Scripture: 2 Corinthians 7:1; Acts 10:9-16; 1 Corinthians 6:19 Series: 2021
Second sermon in the ‘Reset’ series, on resetting the body. Tracing a biblical theology of the body from creation (humans made from dirt, then given breath), through the dietary laws of Torah, to Jesus fulfilling the law and rising bodily, Wilson argues that what we eat and how we regard our bodies matters to God. From 2 Corinthians 7:1 (‘let us cleanse ourselves’) and the body-as-temple, he names three wrong postures toward the body (pride, shame, indifference) and urges the congregation to begin instead from being beloved children made in God’s image. Practically he draws on Wesley’s health rules and Blue Zones research (more vegetables, less meat, exercise, fasting), insisting the reset comes through grace, not willpower.
Illustrations: french-stale-bread, paleo-crossfit-hipsters, maimonides-numbering-law, emmaus-breaking-bread, wesley-primitive-physick, albin-blue-zones, pizza-hut-kale, volunteering-sue
January 10
Reset Your Body
2 Corinthians 7:1
The human diet has changed pretty dramatically over the last hundred years. If we go back further than that, it is almost unrecognizable. What the majority of humans ate was radically different from what anyone eats today. Unless you were the wealthiest of the wealthy, you ate what you had, mostly grains and root vegetables depending on where you lived in the world. Most humans subsisted and worked hard to subsist. I remember reading that even in France in the late 18th century, most people baked bread once a year for the whole year and folks would eat stale, rock hard bread all year long to stay alive. There would be lots of porridge, meat would be a festival kind of event for special occasion. The idea of a meat and potatoes kind of person, who many people are, is a very modern creation. Paleo diet is actually a super modern diet. You have to skip about 10,000 years of human development to go from hunter gatherers who ate meat and seeds, to cross-fit hipsters in the 2,000s who mostly eat meat.
Does God have anything to say about what we eat? or about how we see our bodies? My friends, we are continuing our series called Reset, on resetting our lives. Last week, we talked about resetting our homes and recentering our homes in light of the gift of Jesus Christ. Today, it is about resetting our body.
I will get to some practical stuff at the end, but first, I want to talk about what it means to be a people with a body. In order to get to what Paul is talking about in 2 Corinthians about cleansing our bodies, we need to start at the very beginning. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created. God is the creator. Theologians talk about the creator/creature distinction. It seems small but it is super important. God is not a creature, or an object, God is the creator of all objects. God is not material in God’s self. God created all material reality. Later, when God creates humans, they are first created out of the dirt and the dust and the mud as bodies. Adam in Hebrew comes from Adama, which means dirt. Their bodies are created and then God breathes life into them. And they are set in the garden of Eden to eat of any tree or bush in the garden. Adam and Eve are vegetarians. They don’t kill any living creature until later. It is in the covenant with Noah that humans are allowed to eat animals, but the blood still must be drained. And then that command is narrowed in Exodus when God gives Moses the Torah on Sinai; a lot of the practices in Torah have to do with how you eat. This is understood in modern day as Kosher practices. There are a few that are commonly known. Don’t cook a lamb in its mother’s milk. No shellfish, etc.. Now, there are a lot of ways to understand these commands. But it is important to realize that they weren’t seen as discreet and numbered rules until Moses Mamainides in the middle ages. Jesus never saw the Law of Moses as a set of different laws. As well, the modern way to divide the Torah between the moral law, the ceremonial law, and the dietary law is completely absent in the text. There is no difference between the prohibition of shellfish and adultery. These are on the same level.
The point, though, is that the law is about an overall life pointed and oriented towards God. In all that people did, from how you wake up, to how you pray, to how you eat, it can all be oriented towards God.
Now we have Jesus coming, and for Christians, Jesus grafts gentiles on to the covenant with Abraham. So we can find ourselves with God. But Jesus also says that not one iota will be taken away from the law. An iota is a Greek letter that is often very small and hard to see.
As well, Jesus says that it is not what goes into your body but what comes out of your body that defiles you. For Christians, Jesus fulfills the law and the covenant.
After the resurrection, Jesus eats fish. In this, he shows that the resurrection is bodily because spirits can’t eat.
And then we have this dramatic moment after the resurrection when Peter has this vision:
Acts of the Apostles 10:9-16 CEB
Through all of this, what we eat matters. The fact that we are bodies matters to God. The fact that Jesus came in a bodily way matters. The fact that Jesus rose again in a bodily way matters to God. We see the bodily nature of the resurrection through Jesus eating food and breaking bread. In the story of Emmaeus, it is Jesus breaking bread that opens the eyes of the people to who he really is.
And so we get to this one verse in 2 Corinthians: “My dear friends, since we have these promises, let’s cleanse ourselves from anything that contaminates our body or spirit so that we make our holiness complete in the fear of God.”
Let us cleanse ourselves. Let us cleanse our bodies. Paul also describes our body as a temple for the Lord in 1 Corinthians, so we need to care for it. We need to care for our body.
The difficulty with talking about bodies is that we are each individuals with different histories and experiences of our bodies. There are three common positions people have about their body: too much pride, too much shame, or too much indifference. And all three of these are contrary to who God has created us to be. People with too much pride in their body spend a lot of time on their body and their image, on working out and eating right and they want to reap the benefits of their labor. People with too much shame are responding to tremendous cultural pressures and have probably tried all the things but they may feel like it never works. Finally, there are those who are indifferent to their bodies and they only eat what makes them feel good. So food as this pleasure vehicle as opposed to food as the bounty of God’s creation.
All three of these are wrong. Most of us find ourselves in one of these three camps (and I include myself in this). This year, we have a chance to reset how we see our body in light of Christ’s coming, in light of Christ revealing that we are beloved children of God, that you are a beloved child of God. And we don’t have to start from a stand point of deficiency.
We don’t start from the idea of a goal-weight or size or a celebrity ideal but from the fact that we are made in the image of God. What we put into our bodies and do with our bodies matters. If we are going to love our neighbors, we need to properly love ourselves. Our bodies are not machines, our minds are not ghosts, so we should not see our bodies as machines to be optimized or primed.
The most important thing is to take some time today or this week to reset how you see your own body. To let go of any loathing or pride and start afresh. To let it go. To take away any displeasure at looking at yourself in the mirror. To let it go. You don’t need to talk about God’s child like that. You are beautiful to God. Beauty is not a competition but a reality of the God who is love who gave up everything to die for you.
Practically, we should think about eating to live well. This was super important for John Wesley. He published a home health book with the idea that people are not going to be able to show the light of Jesus when they are not healthy. Most of it consists of advice for when people get sick, but in the beginning Wesley says, “For the sake of those who desire, through the blessing of God, to retain the health which they have recovered, I have added a few plain, easy rules.” The first rules have to do with air quality. Your breathing matters (which we will get to next week when we talk about the soul). Next, he talks about eating suitable food our our digestion, avoid heavy and salted foods, more vegetables than meat, and how water is the best drink.
A Physician at UT Southwestern in Dallas, Dr. Jacklyn Albin, recently wrote a super helpful article about the latest in dietary medicine from a Christian perspective. I will share it on the church facebook page. She goes into a number of aspects of food, but highlights research into Blue Zones over the last decade, which are regions of the world where a large percentage of folks live in a vibrant way into their 90s and past a hundred. A lot of this advice matches Wesley’s. Here are some of the results
- emphasis on a large intake of vegetables, including greens and sweet potatoes; daily fruit intake; daily legume intake, such as beans and lentils; frequent use of herbs and spices, such as garlic, turmeric, rosemary, and mint; most grains as whole grains, such as brown rice, oats, barley, and whole wheat; minimal meat and poultry intake (typically, less than 5% of diet) with occasional fish;
This is not news to most of us, but most of us already like certain things and don’t like other things. And part of being an adult is being able to eat whatever you want, right? The issue is that this mindset ignores the words of Paul and the life of Jesus. Your body is a temple. Love it. Care for it. As well, you are not finished. God is not finished with you. Don’t give up on yourself.
Eating is a habit and habits are developed. Kale used to not be easy to find or very popular. In the 90s, the largest purchaser of Kale in the United States was Pizza Hut in order to decorate their salad bars. Tastes change. Your taste can change. You have to want it and start, again, from the position that a reset is possible. From the time of Jesus, Christians have fasted, and part of the point of fasts for the church was to pray to God in a way that our body does not control us. That the desires of the body do not trump our will to love our neighbor and our Lord.
Wesley’s third section of advice was about eating light dinners 2-3 hours before sleeping and having a consistent time to rest. And then the fifth had to do with exercise. To take care of our bodies and cleanse ourselves as Paul commends, we must do things. Do something. To start, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Do something. Wesley said that walking was the best exercise for those who could bear it (he also advocated standing desks). Do something wherever you are. If time or other issues are present in your life, I am volunteering Sue to be a point of reference. She would love to have a phone call with you about ways of being physically healthy in this life and things you can do.
But all of these starts with how you see yourself. All of it starts with letting go of self-loathing or body-shame, letting go of pride or indifference and resetting. It does not happen through will power but through grace. You can reset your body this year. You can reset how you talk about your body and how you talk about other people’s bodies. You can see yourself as a child of God and see what you eat and how you act not us burdens but possibilities. You are beautiful. And you are beloved. And how you live matters. May you receive grace this day, to reset in light of Christ.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.