On Trusting Bodies: A Baptismal Vision of Paradise
- Pastor Maggie
- Jan 13, 2024
- 7 min read
Today, in addition to the things we usually do when we gather for Mass, we’re going to get to receive Ada into our community through the sacrament of baptism. Months ago, when Caitlyn and I began talking about this day, we didn’t look ahead and pick the readings that we thought would go with such an event. This particular date was chosen because it was the date people would be able to travel to be here.
So, imagine my delight when I began to prepare for today in earnest and discovered today’s readings. We get the story of Samuel, who hears God speaking in a dream, and responds the way we all hope to when God calls to us, “Here I am!” And then we get to hear the Psalmist say that God has put a new song in their mouth—that there are no pre-requisites for God’s embrace, that we are already provided everything that we need to be loved by God. From the gospel of John we heard the story how Peter, rock of the church, got his name. And we hear from Paul’s first letter to the community in Corinth about what it means to have a body. We could not have planned this if we tried.
I want to focus on the letter to Corinth this evening, in part because I’ve never heard a sermon about this text that I found encouraging and I’d really like to do something about that. Paul uses some metaphors here that were important to his community. Our reading today cut out some of them to focus exclusively on human sexuality, which is something that the church has been overly concerned with for a very long time, usually in unhelpful ways.
I don’t always want to treat Paul generously, but today I’m going to. What Paul is trying to do for the community in Corinth is give them guideposts. Many of the guideposts that were useful and relevant for his community are not useful or relevant for us now. We’re different people in a different cultural context, namely one that doesn’t think women are or should be property, which means Paul’s rhetoric falls a bit flat. We’re different. Our concerns about purity and sexuality are different. Nonetheless, the root of what Paul is arguing here is true: bodies are important.
Bodies are so important. And they are the site of so much cultural hysteria. So often the church, like Paul, has wanted to say what bodies can do. One of the things I most appreciate about our tradition is that we trust people with their own bodies. When I was deciding if I wanted to be part of the ECC, one of the things that caught my attention was the part of the ECC’s Affirmations of Faith, which says, “In moral and ethical decision-making the ECC supports the primacy of an individual’s conscience.”[i] The primacy of an individual’s conscience. Primacy. First and most important. I’ve never before been part of a church that was willing to say that. We trust that people know what is right for their own bodies. And what is right for your body doesn’t have to be what is right for mine.
Bodies are important. Paul says they are temples. And I wonder, if bodies are like temples, in what way are they like temples? I met with Pastor Dave at First Congregational Church on Monday to talk our communities doing some things together for Lent. A small orchestra rehearses on Mondays just down the hall, and so after my meeting, on the way back to my office, I got to hear them working out the kinks on Bohemian Rhapsody. You know, “I see a little silhouetto of a man…” Outside of their rehearsal space the hall is lined with hooks for people to put their winter gear, sort of like you might see in an elementary school, and on one of those hooks was a brightly colored jacket. Something about seeing that jacket as clarinets and trumpets played a wobbly rendition of Freddy Mercury moved me. This building is made for people to be together. It’s made for relationship and enjoyment. It’s designed, each area thoughtfully considered, to be a place where people can experience belonging.
Design like this doesn’t just happen. I recently heard Krista Tippit of OnBeing interview a woman named Sara Hendren about a book she’d written. Sara is an artist who teaches design to engineering students, and her book is called What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World. In it she says, “Bodies are soft flesh in a world of machinery, and that can be a beautiful match or an experience that’s full of hurdles.”[ii] She goes on to say that what a body can do depends a great deal on the world around it. “Our built world is designed around something called “normal” and yet every single one of our bodies is mysterious, and constantly adapting, for better or worse, and always, always changing,”[iii] and so the question becomes, “What kind of partnership are we in with all kinds of bodies?”[iv]
When we ask what a body can do and how we can partner with all kinds of bodies, I think an example of this kind of partnership may be the renovations that are happening at Powell Hall right now. I saw a video interview on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s website with the Symphony’s President and CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard. She said that their audience is more broad than ever—from toddlers to the elderly, and everyone in between—so in addition to adding modern rehearsal, education, and reception spaces, which are necessary for the function of the organization, the design includes increased access for people with mobility aids; plans for adjusting the steepness of the hall and improving railing to increase safety and lessen the risk of falls; to add places where families can come and bring kids who struggle to sit still through an entire performance; and even places where people with sensory sensitivities can come to enjoy music too.
That last one really gets me because I can’t imagine being cut off from music, and yet I can imagine that for folks with sensory sensitivities the movement and sound of public concert spaces must be so overwhelming. But even they are being considered in this plan. When asked why the renovations were needed, Marie-Hélène said something really beautiful. She said that the renovations have been planned, “To serve the community and enable a softness and an access to the hall.”[v] Can you imagine an organization whose purpose is to enable their community to be received with softness?
That used to be the vision of the church. In their book Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love for this World for Crucifixion and Empire, theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker talk about how for the first thousand years, the dominant image of the church was not of crucifixion, but of paradise. Talking about their research process they say:
As we visited ancient sites, consulted with art historians, and read ancient texts, we stepped back, astonished at the weight of the reality: Jesus’s dead body was just not there. We could not find it in the catacombs or Rome’s early churches, in Istanbul’s great sixth-century cathedral Hagia Sophia, in the monastery churches in northeastern Turkey, or in Ravenna’s mosaics. And as we realized that the Crucifixion was absent, we began to pay attention to what was present in early Christian art.
Paradise, we realized, was the dominant image of early Christian sanctuaries. And to our surprise and delight, we discovered that early Christian paradise was something other than “heaven” or the afterlife. In the early church, paradise—first and foremost—was this world, permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God.[vi]
They argue that for the early church, the entire life of Jesus, his miraculous healings, his abundant hospitality, his passion, and his resurrection—these things were not about redemptive suffering, but about bringing life in Paradise to earth once again.[vii] And I wonder, what would the world be like if the church was known for its vision of paradise rather than crucifixion? What would bodies be able to do?
And this is where I want to close today, by reminding us of who we are and what we owe to one another. In a few moments we are going to baptize Ada into this community, into the long line of people who have responded to the voice of God calling them by name. We welcome her into a community centered on the inherent worth of all people.
We agree to partner with her to support her as she grows, however it is that she grows. We agree to teach her to trust herself, and to know that her body is important. It is good. It is the temple that God indwells. It is the site of every revelation of her life. It is the soft home where she will both endure hardship and experience deep satisfaction. This is the body where she will experience community. The body in which she will be held, and by which she will hold others. It is precious and valuable. And we trust her to make decisions with it, even now.
And we promise to receive her with softness and care. We promise to be the body of Christ, offering the same graciousness in our life together that Jesus offered in his, inviting Ada into a life shaped not by crucifixion, but by the life-giving vision of Paradise possible in her life here and now.
It’s a tall order, and we will make mistakes. But the love and mercy of God are real, and they will nourish our spirits even as the water and the bread and the wine and the potlucks and the laughter nourish our bodies. What can the body do? With God’s help, a great deal. Not the least of which is to love this child and her family. May we do it well. Amen.
[v] https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/column/winning-stl/winning-stl-why-you-ll-be-more-comfortable-in-the-new-powell-hall/article_d4dae5c6-f5aa-11ed-9d82-f303182f2fa4.html
[vi] Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker, “This Present Paradise,” UU World, July 14, 2008, https://www.uuworld.org/articles/early-christians-emphasized-paradise-not-crucifixion.
[vii] Fat Church, Rev. Dr. Anastasia Kidd, p201.
