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January 15, 2006 - Epiphany 2, Year B

Fornication.
It's one of those words
that we don't hear real often in church, or,
in reality
anywhere else.
It's a word that seems to have come
straight out
of the world of the Kings James version of the bible,
where hellfire and damnation thunder from the pulpit,
where no matter what we do
we are judged
and doomed.

And of course,
it's a word that belongs to one of those things
that we don't like to talk about in church,
at least not in our services,
though it seems to dominate a whole lot of our conversation
the rest of the time.
Sex.
Who can have it, with whom, when and where,
under what circumstances is it good, bad, legal, illegal, a gift of God or something evil.
It's all over the TV, it's all over our conversations, or at least in our thoughts;
it's one of the focuses
of dissension
in our church.

The last couple of weeks, I've been enjoying the new NBC series, The Book of Daniel. If you haven't seen it, it's a drama — or perhaps a comedy; I haven't white worked out which — about an Episcopal priest, his family and his parish. You can't watch it
expecting reality — between the luxurious rectory, the three million dollar building fund and the bishop who seems to attend every Sunday and pops Vicodin with the priest, let alone the Roman Catholic priest friend with mob connections, the incredibly dysfunctional extended family and Jesus sitting in the front passenger seat of the priest's car, it's not like any Episcopal Church I know.
Imagine Desperate Housewives set in an Episcopal Church, and you've got the idea.
And because it's the Episcopal Church, and we all know that there have been some tensions in our denomination about sexuality, they talk about that too. In fact, the hormones are flying everywhere. So far, in just two weeks, we've discovered one of the priest's sons sleeping with the Senior warden's daughter, the other son is gay, two bishops seem to be having an affair, the priests's sister-in-law has developed some sort of relationship with her recently dead husband's secretary . . . you get the idea.
It's just a little bit overdone.

But you know, it's not so far from reality. We live in a society
that is saturated with sex and sexuality. In just a couple of generations
we've gone from not talking about it at all, a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" mentality,
to one that seems to think that it's the only thing that matters.
And that can be dangerous.

Take, for example, our reading today. We get fixated with the word
fornication. But you know, that's not really what it's all about. What the apostle Paul is doing here
is not first and foremost
a rant about sex.
What he's doing
is trying to show how it is
that our bodies
are connected to our faith.

Most of us, I suspect, tend to think of our faith
as something entirely separate from our physical existence. What we believe
is a matter of our hearts and heads.
What we do with our bodies
is something different altogether.
Here are our souls,
but in order to get them through life
we need some sort of container for them. And that container
is our bodies.

Sometimes I think
that we kind of treat our bodies
as if they were cars.
Useful things
to get you around from one place to another.
And we care for them
like we care for our cars.
But car owners
come in all sorts.

Some car owners
treat their vehicles
as the most precious things in the world.
They give them the best fuel, and keep them tuned up.
They are careful how they drive them,
wash them regularly and keep them well polished. Any scratches
are dealt with immediately.
They scour the country to replace the parts
that are looking a bit worn
and do everything possible
to keep their car looking
as if it had just driven
out of the showroom.

Others
work on the premise
that they might as well burn out as rust out.
They drive their cars hard, buy the cheapest fuel,
and do the minimum maintenance necessary
to keep them on the road. More often than not
it's an emergency breakdown that takes them to the shop
rather than scheduled maintenance.
And as for cleaning — well, the rain does a pretty good job,
and sometimes the repair shop will take pity and give it a quick vacuum
It's amazing how long you far you can get with a bad alternator, if you just go gently with the brakes and don't use any lights.
These are the people that call Cartalk, and try to get Click and Clack the Tappit brothers to give them a five dollar fix for a five hundred dollar problem.

Those of you who know my car, know that I tend to be closer to the latter than the former. I take it in for its scheduled maintenance, and I get things fixed when they break,
but as far as cleaning — well, put it this way, it was very nice when the body shop kept me waiting longer than they promised, and to make up cleaned my car for me, inside and out. That was . . . maybe May, I think, and I can't quite remember if I've had it cleaned since. It has a few scratches — mostly from the Christmas tree I tied on top in December — but it works fine and gets me where I want to go.

It's pretty obvious
that our bodies are not exactly like cars. I mean, even all the advances in medical science, with facelifts, heart transplants and plastic surgery, can't give you a new body
when the old one wears out.
There are no trade ins
on our bodies.

But I have a sneaking suspicion
that most of us
actually do treat our bodies like we do our cars.
Some of us care for them, trying to keep them as healthy and new looking as they once were; others like me
tend more towards the routine maintenance, repairs when they're needed
approach.
We treat our bodies
as vehicles for our souls, our spirits,
machines to be kept in working order
for a practical purpose.

But what if our bodies
aren't actually like cars? What if there's something more to them?
Because that's what the apostle Paul suggests. Our bodies are not just containers for our souls or spirits. Our bodies are part of our very essence.

We as humans
are incarnate beings. That is, there is no "us"
without our bodies.
That's why God came to us
in Jesus Christ, a living breathing human body,
God made flesh.
And one of the amazing things about the Christian message
is that when Jesus promised the Holy Spirit to his followers
what he was promising
was that in some strange way
God is made flesh in us too. That's why Paul says
that our bodies
are temples
of the Holy Spirit.

And so the point of our bodies
is neither to keep them as pristine as possible — after all, in the end, we all die, whether our bodies are beautiful or not —
nor to use them up,
the point of our bodies
according to the apostle Paul
is to glorify God.

So in a culture that is kind of ambiguous about our bodies, swinging between ignoring
and worshiping
them,
the Christian faith says,
our bodies are gifts from God,
and somehow, and we can't quite explain why
somehow, our bodies are where
we meet God.

And that's why Paul has his rant about fornication. Not because he things that anything to do with the body or pleasure is bad,
but because he understands
that what you do with your body
affects your soul.
Because you can't separate them.
So if you misuse your body sexually
you can't help
but misuse
your soul.
How you use your body
shapes your soul.

If our bodies
become the most important thing in the world to us, if we become obsessed with diet and exercise and how we look,
if our lives are centered on our bodies, then so will our souls be centered on ourselves. And there will be no room left
for God.

If we are sloppy with our bodies — abusing them one way another through what we eat or drink or smoke, or what we fail to do in caring for them —
then we'll also be sloppy with our souls.
And there will be no space
for God.

What Paul calls us to
is to glorify God with our bodies. To be attentive to them
is part of being attentive
to God.

It'd be nice to be able to give you a list of rules
set out in the bible
that tells us exactly what we have to do. But it doesn't exist.
Instead, what we are called to
is to pay attention. Pay attention to our bodies
as gifts from God.

Learn to appreciate the incredible way our bodies work — even when they begin to fail. Exercise not just to lose weight or get fitter, but because God has given you this marvelous gift of a body. One of the things I discovered when I began hiking again
was that after a while
I began to become aware
of how my muscles worked together,
and how amazing that is,
and it made me want to give thanks
to God.

Learn to savor
what you eat and drink.
Taste, texture, smell,
eats because your body needs sustenance,
and because the flavors
give you joy
and encourage you to thank God.

Use your body
in ways that are not selfish
but give pleasure to others.

And as we pay attention to our bodies, as we care for them, these gifts and dwelling places of God,
we will find our souls growing as well,
and we will find new life, new connection
with God.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2006