Your Body is a Temple

Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church

On March 19, 2006

By Pastor Thomas C. Davis

Text:

1 Corinthians 6: 12-20

"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial.  "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything.  "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other.  The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?  Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?  Never!  Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her?  For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh."  But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.  Shun fornication!  Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself.  Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Sermon Text

Lately I've been preaching on subjects that tie into the adult Sunday school class's lessons about prayer.  Today the lesson was about praying with our bodies; so for my preaching text I turned to Paul's letter to the Corinthians where he says that our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit; and where he also observes that while all things are lawful to people who live in the Spirit, not all things are beneficial. 

In a recent sermon to Hanover's young people I mentioned that Paul thought liked athletics.  He wrote as if he had a very positive personal experience with foot racing, wrestling, and boxing.  I doubt, however, that Paul would approve of the more extreme events which are now are included in the Olympics, for instance, the knee battering moguls, and ski aerobatics.  It's tremendously exciting to see what strong young people can do with their bodies, performing stunts that take our breath away, and leave us sighing with relief when they make it to the bottom of a hill with no apparent injury.  But do they truly escape injury?  What will such extreme sport cost them in the future?  Will the mogul champion be able to walk without pain when she is sixty?  We are free to use our bodies as we choose, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.  But we should realize that the choices we make will have consequences down the road.  All choices are lawful to people of the Spirit, but not all are beneficial.

Paul wrote that message in connection with sexual ethics.  We shouldn't take sex lightly, he admonished.  If anyone pays for sex, he in turn sells his own soul without knowing it.  We fool ourselves if we think that we can separate our bodies from our spirits, and engage in a momentary pleasure of the body without having the naturally very intimate act of sexual intercourse affect our spirits as well.  Paul observes that if you have sex with a prostitute you become one body with that person.  That's the same language that the Hebrews used when they spoke of marriage.  When a man and woman join in marriage, they become one flesh, says scripture.  This is so either within marriage or outside of it, for sexual intercourse is naturally a very intimate activity.  We deceive ourselves if we believe that there can be such a thing as casual, impersonal sex that harms no one.  For if we try to depersonalize sex, striving for bodily pleasure apart from spiritual engagement with another person, then we poison the activity of sexual intercourse for ourselves in the future.  We divide our very selves, making it harder and harder to make love instead of just having sex.  Making love requires the engagement of the whole self: body, mind, and spirit.  If you get used to putting your spirit in a box while your body experiences a momentary fling, you will have a hard time getting your spirit back out of the box.  That's what Paul meant when he said that if you lie with a prostitute you will become one in body with that prostitute.  Don't go there, he warned.  Although some of our bodily choices may feel very satisfying, not all of them will prove beneficial in the long run.  This is just good common sense, not narrow-minded religiosity, from which Paul was doing his very best to liberate us.  Sexual fidelity, and making love with our whole selves is just good common sense, based on what experience has taught humankind over the long haul.

Although this morning's text does concern sexual ethics, Paul's metaphor of the body as a temple has much wider relevance in a society where one third of adults are overweight, and juvenile diabetes is on the rise because more and more children are glued to the tube, chugging soft drinks and munching nibbles.  The Faith in Action Committee resolved recently to begin three health education efforts in our congregation and community.  With the help of our Parish Nurse, Pat Undercuffler, they're going to help us learn how to promote healthier bodies, minds, and spirits.  In this morning's class on praying with our bodies, we learned that the gentle exercise of walking can be good for all three.  Just getting out and moving about helps to increase circulation, tone muscles, reduce stress, and clear the mind.  You don't have to work up a sweat to do your body good, just move your bones.  And if you can't walk, what then?  Are you stuck?  No, Natalie in her yoga classes has taught us that just breathing deeply and stretching gently in place can do your body a world of good.  As you learn to treat your body with loving care through good nutrition, exercise, and rest, your mind and spirit will benefit too.  We are, as scripture says, "Wonderfully made."  The various aspects of our being are complexly interconnected.  What affects our body or our mind or our spirit will inevitably affect all three, either in a positive or negative direction.

Paul makes some readers angry when he contrasts the body and the spirit in a way that seems to imply that our bodies are bad, whereas our spirits are good.  It's easy to think that that's what he meant, because his spirit-versus-flesh doctrine sounds so much like the Greek philosopher, Plato's teaching that ideal forms of things in the human mind are pure, whereas the material instances of those forms in the world are corrupt.  Plato's ideas about the imperfection of material things did eventually influence Christian thinking about the human body.  But we should not make the mistake of concluding that Paul himself believed that our bodies are ugly or bad.  In today's passage he writes very clearly that our bodies belong to Christ, and are temples of God's spirit.  Our bodies are fit to glorify God.  This is a far cry from disparaging the human body, which would indeed have been very odd behavior for a Jew. 

So, bringing this sermon to a close:  Our bodies are not bad or ugly.  They are temples of God's spirit, who resides within each and every one of us.  Our bodies are given to us, but do not belong to us.  We have the freedom to treat them as we wish, of course.  Everything is lawful for those who enjoy the freedom of living in the Spirit.  But not all choices will prove equally beneficial.  How we care for our bodies will affect not only our own health, but also to a small degree the health of our community.  So, we have a duty to Christ to treat our bodies with the respect they deserve, as gifts from God.