The Body

The NT reading for Thursday, Proper 10, Year 2, is from Romans 12:1-8.  "I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."   Our spiritual worship should be our bodies? What does that mean? 


In some sense, it's a metaphor.  We are all members of Christ's body, working together.  But in another sense, I think he means quite literally what he says: our bodies should be our spiritual worship, in the sense that all we are should be devoted to worship, with our bodies as sacrifices, things belonging entirely to God.   What we eat, where we go, how we stand, what we say, what we hear, it all belongs to God.  There should be an unmediated quality between who and what we are, on the one hand, and God, on the other.  


The Gospel reading for today is from Matthew 26:1-16, where a woman pours a bottle of costly ointment over Jesus's head.  People were outraged! What a waste! She could have sold that oil! The money from the sale could have relieved the suffering of the poor!


Jesus rebuked them and commended her action. His rebuke of her critics and his justification of her actions have many meanings. One meaning is this: that our bodies, and the things in the world around us, are not always just objects to be used for this or that goal or purpose. They are, at least sometimes if not always, potentially sacred, things directly connected to the divine.  We can present ourselves, and the things around us, as sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God.