This article is going to challenge you. You will need to read it more than once. My aim isn’t merely to inform you of some truth, merely to give you information to log in your brain. My aim is to get you to adopt certain behaviors and habits of the body that will enable you to appreciate, even to celebrate, your embodiment and the divine purpose of your given body. I want to transform the way you conceptualize your life, your body, and your choices.
What I just wrote needs to be appreciated. Your body has a divinely given purpose. Have you ever considered that, ever considered why God gave you a body? To appreciate your body and its God-given purpose, we need first to appreciate our origin. Two texts from Genesis 1 and 2 are of paramount importance:
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26).
And,
The LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7).
The first verse speaks of the divine image and the given dominion. The second verse helps us appreciate that this is an embodied image, an enfleshed dominion. God created your body in His image and God blessed you to live out that image in your body through the dominion you exercise over His creation. In ways that are sometimes difficult to express, you were created to incarnate God’s image, dominion, and love. You were made to live and do these in three dimensions.
What does that mean? It means you were given a body to create beauty and order – little Edens everywhere you go. You were given a body not merely to tell truth, but to express truth in word and deed. Your body is involved in telling and doing truth. Depending on how you use it, your body will confess truth or embody a lie. J. Budziszewski, author of What We Can’t Not Know, perceptively observes,
Because every part of us has meaning, our very bodies have a language of their own; they say things by what we do with them.
Body Lies
Because this is true, it matters what you do with your body. Cohabitation (living together without marriage), for example, tells a lie with bodies. Two bodies, who have not exclusively committed themselves to one another in a public promise of lifelong fidelity, pretend as if they have. They lie with their bodies. Consider the way Paul speaks of sexual immorality:
Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body (1 Corinthians 6:18).
Sexual immorality is a body lie. It’s using the body for something God has not given it. Living together without marriage, adultery, fornication, lust, etc., all misuse the body. They all involve the body in a lie. They all fail to incarnate God’s self-giving love, instead choosing to take from another for personal pleasure. Therefore, sexual immorality is sinning against the God-given body, against the divine purpose of the body.
The social internet invites users to conceptually disembody fellow image bearers, reducing them to profiles, avatars, and emoticons. By its very nature, the social internet invites us to forget we’re interacting with embodied images of God. Samuel James, author of the insightful and incisive book Digital Liturgies, writes,
The internet, which dominates our lives as the primary medium through which we encounter most of the world, is an entirely disembodied habitat. Consequently, the internet trains our consciences to think of ourselves and the world in disembodied ways.
As a disembodied habitat, the social internet makes certain forms of communication conceptually reasonable that would not be reasonable if we appreciated our divine image-bearing embodiedness. The social internet invites people to say things online they would never say face to face, things they would never say to an enfleshed human standing in front of them. James again offers insight,
…our immersion in computer and internet existence is a crisis of spiritual formation. Our digital environments dislocate us, training us to believe and feel and communicate in certain ways that our given, embodied, and physical environments do not.
Further, the disembodied habitat of the social internet invites people to cheapen the body to a two-dimensioned sexualized object for mass distribution and consumption. James rightly observes,
Porn and the web go together so efficiently precisely because they are both instruments of commodification, a way to turn the most intimate or even most elementary stuff of human life into consumable content.
Astute readers will see why the sexualization of human identity (under the LGBTQ+ flag) is a body lie. God embodied males and females as sexual complements. Rosaria Butterfield, author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, lived for years fully embracing the sexualized ideology of our day before repenting of her pride and confessing Christ. She describes the created body as a pattern stamped with a purpose.
In other words, when we consider the human body, we observe that each body has its own heart. The heart does what it’s designed to do without the assistance of any other body. The same could be said for the lungs and the kidneys and the liver and on and on, until we come to the reproductive organs. Then we discover something designed to pair with its complement to achieve its telos/goal. This doesn’t mean that individuals must pair with their sexual complement. It does mean, however, that males and females have a sexual complement. Further, it means that acting against this created reality would be acting against the created body. It would mean telling lies with the body. And this would be an open rebellion against the body’s Creator.
James again proves helpful:
Part of faithfulness to God as embodied humans means living wisely, and this wisdom consists primarily of seeing the world the way God sees it and responding accordingly. We live wisely when we live along the grain of God’s character, his law, and his creation. Consequently, anything that tilts us away from the giveness of reality – including but not limited to our physical existence as bodied creatures – undermines wisdom.
Body Liturgies in Christian Worship
How do we learn to appreciate the body, to live in line with its purpose to incarnate God’s love? The answer involves more than information because we are more than mere brains on sticks. The answer involves meaningful actions for our bodies. We must learn to bring a sacred awareness into our body’s actions. The word sacred surely evokes Christian worship, even its liturgies. That’s good and we will expand on this, but these meaningful actions/liturgies must not be limited to worship. They will grow out of worship, but cannot be limited to it.
James Smith, author of You Are What You Love, observes,
The way to the heart is through the body. That’s why counterformative Christian worship doesn’t just dispense information; rather, it is a Christ-centered imagination station where we regularly undergo a ritual cleansing of the symbolic universes we absorb elsewhere. Christian worship doesn’t just teach us how to think; it teaches us how to love, and it does so by inviting us into the biblical story and implanting that story into our bones.
In other words, Christian worship involves our bodies. It involves getting God’s story into our bodies, into our bones, that we then live out in our vocations. So Smith offers,
Liturgies work affectively and aesthetically – they grab hold of our guts through the power of image, story, and metaphor. That’s why the most powerful liturgies are attuned to our embodiment; they speak to our senses; they get under our skin.
Let’s start with some of the liturgies for the body baked into Christian worship. Perhaps the most obvious is the sign of the cross (T). Some have rashly dismissed this as “a Roman Catholic thing,” but Rome has no exclusive claim on the cross. It belongs to everyone because Jesus died for everyone. Further, consider the significance of the bodily confession the sign of the cross makes. The rubric indicates: The sign of the cross may be made by all in remembrance of their Baptism. Making the sign of the cross over your body calls to mind the Baptismal liturgy: Receive the sign of the cross both upon your T forehead and upon your T heart to mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified. In this rite you were marked as one redeemed by Christ! Making the sign of the cross invites you to remember the good news in store for your body:
If we have been united with him in a death like [Christ’s], we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:5).
This is about your body! You were joined to a death like Christ’s in your baptism. And you will be joined to a resurrection like Christ’s when He returns!
Further, in making the cross over your body, you are bodily reminding yourself, Jesus took on a body like mine and then He died for my body. Jesus forgave my body. Jesus rose for my body. Jesus will return for my body. My body is redeemed. That’s a powerful body liturgy!
And it’s a wonderful way to involve children in worship. In their early years they might not know how to read or completely follow the liturgy, but they can learn how to make the sign of the cross. They can be taught the good news of God for their bodies that the cross confesses. They can be taught how to bodily remember their baptism and this will help get the story of God into their very bones.
Throughout the Divine Service you are again and again invited to make the sign of the cross to remember what Jesus has done for your body, to remember what hope is in store for your body, to confess that Christianity is a bodily faith, a faith that involves purpose and hope for the body.
During prayer, you are invited to bow your head, close your eyes, even to fold your hands. These are body liturgies that teach reverence and honor. The body motions help get this reverence and honor into your lifeblood. Before hearing the Gospel reading (and during Trinitarian hymn verses) you stand to hear the very words of Jesus and to glorify the Triune name. You do this with your body. These are body liturgies. They teach your body to respond to its Creator and Redeemer. It gets the truth of God into your body.
As we reverence and gather around the altar, we kneel (or stand together in the front pew) and open our hands and mouths to receive Christ’s forgiveness and life into our very bodies. We even hear Jesus say, “This is my body given for you.” This is a body liturgy. It gets the Gospel beyond your mind into joints, sinews, and tendons.
The Divine Service, in many meaningful ways intentionally involves your body. Its aim isn’t merely to tell you something about Jesus, merely to impart information, but to help you feel the good news of Jesus (who is present and acting in the Divine Service) in your body. Smith captures the idea well,
The church is that household where the Spirit feeds us what we need and where, by his grace, we become a people who desire him above all else. Christian worship is the feast where we acquire new hungers – for God and for what God desires – and are then sent into his creation to act accordingly.
So the service ends with the blessing of God spoken over your body (and the final invitation to make the sign of the cross over your body) and the call to take your sanctified body into your vocations where you will incarnate God’s love in your imaging of God and exercising of His dominion over creation.
Body Liturgies in Christian Vocation
What does this look like? It looks like creating beauty and order out of chaos wherever God places you, little pockets of Eden everywhere your body goes. It looks like seeing the image and dominion of God as incarnational realities in your vocations. It looks like seeing your hands as creative instruments for good and your voice as a positive force for confessing truth and edifying your neighbor. It looks like husband and wife imaging Christ and the church through their loving and selfless bodily self-giving. It looks like grounding your identity in your created embodiedness, celebrating the good and beautiful gift of male and female bodies and how they work in complement to create beauty and order in creation, part of which involves the lifelong, exclusive, one-flesh, potentially procreative union in male/female marriage.
To get a little more specific, it looks like farmers delighting in well-ordered farms. It looks like a marching band delighting in the joy of creating order and beauty out of the chaos of an undirected crowd of musicians and color guard. It looks like a basketball team delighting in a well-ordered and executed play. It looks like actors/actresses delighting in telling a story that edifies, challenges, and/or inspires.
It looks like a family intentionally gathering around a family table for conversation and food. It looks like an accountant carefully ordering numbers for clients. It looks like a dad chasing behind his five-year-old he has just released from his now-training-wheel-free bike. It looks like disciplining the body through consistent exercise and a thoughtful diet so that you are always ready for the tasks God sets before you. All these involve the body. And each of these invites us to reflect on the purpose of our bodies: to incarnate God’s image, dominion, and love.
Further, each of these invites us to develop intentional body liturgies to help us remember and confess this. Perhaps you could find meaningful ways to incorporate the sign of the cross in your day: before you step into your truck, before you enter the classroom, before you begin taking calls for the day, or preparing reports. Perhaps you could recite a hymn verse such as the ones below before beginning your task.
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
Take my voice and let me sing
Always, only for my King;
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.
- LSB 783 Take My Life and Let It Be sts. 2–3
Maybe you could wear a cross necklace or pendant to remind you of your union with Christ and the promise of resurrected bodies. Maybe you could simply speak the word baptized over your hands before you begin your task or as you look into the mirror in the morning. Maybe it’s as simple as remembering that you embody the image of God when you bring order and beauty out of chaos, whether that involves sweeping the floor, raking the leaves, folding the laundry, or preparing a home-cooked meal.
Your body matters. It matters for your identity. It matters for your purpose. It matters for eternity (and Jesus’ resurrection puts an exclamation point on this!). In many and various ways we need to develop liturgies to communicate and confess this truth. Leaning into the body liturgies in the Divine Service will help because that’s where it starts, where God’s Gospel story gets into our bones. And with His story in our bones, we move into our vocations to live out our bodies’ divine purpose: to incarnate God’s image, dominion, and love.
- Pastor Conner
