Rev. Tessie Mandeville
January 21, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

Imagine a world where everyone understands intimately that we enter paradise right here on Earth—not somewhere else, not in the heavens, not in a world beyond death, but right here and right now.

Imagine a world where children are told from the moment they are born that the first paradise they will know, that the palace of bliss that they have been given, is their own bodies. And that with and through their bodies, they can know the Divine. (bell hooks)

To be fair, I did learn some of this as a child. My Southern Baptist tradition taught me that Adam and Eve were in the garden, dwelling in paradise. As the story goes, “they were both naked and they felt no shame.” Imagine that. From my earliest days, I learned that the essential goodness of the body was proclaimed by God and that paradise is our true home. Adam and Eve entered paradise through their bodies. We enter paradise through our bodies.

Somewhere along the line, it seems we’ve lost this. We’ve lost sight of the fact that in the beginning God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, in our likeness.” Do you think that meant only part of us, only our minds and spirits, and not our bodies? We have been created in the image of God and it is God who proclaims our bodies “good.”

The very center of our Christian faith, the defining moment of our faith is this: God became flesh. The most decisive experience of God was not in doctrine, or creed, or idea, but in the Word made flesh—and in the Word still becoming flesh.

Why then, are we so afraid of bodies? Why are religious people so nervous about bodies? They can barely talk about bodies! In the Gospel of Thomas, which was a book that didn’t make it into the “official Bible,” Thomas says to Jesus, “When will we see the realm of God?” And Jesus says, “When you are able to disrobe without shame, then the realm of God will be among you.” Do you see why they didn’t let THAT ONE get into the Bible?!

We live in a culture that teaches us that spirituality is better served without our bodies. When Christianity first took root, it took root in Greek soil and the Greeks at that time did a lot of thinking about the separation and the split between mind and body, between flesh and spirit. Because of that, our Christian ancestors viewed their bodies as part of their “sinful nature,” as things that needed to be disciplined and controlled. I believe that part of our task as LGBT Christians is to reclaim the sacredness of our bodies; to redeem the holiness of all bodies.

Our bodies don’t separate us from our spiritual lives; they open us to it. Our bodies are the vehicles to the Divine. Every experience we have is in our bodies. The human body is the dwelling place of God. Mary Ann Tolbert, a former professor of mine and New Testament scholar says, This body that we have, this living breathing combination of holiness and dust, this is where the holy one dwells. Our sacred scriptures ask us, “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you?” Our bodies are not objects to be repressed, discarded, or despised, but a shining image of the Divine. We live and love through our bodies and our bodies teach us about God.

I want to acknowledge that it is not just what we’ve been taught in churches that have led us to alienation and estrangement from our bodies. As children, our bodies were the means by which we learned about trust, intimacy, protection and nourishment. Some children learned through their bodies that home was not a safe place. Some children learned that they couldn’t trust their parents or primary caregivers. Some children experienced terrible abuse and they learned to cut off from their bodies for good reasons. For a variety of reasons, many of us in this room probably have a complicated relationship with our bodies. I know I do, and I also know that healing is possible as we learn to be gentle with our bodies. The human body is the dwelling place of God.

Our bodies don’t separate us from our spiritual lives; they open us to it. I have to say that sometimes I am just downright amazed with the Apostle Paul and I’m thankful that he doesn’t always annoy me! In fact, in First Corinthians, I am thrilled with the “body theology” he is teaching. In today’s passage, Paul introduces his metaphor of the church as Christ’s body. He says that the church is not one body with one part; it is one body with many parts. To show how deeply we are all connected in the body of Christ, he writes, “If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

I believe the larger body of Christ is suffering today with the trail of a local Lutheran minister, Rev. Brad Schmeling. Most of you probably know that he is standing trial right now because he is in a gay relationship. The line being used to charge Pastor Schmeling is: “Ordained ministers who are homosexual in their self-understanding are expected to abstain from homosexual relationships.” In other words, we are expected to be disconnected from our bodies and our desires in order to serve God.

I’ve read numerous articles about this trial and my heart goes out to Rev. Schmeling and the congregation that he has faithfully served. This must be a very painful time for all of them. What I find most encouraging is Pastor Schmeling’s argument “that his spiritual life and church work have flourished as a result of his with relationship with his partner, Darin Easler, which he maintains is both valid and holy.” (Southern Voice)

Rev. Schmeling understands that our bodies don’t separate us from our spiritual lives; they open us to it. Our bodies are the vehicles to the Divine. Every experience we have is in our bodies. The human body is the dwelling place of God. The Church world wide must learn to accept our bodies, our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender bodies, as vital members of the living body of Christ. Until they do, the body of Christ is not whole.

The Apostle Paul wants us to understand that all of our gifts, all of our bodies, work together to build up the larger body of Christ. In this way God ensures that everyone’s needs get met.

God’s love always bends toward human needs . In the gospel of Luke, the Holy Spirit anoints Jesus to bring Good News to “the poor, to prisoners, to the blind and the oppressed.”  It’s important that we don’t spiritualize away the literal meaning of the words.  As you read the gospel of Luke, you realize that when people are filled with the power of the Spirit, it results in concrete acts of compassionate engagement with the poor and the oppressed in the world. For Luke, to be filled with the power of the Spirit means that you can’t escape or ignore the world.

“Good news is only good news when it meets the needs of the people.” (Brian P. Stoffregen) As Edward Markquart states in the course Witnesses for Christ: “For example, if a woman is dying of cancer, the gospel is God's strong word of resurrection. If a person is permeated with guilt, the gospel is God's assurance of forgiveness…For the starving, the gospel may be bread. For a homeless refugee, the gospel may be freedom in a new homeland. For others, the gospel may be freedom from political tyranny. The gospel is always related to human need. It is never truth in a vacuum, a theologically true statement which may or may not relate to one's life. The gospel is God's truth, God's message, God's action, God's word to a particular person, to a particular need, to a particular historical situation. You don't throw a drowning person a sandwich. However good the sandwich may be, it just doesn't meet that person's need. You throw a drowning person a life jacket or a lifeline, or you dive in for the rescue.So it is with the gospel. The gospel is God's truth, God's action, aimed at a particular human need.” God’s love always bends toward human needs.

Imagine a world where everyone believes that their bodies are good. Imagine a world where everyone truly understands that their bodies are gifts from God and that God loves these bodies so much, that God dwells in them. Imagine a world where the Church is whole and integrated, using the gifts of all people. Imagine a world where everyone is able to disrobe without shame. Imagine it. Dream it. Live it. Here, in these bodies is the door to paradise and God says, “Welcome home.” Amen.

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved