Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome back to our series,
God is.
And today.
.
.
I'm going to share some more personal musings.
Around the idea.
Of God is.
Flesh.
And the reason why I've come to this is because I've been thinking about bodies,
Which.
.
.
Isn't always the sort of thing you think you'd be discussing as part of a spiritual reflection.
Because we tend to make spirituality about things that seem a bit less physical.
We talk about thoughts and ideas and souls and spirits and prayer and silence and contemplation and meditation and imagination.
And that's all kind of invisible stuff.
But the Christian tradition particularly makes one of its central claims in the most physical language that you could imagine.
In John's Gospel.
Chapter 1 verse 14,
We read,
And the word became flesh.
And made their dwelling among us.
The word became flesh,
Or to use the two Greek terms,
The Logos became Sarx.
And when we're talking about socks.
We're not talking about flesh as some people like to understand it as,
Ooh,
That's,
You know,
The enemy of the spirit.
Not at all.
We're talking about.
.
.
Actual flesh.
And blood.
So this Logos takes on skin.
And bones and blood.
And a stomach that got hungry,
And feet that got dusty,
And hands that got tired,
And eyes that wept and cried,
A body that could be touched,
A body that could bleed,
A body that could die.
And I'm only just starting to realize how absolutely radical an idea that is.
Now when a lot of Christians think about the incarnation,
The becoming flesh of this Logos,
They often talk about it as though it were just a theological fact that you have to believe in order to,
You know,
Be in,
Quote-unquote.
God became human?
Tick.
Doctrine established.
Believe it.
And you're in.
Let's move on.
But I want to sit with this.
For a moment.
And so I invite you just to consciously bring yourself into this time.
To take a nice deep breath in.
And out.
Still your heart,
Your mind.
I'm going to share some questions and I'm not going to asking you to answer them but just to sit with them and I'll leave a bit of space between each one.
You may want to write some of them down later or come back to them.
But I want to sit with this idea that God became flesh.
And really contemplate.
What this might mean.
I mean what does this do?
To our understanding of matter.
What does it say?
About bodies.
What does it say?
About the physical world.
What does it say about eating?
And drinking.
And sleeping.
And touching.
And sweating.
And laughing and aging.
What does it say about the things we seem to think God?
He's trying to rescue us from.
In other words.
What if this whole spiritual life isn't about escaping the physical world?
But realizing that God has entered into it.
With us.
I've been thinking about the ordinary things Jesus used.
Water.
Wine.
Will.
Mud.
Spit.
Touch.
A meal.
A tell.
A fishing boat.
A garden.
Atul.
The physical world is the environment in which Jesus' ministry happens.
And then there's the resurrection.
And note that the resurrection stories make it really clear.
This is not me.
A ghost of someone?
And it's not the survival of their ideals and ideas carrying on with other people.
We're told that the resurrection is of a body.
But it's not just any kind of body.
It's a body that can be touched and is solid and can be embraced.
But it's also a body that can appear and disappear seemingly at will.
A body that seems to be able to move from point A to point B without covering the distance in between.
Even through walls.
It's a body that can eat and drink.
A body that,
Albeit is made whole,
Interestingly,
Still alive.
Carries scars.
But quite often in spirituality,
We're very stubborn.
About bodies.
And even in Christianity,
Where there's a belief in incarnation,
In resurrection,
In the goodness of creation,
And that the word became flesh,
Sometimes our spirituality still feels like an elaborate attempt to get away from being embodied human beings.
And I wonder if there's some unlearning to do.
And I've also been thinking about my own body and maybe you'd like to give some thought to yours today.
You know,
The body that we sometimes appreciate and sometimes criticize.
Actually,
Maybe that should be quite often criticized.
The body that I notice is showing signs of wear and tear,
Gets tired,
Carries scars,
Aches in spots,
Is aging.
The body that doesn't always do what I want it to do.
And I'm wondering,
What if the spiritual response,
Even the Christian spiritual response,
Isn't to transcend the body but to receive it?
Our bodies aren't an inconvenience,
Standing between us and God,
But they're a part of the life that God has given us.
Our bodies breathe and move and sense and eat and sleep and think and love and hurt.
Our bodies live and in all of this,
Mysteriously,
God chose to come to us through a body.
And that's why the Incarnation matters so much.
It tells us that matter matters,
That the physical world matters,
That our bodies matter.
The person sitting next to me matters.
The person whose body has been wounded by violence matters.
The person whose body has been neglected matters.
The elderly and disabled body,
The sick body,
The tired body,
The hungry body,
The beautiful body,
The awkward body,
The aging body,
It all matters because flesh matters.
And it matters because God became flesh.
This is where the story gets a little bit more interesting.
Because the God.
.
.
Who can't be contained,
The God who is mystery,
The God who is more.
The God in whom all things have their being became one particular God.
Human being,
But not any less God because they became flesh,
Somehow mysteriously God revealed.
Through flesh,
And that's a bit I don't want to rush past.
It's not as if God tolerated matter for a while.
God entered it.
It wasn't an observation of human life from a safe distance.
God inhabited human life,
Which means we should be very careful.
Whenever we decide that something is too ordinary to be holy.
Because God,
It seems,
Has already made an extraordinary statement about ordinary human life.
God becomes flesh.
And I'm still wondering what that means for my body,
For your body,
For the world.
For the things we touch.
For the life we're living right now,
Maybe tomorrow.
We might even ask.
An even deeper question that hinges onto this,
If Jesus is what God looks like.
When God comes as close to humanity as possible.
What does Jesus tell us about God?
And may grace,
Peace,
And love be with us.
In this world,
In our bodies,
Today and forever.
And always.
Until tomorrow.
Bye for now.
