The Practice of Wearing Skin - John 13

It became something of a ritual in our house when I was a child.

Mum would fetch the red plastic basin, weathered from long years of use, and boil a kettle of water. While she was waiting, she’d go and get some soap or bubble bath, and when the kettle was boiled, she’d pour the steaming water into the basin and add just enough cold to make it bearable. Then she’d put her hands in and swish them around ‘til a layer of suds began to form.

She’d carry the basin through to the lounge where my granny would be sitting, stockings off and bare feet ready for a good soak. She had bad feet, my granny – corns, bunions, hard skin. You name it, she had it! I’m embarrassed to say it but I remember her feet almost as clearly as I remember her face.

Once the warm water had done its job, and the skin had loosened a little, mum would set about her work with scissors and a sharp knife, paring away the layers of tough skin ‘til she got down to the softer, pink flesh.

And I would sit and watch them, as I played with a pumice stone that was exactly the same shape and size as a wee grey mouse.

So far in life, I’ve never needed my feet done. And I don’t think I’ve ever had them washed by someone else, at least, not in that kind of way. But what struck me, and strikes me, about what I’ve just described to you, and what we heard in our reading from John this morning, is the intimacy of that act. Bodies kneeling before bodies. Holding, touching, washing. Paying attention.

And given what I’ve been saying over the past couple of weeks it won’t surprise you to know that that’s where we’re going today. Encountering God as we pay appropriate attention to the body. Our own, and others.

For a moment, I want to take you back to the Labyrinth we ran in the church a few weeks ago.

One of the stations people found hardest was the one where you were invited to look in a mirror and reflect on the fact that you are made in the image of God.

More than a few folk told me that they rushed past that one because they couldn’t bear to look at themselves in the mirror for very long.

So for that reason alone, I’m not going to suggest we take up one of Barbara Brown Taylor’s suggestions – which she offers only partially tongue in cheek. She reckons that every once in a while we should pray naked, standing in front of a full length mirror!

I dare you! I’ll be asking for progress on that one next week!

But there is a method in her madness! There are so many voices in the world and in our heads telling us that our bodies aren’t good enough. They’re not the right shape or size; they’re showing their age; they tell tales on us – how we’ve lived, what we’ve done, what’s been done to us. Are those the voices that we hear when we look in the mirror? Is that why some of us find it so hard to look?

And yet, this body is the place where you live. It’s your soul’s address. And if you’re not at home in your own skin, where will you be at home?

In the face of a culture that simultaneously idolises the body and fosters huge dissatisfaction within us about our bodies, the Bible speaks another word we need to hear. It says that the body - our bodies - are good.

In the beginning, God created; and from the Adamah, the dust, God made Adam, and from Adam, Eve. And he looked on all that he had created and he called it – good.

Bodies are good, says God.

So much so that when he decided we needed to know him better, he wasn’t embarrassed to put one on.

Here’s a sentence you won’t hear often in church, though you probably should. A deep Christian spirituality is profoundly sensual.

Let me say that again. a deep Christian spirituality is profoundly sensual.

Every spiritual practice you can think of begins with the body and the senses. We sit, or kneel, or prostrate ourselves or close our eyes to pray. We open our mouths to sing and pray and tell our truths about God. We chew the bread and we drink the wine. We fast sometimes, and deny our bodies the food they need.

Our feet walk the path God sets before us, our hands and minds do the work God calls us to.

We take in the beauty of the world, and the glory of the creator of the world, through sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. We reflect it in our creativity through music, art and words; through the care and enjoyment of nature.

All of this through our bodies.

Bodies are good, says God.

There are even hints in the Scriptures that angels envy us – these strange stories in the depths of Genesis, and indeed in other traditions, of angels coming down to wed or maybe to bed human beings. Envious of their flesh.

So from the very beginning, creation, matter, flesh has been understood as basically good. And the Jewish tradition, out of which Christianity grew, understood that. It didn’t really distinguish between spiritual and physical but saw them as different sides of the same coin. Both holy, both necessary. Both good.

But in the early years of Christianity, Greek thinking began to be woven into the story in a way which threatened to undermine that truth. In the Gnostic cults that were around in the first century AD, the spiritual was privileged over the physical; in fact the physical came to be thought of as evil. Only spirit was pure, or of God.

The young Christian churches were in danger of taking that lie on board and turning their back on the goodness of creation. And that’s why the New Testament writers, especially John, attack it head on.

Listen to how he begins his first Letter:
 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.”

Not only did God come to us – says John. He came in the flesh.

Later on in the same letter he writes – “This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.”

Those who deny that God came in the flesh are simply wrong, he’s saying. And in today’s reading, on the last evening he spent with his disciples before his crucifixion, what does John tell us that Jesus did?

He shared a meal with them; he washed their feet. Simple bodily practices that conveyed profound spiritual truth.

He broke the bread, he poured the wine, he washed their feet. And he saw that it was good.

Some Christians talk as though they can’t wait to throw off their bodies and get down to some serious soul-business with God in heaven.

A Biblical spirituality tells us that if we can’t learn to live well and reverently and thankfully in our bodies, we’re not ready for heaven because whatever our future looks like, it’s embodied. “I believe in the resurrection of the body” says the apostles’ creed.

Bodies are good, says God. They’re here to stay.

So don’t be too quick to discount the ways in which your body can bring you closer to God.

There are things that holding a sleeping child, or a dying relative in your arms can teach you, that you can’t learn from a book.

There are things about learning to live with your body’s limitations in illness or old age that you can’t discover in any other way.

There are deep levels of gratitude to plumb when you fill your belly with good food after being hungry, or feel the endorphins tingle in your muscles after you’ve had a hard physical workout of some kind.

There’s a reverence for the other that’s born in us when we get close enough to meaningfully touch them. When we wash their feet, or take their hand or touch their shoulder. When we recognise them as a fellow wearer of skin.

Our culture tells us in a thousand different ways that our bodies aren’t good enough. God says that for his purposes, they will do just fine. Don’t believe the ancient Gnostic lie that says God’s too holy to bother with bodies.

A while ago I heard a great story about StTeresa of Avila. Apparently she was sitting in the privy, praying from her prayerbook and eating a muffin at the same time.

In her heart she felt the devil condemning her. “What kind of a Christian are you, praying to God while you’re on the toilet. Don’t you know that God is holy?”

Straight away she said “Here’s how it is. The prayer’s for God. The muffin’s for me. And the rest’s for you!”.

I like her style. God’s not embarrassed by our bodies, and neither should we be.

He knows that our bodies are often his best way of getting though to us.

So here’s your homework. Try, this week, to be more aware of your body. Notice the grunting noises you’ve started making when you bend down to pick something up. Notice the niggles and pains. Notice the good sensations that bring you pleasure. Notice what you put into your body. Pay attention and talk to God about these things.

I doubt you’ll do the naked mirror thing, but maybe you could get into a wee routine when you’re washing in the morning, or eating a meal, or climbing into bed at night, where you take a moment to give thanks for the skin you’re in. That most of the time, your body works. That it’s been your home all these years. That you’ve been though a lot and you’ve come this far together.

And take a moment to thank God that he didn’t consider it beneath himself to join the community of those who wear skin – living, dying and rising again among us, and leaving a lasting memorial of his humanness as they gathered in the upper room to break bread and share wine. This is my body, he said, this is my blood. Do this in remembrance of me.