This summer has been a time of physical presence in America. I have been physically present with friends, family, supporters – people I haven’t seen in months or years. Emails and blog posts keep people in the loop about what I’m doing; Skype allows me to talk face to face with my family. But technology cannot replace the significance of being bodily present with someone else. I can’t give my mom a hug over Skype. I can’t sense a friend’s mood through a blurred image or Facebook status updates. I can’t be sitting in the same room with someone while they’re on a different continent.
In a sermon today at Grace Church of DuPage, Dan Brendsel discussed 1 Corinthians 16. He raised an interesting question: Immediately after proclaiming the glories of the resurrection in chapter 15, Paul discusses such mundane things as travel plans and financial arrangements. What’s the connection?
God became flesh, so our experience as humans is not complete without addressing things of the body. Here’s the connection: If God made Himself bodily present in Christ, surely we should prioritize making ourselves bodily present with people (without a curtain of technology). Paul’s travel plans centered around his desire to be physically present with the Corinthians.
5 I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, 6 and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.8 But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, 9 for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.
This passage from 1 Corinthians 16 suddenly struck me as very relevant to my particular situation. I was spending a summer in the US so some people could “help me on my journey” to BFA (aka financially). Yet Paul’s focus, and mine as well, was to spend time with people, not “just in passing.” Support raising is not so much about the money – it’s about developing partners who want to share in the ministry I do. They want to be physically present with me here so they can be present with me in spirit while I’m there (much like Paul’s yearnings for the Colossian church – see Colossians ch. 2).
Talking with so many people has been a stretch for my introverted self, but God has been blessing me with deepened relationships and an understanding and partnership of those “here” with me “there.” I know I have a network of people who will welcome me with open arms and help me with the transition back in a year. People who visited me in Germany (Mom & Dad, Erich, David, Abby & Chris, Kristin) have a fuller understanding of life there because they were present with me in the place I now call home. Their physical presence is now included in my collective memories of the place.
The ideas in Dan’s sermon coincided with concepts in Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson (thanks to Jonathan for giving me the book!). I haven’t finished it yet, but a lot of the ideas were interesting and worth considering. Anderson claims that “the evangelical legacy with respect to the body seems to be more one of inattention than outright rejection or even a conscious ambivalence” (41). Christian theologians tend to ignore the importance of the body in our faith, choosing instead to emphasize the exercise of our minds to grow in knowledge of God. Yet looking at the Bible, God makes his own declaration about the importance of the body through creation and the incarnation.
God created this body of dust in His own image. Then He came to live in that dust, that skin – “If ever there was a question about the goodness of the physical body, the incarnation of Jesus Christ definitely answered it” (21). Then God decided to dwell in all believers through the Holy Spirit – “the body is nothing less than the place where God dwells on earth” (50). “This is the paradox of the body: The body is a temple, but the temple is in ruins” (31). As it is a temple, we should treat the body as the dwelling place of God, not as an idol to fashion and shape into our own ideal image. We’re not to be in ruins forever, though. Jesus’ incarnation, death and resurrection are the inauguration of our own future bodily resurrection. We’re not going to be weird floating translucent spiritual beings in Heaven – we’re going to be resurrected with real, physical, glorified bodies!
So as a real embodied human with God living in me, I am an earthen vessel. I have a physical presence, and this body is in Illinois right now but will be in Germany by Thursday. I’m thankful that I have been fully present here this summer, present with people physically as well as mentally and emotionally. I also look forward to Heaven when I won’t have these physically and emotionally demanding goodbyes.
