Christ Lutheran Church: Welcome

Our Bodies - January 11, 2009

Our Bodies

1 Corinthians 6:19-20

January 11, 2009

Rev. Dave R. Garwick

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.”

You know, whenever you read a passage in the Bible, you want to look for a couple different things. So many passages speak about what people do and at the same time they also speak about what God does.

Take the passage before us this morning. The apostle Paul writes the new Christians in Corinth, Greece, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” That is pretty clear about what people are supposed to do. Because our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, because our bodies are not our own, what we are supposed to do is to honor God with our bodies.

People these days often say, “You can’t tell ME what to do – it’s MY body and I can do anything I want with it.” Or another version of it is to hear someone say, “As long as I only risk hurting myself and do not endanger others, I can do anything I want.” Our laws say that the decision about whether or not to destroy a perfectly healthy fetus is solely the decision of the woman and her physician because a woman has the right to decide whatever she wants to do with her own body.

For Americans who are on their own, that’s one thing. But for Americans who are followers of Jesus Christ, that is totally wrong. For a Christian, a woman’s body is NOT her own. It was bought with a price by Jesus sacrificing HIS body. Therefore she is to honor God with her body. Her body is not her own, the body within her body is not her own, and she has to decide if destroying the body inside her is honoring the One who created that little one and who died for that little one.

And that is true not just for expectant women, but for every soul who has been loaned a body that does not belong to them. THAT is what this passage has to say about what people are to do.

What does it say about what GOD does? It says that the same God who honored us by making us in His image, is the same God who then loves us by sacrificing himself to make us His own – even down to our very bodies. We often like to think of God as only being interested in our souls. Not true. His sacrificed himself for ALL of what makes us up. That is why Paul just asked a few verses earlier, “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?” (1 Cor 6:15)

That not only grants us special love and special honor by the creator of the universe. The wonderful fact that even our bodies belong to God also grants us a universe of security that we can trust God to care for even our physical needs as well.

When we receive that scary diagnosis and we face an uncertain medical future we can trust that God will work out everything for the best even for our bodies ... since, after all, these belong to Him.

The tricky part is remembering this when all supports are washed away. I have to confess that I myself was distracted from doing this only a couple days ago. You’ll recognize where Ann and I were on Thursday evening. Remember that song about Puff the Magic Dragon, who dwelled in the autumn mist in a land called Hannalei? Well, that night, Ann and I were on the beach of Hannelei, on the north coast of the Hawaiian island of Kau’ai. A storm had just passed by the day before and we went to look at the big waves. They were terrifying in their awesome fury. They were so massive that they blotted out the very horizon. We stood on the beach and were almost literally blown off our feet by the blasts of wind that were thrown at us by the advancing waves. Even the mountains were disappearing in the haze that the waves were throwing up. The surf was so powerful that we were warned that if we played tag with the back and forth waters, we could be sucked out into the riptides in only six inches of water.

Here is my confession. When we gazed onto this awesome power, all I felt was vulnerable and even a little fearful. What I did not remember was that my body was made and belongs to the very same One who was made those waves, who was Master over them, who once walked on waves and made them still ... the same One who promised to take care of my BODY and soul. I only feared the waves when I could have trusted Jesus and then marveled at the waves ... if only I had thought of Him at the same time. But isn’t that exactly what happens every single day when life’s problems distract us from Jesus rather than drive us TO Him?

If you would open your hymnals to the Hymn of the Day, “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand”? Look at what Rev. Edward Mote wrote in England about the time of the American Civil War:

When darkness veils His lovely face, 
I rest on His unchanging grace:
in ev'ry high and stormy gale
my anchor holds within the veil.

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, His blood
sustain me in the raging flood;
when all supports are washed away,
He then is all my hope and stay. 

On Christ, the solid rock, I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand.

Since our bodies do not belong to us, since our bodies do belong to the One who made us and who died to redeem us, on Christ the solid rock we CAN stand! Amen. May it be so!