KINGSVIEW

SADDLING UP OUR BODIES FOR OUR SPIRITS TO GALLOP

Michael A. King

What if our spirits could gallop on our bodies? What a radical question, because many of us see our bodies as enemies of our spirits. That’s how I was raised, and like many of us I still tend to fall into such thinking today.

There’s some scriptural basis for it. Throughout his writings the Apostle Paul, for example, speaks frequently of the flesh, often in relation to its lusts and temptations, with flesh seeming to mean at least partly our bodily needs and urges.

And body is a problem in the story Jesus tells in Luke 12 of the rich man who thought he would pile up riches, then eat, drink, and be merry. But as soon as he got himself all set for the merriment, he died. So he was a fool, concludes Jesus. He was a fool because he put all his emphasis on making his body secure and then on pampering it, and what good was that when as soon as he got it he died?

Jesus’ point is that if that’s all we live for, in the end we’ll find it’s nothing. That’s why he tells us not to be rich toward ourselves but to be rich toward God—and why he says that where our treasure is, there will our heart be (Luke 12:34).

We also know from experience that our bodies easily and often betray us. They want things! They want all kinds of things. And when they want them, they want them now and they want them bad. So our bodies shout at us and whisper to us and plead with us and send tentacles of desire snaking out through us, telling us oh please, drink this, eat that, caress her, touch him, fall into this soft soft bed, get into this BMW with leather so tender it feels alive. Every minute of every day, there our bodies are, wanting this, aching for that, never shutting up, always craving craving craving.

No wonder Christians have from the start spent countless hours telling each other how bad their bodies are and how often they must be whipped into shape!

And my point isn’t really to question that. My body wants things it shouldn’t have, can’t have. Yours does too. Addictions are the name we give to those desires we feel aching in our bones, made up of this tangled blend of wants of flesh and spirit, that make us ache to do things we deep down know will hurt us.

So let no one hear me suggesting body is not dangerous. Body is one of the most dangerous things God gave us. Body is like a nuclear reactor. Keep it under control, or get a chain reaction that blows up your whole life, all because what your body wanted was not what it could have and survive.

But even as I stress the danger of body, that’s not where I want to end up. I want to look at the flip side of the coin—to explore, as my title suggests, the possibility that our bodies can sometimes carry our spirits on the journey.

We need the teachings found in Ecclesiastes, which tells us again and again to eat, to drink, to be merry, to enjoy when we can the bodies we have been given in this life, amid all its pressures and stresses and woes, because these are enjoyments God himself has given us.

Listen, for example, to Ecclesiastes 2:24: "There is nothing better than for mortals to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat. . . ?" (NRSV) Or 9:7: "Go eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do."

And I want to suggest that Jesus is also right to have his rich fool quote from, precisely, the kind of view expressed in Ecclesiastes to suggest this: how shallow and transient such enjoyments are if they’re all we have.

I want to work at this question of how our bodies carry our spirits forward because I’m convinced—from my experience, from watching the lives of others, and from what I see in the lives of those who are honest with me—that we live a whole lot more in and for our bodies and a whole lot less in and for our spirits than we like to admit.

Example: Suppose in preparing a sermon I am just plumb tired out. The last thing I want to do is work. I don’t know what my congregants think happens then. I half-hope they’ve been fooled by the image people sometimes have of pastors as set apart, more pious, far holier than thou, fooled into thinking that then I just pray for God to give me strength and lo, the inspiration comes! Sure, sometimes that’s how it works. I do believe in the power of God and prayer and holy inspiration. But often that’s just part of how I get through.

Here’s the other part: I promise myself I’ll at least confirm a Scripture and give our bulletin editor the sermon title before I let myself have a coffee and doughnut. Or I promise myself I’ll do that much, then watch "CSI" on TV with my daughter Rachael. Or I’m really behind, so I’ll force myself to work until 7:30 even though it’s Friday night, but then I’ll go out to the Sultan Indian Restaurant with family or friends.

When I do any of those things, in effect I’m putting a saddle on my body and inviting my spirit to ride it. My body isn’t headed where my spirit is; it just wants its next pleasure. But if my body knows it’s headed toward that pleasure, it doesn’t seem to mind if my spirit rides it toward where my spirit needs and wants to go.

Where my spirit wants to go is toward God’s treasure. My spirit wants to be rich toward God. My commitment to preach every Sunday is part of my spiritual journey, because in addition to the fact that pastoring is a job, I accepted the call to it as part of what I understood God wanted me to do.

So I want my spirit to hold the reins, to tell the whole of me where it’s supposed to go. But one incentive I use to take a few more steps on that journey is my body’s craving for the joy of food or whatever else it happens to have fixed its hungry eyes on.

I see two benefits to this approach. First, letting our spirits ride our bodies gives our bodies something useful, constructive, productive with which to busy themselves. Otherwise they can just get sloppy, lazy, addicted, not knowing what to do with themselves except root around as constantly and restlessly as robins grab at worms after the lawn is freshly mowed.

A second reason so many of us have such trouble doing something worthwhile with our bodies is our tendency to think anything they want is bad. If the only good body is a whipped body, a straitjacketed body, or maybe even a dead body, then what do we do when no matter how hard we try to whip the mangy thing into shape, it still ends up ruling us?

Many of us then take our bodies’ pleasures into the closet. We not only hide them from others but often also even from ourselves. We sneak the midnight snack in all its various forms as surreptitiously as we can, hoping no one else will notice what we’ve fallen into and even more that we ourselves won’t really have to face just how much power our bodies do have.

But if we actually accept that our bodies can do good things for us, even carry our spirits where our spirits need to travel, then maybe we can be more honest about what our bodies need. And once we’re honest, maybe we can celebrate, as Ecclesiastes so richly does, that as long as we respect the rules within which God asks us to use our bodies, enjoying them can be a wonderful thing. It’s just plain the case that some of the greatest pleasure most of us experience much of the time is the joy our bodies give us.

Precisely because the joy can be so intense is why our bodies so often and quickly lead us astray. But if we accept the joy, if we savor it, if we cherish the treasures of food and sex and wind on our skin and soft things to touch or be touched by as God’s gifts, then maybe we can also see how, if we put it all together, some delightful things could happen. Then maybe we could learn more about how to saddle up our bodies and let our spirits ride. Then maybe we could go for great gallops through the glorious winds of this world and those endless physical joys and motivations with which God has so richly blessed us, and still be rich toward God.

—Michael A. King, Telford, Pennsylvania, is editor, DreamSeeker Magazine, and pastor, Spring Mount (Pa.) Mennonite Church, where he preached a sermon on which this column is based.