Our embodiment is the concern of the lectionary this week. Our bodily temples† are revered as sacred, and blessed as such in the rite of Holy Communion and other sacraments. The body is nonetheless frail and temporary. I hope current events at least serve to remind us not to take our health for granted.
God knows us wherever we are–under the fig tree*, in our beds asleep, forming even in the womb. God hovers over those waters, too. And in that gift of life, a chance, a choice. Jesus gave himself entirely to God and God’s people. Our lives are an opportunity to say “Yes” to that gift as he did, to embrace it even in its crudeness and chaos. There are no excuses. I hope like many others that 2021 brings healing to a world struggling through its challenges, but I must take responsibility for my role in that healing, not merely cast my optimism on the turn of a calendar page or on a cosmic alignment in which I play no part.
Most likely you’ve needed to find sanctuary in unexpected places in the last year. Perhaps that’s a discomfort we should get used to. The body of the Church isn’t in its buildings. We love the beauty and artistry of our home churches, or that one we always like to visit on Christmas Eve, or the way that hymn sounds in the rafters descending gracefully upon our ears. Those are expressions of our worship of a God deserving of our best. But a cloistered experience of the holy is not the tradition that was passed to us by a teacher who walked from town square to town square, or of a Spirit that spilled into the street uncontrollably at Pentecost. The body of the Church walks about the world through us, through the body bread and blood wine Christ passed to us at the Last Supper. Energy for life.
Each of us has the capacity to create sacred space within ourselves, but we’ve got to maintain the temple with care, mindful of its hallows. Remember the reverence and awe you feel in the sanctuary and savor it, so that you can carry it with you, and share that radiance with those who need it most, in the more profane places that makeup the rest of the world. When you know that you have carried Divine Love to another who was in need of it, the gift of life is apparent, joy flows. Make a habit of it, and surely “You will see greater things than these.”
†1 Corinthians 6:12-20
*John 1:43-51
-Matthias Everhope, Jubilee Church
–What is preventing me from loving myself and others more completely?
–What does Paul mean “that you are not your own?”
–Where does my presence matter most?
