we are too tall or too short. Our skin is too dark or distorted by freckles. Our hair is too straight or too curly or . . . gone! So there is a multibillion industry that feeds into and even encourages our dissatisfaction with our bodies. What we would prefer is that in this age of concerns about obesity and poor physical health on one hand, and unrealistic images of beauty on the other, we could develop a whole and Godly perspective on our bodies.

This morning you woke up because your heart and lungs are still working and ate some food and then bodily made your way to this place of worship. You used your arms and legs and eyes and ears to get here. During worship you may stand up a number of times, and you may be hoping that the preacher doesn’t “gas on” because when you have to sit on those hard wooden pews for too long your Gluteus Sermonus gets a little sore.

This morning we will continue a series of messages on the spiritual practices which help create a healthy Christian faith. So far we have considered testimony, our ability to tell our story our faith. Last week Rev. Cathy invited you to sing as another expression of faith. As you heard in scripture today, we will reflect on the importance of our bodies as an expression of faith.

Today we heard words from psalm 139 including

...it was you [God] who formed my inward parts:

you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Last week I got onto an airplane and discovered, somewhat to my dismay, that I was seated next to a young mother with a child eight to ten months old. This can be the airline version of a root canal! I shouldn’t have worried because the child was a sweet-natured little guy who got the only free meals on the flight as he alternated between breast-feeding and sleeping. At one point he stretched across his mother’s lap and his feet which had shed both shoes and socks lay across my leg -- my heart was won. I noticed his mother gently examining each of her baby’s exquisite fingers as he dozed, touching each one in turn. Total strangers, we would agree that he was wonderfully made.

The other passage we heard from the gospel is of a “wanton woman,” or at least a woman who is viewed with suspicion by the religious leaders who have invited Jesus for a meal. She crashes the party, and what an entrance she makes! She drops to the ground at Jesus’ feet and kisses them and washes them with her tears. Then she breaks out the perfume and caresses his feet some more. This is a very sensual and physical story, not what we usually expect from the bible.

This unnamed woman violates all sorts of social conventions but Jesus doesn’t seem to be embarrassed or offended. In fact, when his host criticizes what he views as a shocking display Jesus asks him; why didn’t you wash my feet as a sign of hospitality and why didn’t you greet me with a kiss? Then he forgives the woman for whatever is being held against her.

What a reminder that ours is an incarnational, in-the-flesh, embodied religion in that Jesus was a human being, whatever we may affirm about his divinity. He entered into this world as a vulnerable infant and he experienced hunger and thirst and he suffered physically on the cross. The accounts of the resurrection tell us that not only did his spirit endure death, his body was gone from the tomb.

Of course there are a number of gospel stories in which Jesus is touched by others or touches them for a number of reasons, including the healing of their infirmity and disease. He is not some otherworldly being who must remain at arms length from real people. Unfortunately, our Christian faith has often strayed from this essential truth and has gone in the opposite direction. Rather than “keeping body and soul together,” to borrow a phrase, we have made them polar opposites in which the body has been viewed with suspicion or disdain. Some of us have come from Christian traditions which encouraged us to feel shame about our bodies and our sexuality.

Do you love and honour your body? If this were more than a rhetorical question I’m sure we would get some mixed answers. Perhaps we could make it sound a little less religious by simply asking if we are “okay” with our bodies. The other morning at bible study I asked the group if they liked their bodies and one person answered “it could be better!” We all laughed because that’s the way we often feel.

When we are teens and young adults, we are often insecure about our “looks” and our bodies, keenly aware that there is always some elite group of gods and goddesses to which we don’t measure up. We take out the photos years later and wonder what all the angst was about.

In mid life we become aware that there are parts that sag and bag, giving in to the forces of gravity. When we climb on the bathroom scales, we want to demand a recount.

It is often in later life that the vagaries of the flesh become even more pronounced and we may fight back anxiety and fear over the way the various parts of our body seem to fail us when we need them most. If we’re not careful, we can journey through life without ever really being satisfied with what is God-given

In a thoughtful little book entitled Honoring the Body Stephanie Paulsell encourages Christians to renew our friendship with our bodies, because through the vulnerability of these bodies we express love and support and kindness and intimacy, and this is what God intends for us. I know this is true because as a pastor I have often held hands with people in times of crisis as a gentle means of support. I am often struck that men who are about to undergo surgery will hold my hand in prayer, or actually hug me, even though we would never touch each other on other occasions. Often I will give a farewell hug to an elderly member of the congregation –with permission of course – when our visit in the nursing home comes to a conclusion. Just before Christmas one of our seniors in her early nineties asked for a hug as I was about to leave, and as I did she gave me a little kiss on the cheek. Somehow I felt like part of her family.

When we chose to honour and love our bodies we acknowledge that they are vulnerable and fleeting, but we also say that we are more than souls inhabiting bodies. Paulsell points out that in the Jewish tradition we don’t just have bodies. We are our bodies as we are our souls. So our souls and bodies are interdependent and worthy and glorious.

We can honour our bodies in so many ways. Getting sufficient sleep is important in our insomniac society. Choosing the right foods, as well as adequate rather than excessive portions of those foods honours the body. We can walk our way to a healthier, more honourable body image, or maybe dance. We can go to the gym or push ourselves to our physical limits in other ways. We can practice yoga as the integration of body, mind and spirit.

As well as honouring our bodies we can also love our bodies, not in the sense of the boy Narcissus of legend who can’t stop staring at his reflection in the pool, but with the quiet conviction that God loves what God has made and we should love it too.

Last year I was in the store called The Body Shop and I went to the counter to make my purchase which was shaving cream – very manly! The young woman behind the counter asked “Love Your Body card?” Since I do not enter The Body Shop often I was taken off guard and replied “I beg your pardon?” “Love Your Body card?” she repeated, to which I offered “I didn’t know that I needed a card to love my body.” She proceeded to tell this dense old guy about all the deals and benefits I can get with a card.

Perhaps we all need to carry a Love Your Body card, not for the store discounts but for the reminder that God has brought each of us into being and that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.