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It’s Holy Week! Part 3
Monday, we looked at the big picture of the history of God’s relationship to people up to the Day of Atonement. Yesterday, we looked at the entrance of Jesus into the story. Today, let’s look at the Passion of Christ and the rest of the Jesus story.
21. Jesus is arrested, abandoned and denied by his disciples, beaten, mocked, and sentenced to death by Rome’s most barbaric form of execution.
22. Jesus is forced to carry the crossbeam through the crowded streets of Jerusalem up to the site of his execution.
23. Jesus is too weak to complete the trip and collapses. A member of the crowd is chosen at random by the guards to carry the crossbeam for Jesus the rest of the way.
24. At Golgatha, Jesus is stripped naked (yes, as naked as he was born).
25. The guards attach Jesus to the crossbeam with iron spikes through his wrists and to the stake with spikes through his ankles and raised to hang between two thieves until his struggle for breath overcomes him and he gives up his spirit to God and completes the sacrifice.
26. At the moment of his death, there is an earthquake and the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple is torn in half from top to bottom.
27. Jesus’ execution lasts only six hours, considerably less time than most people endured the experience.
28. Jesus is buried and mourned, and the disciples hide in fear that they will be arrested and executed next.
29. The women at the tomb discover Jesus’ resurrection early in the morning three days later. They become the first bringers of the good news (gospel) that Jesus is alive.
30. Jesus appears to his disciples and to many other people over the 40 days following his execution, eating and drinking with them and allowing them to touch him to prove that he indeed has retaken physical form.
31. Jesus ascends into the clouds after promising to send his spirit to be with his followers and to return again one day soon to bring the kingdom of heaven.
There are so many wonderful moments in this part of the story of God. Jesus, a physical human being, dies a physical human death (of the worst kind), and is resurrected to again be a physical human being. The women are the first evangelists. Jesus promises to leave his spirit with those who believe in him.
But my favorite moment is the moment of Jesus’ death when the curtain is ripped in two. Remember the curtain? That piece of fabric hanging in the entrance to the Holy of Holies? It served as a reminder of the barrier between God and God’s people. It blocked people from God’s presence with them.
In fact, only the people considered to be the cleanest and most holy were even allowed near the Holy of Holies. Even the high priest, the holiest person out of all of God’s people, was only allowed inside once a year to sprinkle sacrificial blood on the Ark to atone for the sins of the people. God was just too holy to be with the people. The people were just too unholy to be with God.
But God came to the people anyway, in the physical human form of Jesus. God became the ultimate blood sacrifice–the last and final atonement for all the sins of all people everywhere throughout all of time. God ripped the curtain (top to bottom) at the moment of Jesus’ death to show the people that there was no more need to separate the holy from the unholy–the sacred from the secular.
And when I think that God, his son not sparing,
sent him to die, I scarce can take it in,
that on that cross, my burden gladly bearing,
he bled and died to take away my sin.
Then sings my soul, my savior God, to thee.
How great thou art! How great thou art!
Forward Friday: 4 Ways to Pray (Naked)
In keeping with tradition, we’re wrapping up this week’s theme on praying naked with four suggestions. Choose the one that best fits, and come back to share your experience.
1) Pray in the bathtub (centering prayer): As you remove each article of clothing, remove along with it some distracting thought. Allow the water surrounding you to remind you of the movement of the Holy Spirit within you. Don’t be discouraged by distracting thoughts, but allow your nakedness to remind you of your purpose, and continue to set distractions aside. Once you are centered (this can take anywhere from 15-30 minutes, so don’t rush yourself), allow God to speak to you. This might take the form of a recurring distracting thought, an old emotional wound, a nagging memory of an unreconciled relationship, a line of music or verse of scripture, or anything else. Whatever emerges, take it to God and experience God’s love, healing, forgiveness, acceptance, and renewal.
2) Pray in your room (intercessory prayer): As you undress, be aware of the vulnerability of your naked body. Allow that vulnerability to guide your conversation with God. As you become more comfortable with your nakedness–alone in your room–allow yourself to experience compassion for those whose vulnerability is taken advantage of. If that is not a natural experience for you, read Stacey’s post as an example, and ask God to open your eyes not only to your own needs but also to the needs of others.
3) Pray semi-covered (inner healing prayer): For those of you who have experienced trauma and may be triggered by the vulnerability of your nakedness, try undressing and then covering yourself with a towel, robe, or blanket. Allow the covering to be an intentional reminder of God’s protection over you. Read Gen 2:25, slowly, aloud, once every five minutes for 30 minutes. Between readings, sit quietly and allow God’s truth about your body to take root. As any shameful memories arise, offer them to God. Ask God to enter those memories with you and show you the truth about yourself. If you’re feeling too vulnerable at any point, try putting some of your clothes back on, one article at a time. Allow the act of getting dressed to be an intentional reminder of God’s protection over you.
4) Sleep naked (resting prayer aka letting-God-do-all-the-work): For those of you who find the whole conversation about praying naked to be uncomfortable or ridiculous (or if the above suggestions just aren’t for you), try simply sleeping naked tonight. Again, as you undress, be mindful that you are uncovering yourself before God. Ask God to enter your experience and show you something new. (If you sleep with a partner, be sure to warn him or her that you are sleeping naked tonight as a spiritual exercise, not as an invitation to sexy time. This is your chance to experience your sexuality within yourself and with God. Have sexy time tomorrow night.)
What Laywers, Parents, and Carpenters Have in Common
I had planned to write a post for today about ways to pray other than naked. (If you missed Stacey’s guest posts on praying naked this week, you can read them here and here along with my introduction.) But I got caught watching a video of Eugene Peterson’s recent talk “Practicing Sabbath” at Q with Dave Lyons, and I couldn’t get this excerpt out of my mind.
Nothing happens when you pray, you think. There’s nothing in prayer that gives you any satisfaction in terms of having accomplished anything. So learning to pray is learning to not do in the awareness that God is doing something and you don’t know what it is at that moment.
When people ask me how to pray, sometimes I’m tempted to tell them what I do that first hour in the morning [here he is referring to his daily devotional time of reading scripture and praying the Psalms], which I’ve done since I was 15. But I realized at one point, that’s not so. When I leave my study, close my Bible, that’s when I’m praying.
I pray all day. Prayer now is something that suffuses my life. Most of the time when I’m praying I don’t know I’m praying. Later on I realize I have been. But to get to think about prayer in a little more comprehensive way as the interior life that the Holy Spirit is breathing in us every time we take a breath suddenly changes prayer from being a practice like you practice the piano to being a practice like you practice being a lawyer or practice being a parent or practice being a carpenter. You’re doing it when you don’t know you’re doing it.
Don’t you love it when you’re around a really skilled craftsperson? They just do it beautifully and economically and you realize: that man is carving something, and he doesn’t even know he’s carving. He doesn’t think: “I’m carving. Isn’t this wonderful? I’m carving!”
My goal–and the witness of a lot of people I’ve read through the centuries–is not to pray in such a way that you’re conscious of praying but to live a life suffused by prayer so that your life becomes a prayer. But that’s not the kind of thing you can write a book about. It’s only a thing you can live and see other people live.
If “play” and “pray” don’t work together, both are diminished. That’s why both are necessary. Otherwise, they become duties that you have to perform.
Whether you pray by getting naked, going for a hike, reading scripture, interceding for others, contemplating or meditating, or any of the many, many other ways to pray–let prayer suffuse your life so that you experience the inspiration [read: breath] of the Holy Spirit with every breath.
How do you pray? Share your experience in the comment box below.
Bathtub Spirituality: Getting Naked Before God
I’ve always hated showers. Give me a glistening white tub full of sudsy warm water, candles on the ledge, and a glass of red wine. That’s the way to be clean.
Showers are for the hurried, getting clean all in a rush of water hurtling down and straight into the drain–like getting caught in a downpour and giving up any hope of finding shelter before you’re soaked. Showers are for standing; you’ve got someplace else to go–and you’re going to be late!
Baths are for lingering, resting, enjoying. No agenda. No interruptions. Only peace. Warm, scented, slightly alcoholic peace. Taking a bath is my favorite form of centering prayer.
I’ve had some very profound moments, naked among the bubbles and salts and dripping faucet. Moments when God speaks, when my heart breaks, when I am listening. Moments of forgiveness, release, understanding, wonder. Moments of experiencing God’s tenderness, mercy, lovingkindness.
In these moments I feel like nothing separates me from God. I can lie back in the water until my ears are covered and my hair swishes like seaweed around my head and feel held, encompassed, hemmed in. I can stretch my legs one over the other, stick my big toe in the leaky faucet and examine myself exactly as God knit me together–my skin softened by the soap and salts and getting wrinkly from the long soak.
I can be fully myself in these moments, alone in the sanctuary of my white bathtub. In these private moments I share my most intimate, sacred self with the Creator. No cathedral, chapel, prayer garden, or monastery compares to the holiest of holies that is my tiled bathroom–with the steamed-up mirror, flower-shaped bathmat, and humming air vent that occasionally creaks when one of the screws comes loose.
That is my sacred space. That is where I am most spiritual–and most physical. That is where I experience God–in the bathtub.
This week I’m honored to host a beautiful moment in my dear friend Stacey Schwenker’s journey through experiencing her sexuality as a single person. She’ll be sharing her experience of getting naked before God tomorrow.
Until then, how do you get naked before God?
I Gave Up BEING AWAKE for Lent!
I’m excited to have my friend Jenn Cannon guest posting this week. She’s going to be sharing some of her journey with fasting and healthy living in light of the Lenten season. Before I turn my blog over to her, I thought I’d prime the pump, so to speak, by sharing some of my thoughts on Lent and body theology.
I never knew much about Lent growing up. My church didn’t really follow the church calendar outside of Christmas and Easter, and I only knew about Ash Wednesday from my Catholic friend. I was in college before I was ever encouraged to “give something up for Lent.” That first year, I followed my friends’ lead and gave up sweets. I lost eleven pounds in time for Easter Sunday (oh my, what a sweet tooth I had, especially with unlimited soft serve in the dining hall!), but I missed entirely the spiritual purpose of preparing my heart and mind for the celebration of the resurrection.
A couple of years back, I gave up driving for Lent. I could, because I lived close enough to walk pretty much everywhere I needed to go. Walking has always been a spiritual experience for me, although to be fair, I usually prefer to walk in nature than along busy city streets. For the first time, during that season, I sought the spiritual side of Lent and allowed myself to experience the loss of my car and enjoy the presence of God on my daily journeys.
The next year, I stayed overnight at a monastery on Ash Wednesday and learned the spiritual practice of silence. It was a painful time for me, and learning to be silent and still became disciplines I will always carry with me. I wrote a little about my experience at the monastery here.
Giving up BEING AWAKE for Lent
This year, Lent sort of sneaked up on me, and I wasn’t sure I would give up anything at all. But I’ve been uncommonly tired in the last few months, and recently I’ve been pressuring myself to get out of bed and be productive again. Today I decided (a little late, I know) to give up this spirit of doing for Lent and practice being.
Giving up doing for Lent may not sound very applicable to body theology, but it really is. Our western society is collectively sleep-deprived. While most people sleep an average of six hours per night, most people need eight or nine hours. That means most people are living on two or three hours of sleep fewer per night than their bodies really need to function properly.
Last week, after a super-fun sleep study and nap study (during which I was sorely unable to do much of either), I met with my neurologist to find out that my body most likely needs ten to twelve hours of sleep per night. That’s two to four hours more sleep than most people need–and four to six hours more sleep than most people get!
So, for the rest of the Lenten season, I am going to be sleeping as close to ten hours a night as I can. That means moving my work schedule from the morning to the early afternoon. That means going to sleep instead of squeezing in that extra Netflix episode. That means allowing my body to receive the rest that it needs without pressuring myself to get up and be productive all day. That means practicing the spiritual discipline of rest.
We’ll talk a little more about the theology of rest on Thursday. For now, get ready to meet my new guest poster, Jenn Cannon. It’s gonna be awesome! Until then, I wish all you lovely readers peaceful sleep and pleasant dreams…..zzzzzzzzzzzz.
16+ Ways to Pray without Saying a Word
We were given bodies for a reason, you know. God is Spirit, and we could very well have been created as formless spirits floating out in endless space. God had all creative power trembling in the vibration of the Word that spoke the world into existence, and God chose to design us with physical form. As Wuellner puts it in Prayer and Our Bodies, “We were intended to receive God’s full energizing nurture through all five senses.”
Chapter 5: Letting Our Bodies Pray
This is perhaps my favorite chapter in Wuellner’s book because of the way she describes prayer:
Prayer is easier than we thought. Prayer was always meant to be part of our everyday lives, part of our bodies, part of all our actions. It does not mean that we are to be solemn and unsmiling as we act sacramentally through our bodies. A sacrament, whether in the church or out of it, is meant to make us more fully human, not less. “The glory of God is the fully alive human being,” Iranaeus said in the second century. Yes, we are to respond to the body’s acts of worship with intentionality, awareness, deliberation, but also with pleasure and joy.
Throughout the chapter, she mentions various bodily acts that can be prayers:
- breathing
- yawning
- stretching
- dancing
- tasting food and eating slowly
- looking at color
- smelling a flower
- letting water run over our hands
- gently massaging our hands, feet, face, or neck
- taking a nature walk
- singing or playing a musical instrument
- lying on the ground outside
- participating in symbolic action with a trusted friend or group
- creating with clay, crayons, craft sets, etc.
- listening to music
- laughing
Despite all the books I’ve read and classes I’ve taken, I still have so much to learn about prayer, and those lessons can come from my own body. We all perform so many of the actions on this list, often without even thinking about them. Yet our every activity can be a conversation with God if we want it to be.
Chapter 10: Daily Life in Prayer with Our Bodies
All it takes to move from living to praying is the choice to be aware of the connection between our bodies and our spirituality. This awareness is all it takes to close the gap between the body and the mind, the flesh and the spirit, the human being and God. Wuellner calls this closing of the gap a unity or marriage:
If we can remember our embodiment with awe and gratitude while driving on the freeway, cooking, washing, cleaning house, making love, preaching a sermon, reading a book, or talking with a friend, then we have entered into a unity with our bodies that has become a genuine marriage.
Wuellner follows with suggestions for bodily meditation at each of the following moments in a day:
- waking and rising
- cleansing
- eating and drinking
- working
- recreation, exercise, sexual activity, sports, celebration
- sleeping
“Remembering our embodiment with awe and gratitude…”–what a beautiful expression of body theology.
I think we’ll continue our little tour through Wuellner’s book next week with some insights on sexuality, illness and disability, community, and creation. For today, choose just one item from one of these lists and in that action or moment of the day, “remember your embodiment with awe and gratitude,” and allow your body to pray and “receive God’s full energizing nurture.” It won’t take a minute, and you can do it without uttering a single word.
Is Body Theology Foundational?
Is body theology foundational? Is this concept–the way I define and understand it–part of the rock bed of the Christian faith? If Christ is the cornerstone, then is Christ set in body theology?
As I began developing my concept of body theology a few years ago, I was presented with this question and began to ask myself just how much of the Christian faith is wrapped up in my definition of body theology. I came up with four categories: sexuality/physicality, community, media literacy, and service. The more I studied and explored the concept of body theology and the messages of our culture, the more convinced I became that we must first understand ourselves as physical/sexual/worthy beings before we can engage in healthy community, media literacy, and service because everything flows from the core issue of where our identity lies.
Our identity is the source from which we conceptualize everything we believe, from which we make choices to act or react, and through which we relate to God, ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
The issue of sexuality/physicality must be dealt with first because it is the biggest and deepest lie; it is the lens that must change first or it will color the way we understand all the other issues. While it is true that identity can only be discovered in community, in many cases unhealthy messages about our identity have already been internalized and are, thus, already being perpetuated in our communities. Before we can change the community identity, we have to exchange God’s truth for these lies about our bodies. Only then can we engage in community, culture, and service in a healthy way.
So, is body theology foundational? Christ of necessity must be set in body theology precisely because God entered the world in human form–as a body! Christ cannot be set solely in any theoretical or spiritual foundation because that negates the very meaning and purpose of the incarnation: God incarnate; God dwelling among us in the flesh!
This is the foundation of body theology: our bodies matter because God used BODY to create us, to relate to us, and to redeem us.
In this context we find our true identity in Christ. It is our human response to the incarnation of Christ to accept ourselves as the holistic bodyselves we were created to be. Only then, through this identity in Christ, can we begin to develop a healthy theology of bodily sexuality, bodily community, bodily cultural discernment, and bodily service.
What is Body Theology?
Body theology is traditionally used to refer to body image and sexuality; however, I believe a true body theology is much more holistic, involving not only what we look like (physicality) but who we are as human beings (identity) and what we do with our bodies (community and service).
Holistic body theology is four-fold: sexuality/physicality, cultural discernment/media literacy, community, and service. Topics covered on this blog will stem from one of these categories, always with the underlying principle belief that our bodies were made good and, though corrupted by the fall, have been redeemed through Christ.
Holistic body theology, then, is based on the incarnation of Christ: God took on flesh, not merely the appearance of flesh; God lived and suffered and died—and rose again!—in the actual, fleshly sense. Likewise, we are both corporeal (bodily) and spiritual beings. My goal is to encourage Christians to realize our true identity in Christ, free ourselves from bondage to the lies that can be perpetuated through culture, and be empowered to enter into the redemption Christ offers both for our bodies and how we use them in the world. I believe that as we grow in knowledge and discernment, we can redeem both the way we see ourselves and the way we interact with culture–and enjoy living in freedom in the space where the sacred and secular blur into messy, surprising beauty.
Come join me on this journey toward healthy, holy living.
Holistic Body Theology 