The 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions opened yesterday, and I was pleased to be on a panel with two of my colleagues, Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar and Kris Kvam, on Embodied Justice from a Lutheran perspective. I wanted to share a bit from my presentation, because I think the concept of embodiment is so important for Christianity, especially as it relates to the larger Parliment theme of freedom and human rights.
I love the Parliament of the World’s Religions–Chicago was my fourth one–and I love it for two reasons. First, I believe religions have so much to learn from each other, and the Parliament is a wonderful event for learning, and cross-religious relationship-building. Second, I believe religions—working together—have so much power to do good in the world; at their best, religions are compelling forces for peacemaking, climate advocacy, political stability, and more just societies. And, the Parliament is a wonderful venue for sharing stories of religious organizations and individuals who are doing just that, and inviting others to share in the good work. The Parliament, then, is a sign of hope, and a living embodiment of the belief that religions—religious people—can change the world.
Beginning & Ending: LOVE
In my presentation, I start and end with love: God’s love for us, a love that flows through us and draws us into love; our love for the neighbor and the stranger that is a response to God’s love. Christian love is, at its core, our participation in God’s love for the world. God opens God’s arms and invites us into God’s passion for, and God’s embrace of the whole creation.
The Message translation of John 3:16 begins with these words, “This is how much God loved the world…” Those words could stand as an introduction to the entire Bible, the entire story of God’s creation, redemption, and transformation of the whole cosmos, and you and me. All of it—all of God’s agency, all of God’s activity comes from love, and love is the animating divine force that pulses through creation and holds each and every piece of it together.
This is an embodied love—again both God’s love for us, and our love for each other. In a Lutheran Christian theology, bodies are central to the way we understand our relationship with God, with creation and with all members of the human family.
This is a presentation in three movements:
- Logos to Sarx: The Word becomes Flesh
- Bread to Body: We physically become members of the Body of Christ in Communion
- Love to Justice: The embodiment of God’s love in our words and deeds
Movement One: Logos to Sarx: The Word becomes Flesh
The Gospel of John begins with these words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” John 1:1-4
If you know the first account of creation in Genesis, you know that God speaks and the cosmos comes into existence—light, darkness, the sea, the earth and all its creatures. The Word is how God creates.
But then, in verse 14 of the Gospel of John, the writer goes on to say, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” This is what incarnation means: that word is from the Latin “in carne,” which literally means, “enflesh.” The Divine has enfleshed Godself into the whole world. Not just humanity, but the world. The verse does not say the word became human, it says the word became flesh—sarx.
Unique among the world’s religions, Christianity asserts that God really and truly became a person—a material being, entering physically into the human experience and taking suffering, sin, and even death into the very being of God for the sake of the world. And, what Christian theology is coming to recognize more and more, is the fact that God being made human has cosmic significance, as it embeds God in all aspects of the physical world—not only in all humans, but in all animals, all places, all rivers, all mountains.
Bodies matter so much to God that God took one on for Himself and in so doing united the entire creation to Godself, embedding Herself deep into every corner of creation: the brightest, biggest, most-distant Supernova to the smallest vole scurrying through the grass as I hike the hills near my home in Dubuque, Iowa. And God is in the grasses, and in my dog Rufus hiking at my side, and in the little grasshopper that jumps as his paw comes a little too close. And God is in me, and in you, and in every single human that lives, and has ever lived, and will ever live on this big blue planet.
Bodies matter in Lutheran theology, because bodies matter to God. Creation itself, the universe and all its creatures, is God’s body.
Movement Two: Bread to Body–Holy Communion
Lutheran Christians have two Sacraments, Baptism and Communion. In my tradition, we call them “means of grace,” and by that, we mean the concrete, material, tangible, taste-able encounters with God. If you want to see Jesus, if you want to find Jesus, Lutherans say, “Come to the table [communion], come to the font [baptism]”—that is where he is promised to show up, that is where you will always find him. You can find Jesus other places as well, of course, but you can surely, consistently always find him there.
One of the core documents of the Lutheran Church, the Augsburg Confession, talks about Sacraments this way. Sacraments are “signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us in order thereby to awaken and strengthen our faith” [CA 46.1-2]. It is through the sacraments that “God moves hearts to believe” [219.1]. They are “Rites, which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added” [ 219.3]. Communion, then, is a one very specific, very particular way that we are united to God—in a physical, concrete, embodied way.
The account of what is usually called “The Last Supper” is found in all four Gospels. In that meal, Jesus says to his disciples, “Take and eat, this is my body, given for you; take and drink, this is my blood.” Lutherans believe that bread and wine really and truly becomes Jesus’ body and blood, even while still staying bread and wine. Therefore, in Communion, when we eat and drink, we literally ingest Jesus—taking his flesh into our own flesh, uniting our own bodies with his. In Communion, each one of us individually—and all of us together—become members of the body of Christ. We are the hands, eyes, heart of Christ in the world.
Communion, then, is a special kind of food for the new Adam, the new Eve—born in baptism. It is food for the journey, the journey of our life of faith, the journey of sharing the abundant life God wants for each of us. At the end of the Lutheran communion liturgy, we often say, “taste and see that the Lord is good.” We don’t have to guess, or wonder about God’s goodness—we experience it first hand, and then go out to share that goodness with others.
Bodies matter in Lutheran theology, because in Communion, we become the body of Christ in the world.
Movement Three: Embodied Love to Justice
What does God’s love look like? How do you know that love? How do you feel that love? How does you see that love? How do you share that love? Well, given what I said in the first two movements, I hope you see that God’s love, embodied, looks like your love and my love [even though that love is only ever a dim reflection of God’s perfect love]—our loving actions in the world. People [and let’s include animals and plants and the whole environment, too.] experience God’s love in and through the love we share with others—family and friends, but also strangers and even enemies—and especially those who need it most. More specifically, embodied, concretized Divine love looks a lot like justice—love enfleshed in solidarity, accompaniment, forgiveness, and friendship.
The Lutheran Church has a slogan: “God’s work, our hands.” It points to our belief that God’s love is made real, made tangible and experiential, through us; God’s love moves in and among us not abstractly or theoretically, but through breath, touch, words, songs, tears, kisses and laughter.
The culmination of Christian life is a transformed, Spirit-led life of love, a life that shows forth the glory of God in service and care for the neighbor. It is a life that testifies to the deep connection between one’s relationship to God and one’s relationships in the human family, relationships where we see Christ in the face of each other, and embody the heart and hands of Christ in word and service for the sake of the other.
Bodies matter in Lutheran theology, because it is through bodies that God’s love is made real in the world.
Conclusion
The Christian Church has not always spoken favorably about bodies. It has given the impression that bodies are less important than the mind, or the soul; and it has suggested that bodies are meant to be disciplined or punished. But those ideas are contrary to core claims of affirmation about bodies that stand at the heart of the Christian tradition. And, those claims empower us to see our bodies—and the bodies of others—through the eyes of love, through God’s eyes of love. AND, they embolden us to use our bodies for good in the world: to do God’s work, to embody God’s love.
Happy Lutheran 