Sermon: Epiphany 2 - Year B

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (v. 19)

No, actually we don’t.

Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in Corinth, and they didn’t know what he was talking about. We’ve had this letter in our hands for 2000 years and we’re no closer to understanding what Paul was saying than the Corinthian Christians were.

Whether our problem is mis-use of sexual relationships, care for the poor and hungry, or failing to keep our bodies healthy, carrying around all this redundant protoplasm from eating to satisfy hungers other than bodily needs, Paul smacks us right between the peepers:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?”

I don’t think we know how to talk about our bodies. I think many of us are completely disengaged from them, seeing them as vehicles to carry our brains around in, only acknowledging them when it needs something: food, something to drink, a trip down the hall, first door on your left.

And so, we get caught up in the rules of proper behaviour. We want to know what’s expected of us so that we can meet those demands. We want principles to follow, laws to guide us, steps to take, to achieve the ends that are expected of us.

Think about how Christians talk about our bodies. We’re big on rules and expectations.

People often get the impression that the church has one big “NO!” to say about sexuality, for example, that our primary focus is on limiting peoples’ pleasure, keeping it carefully confined, under wraps, behind a veil of Do’s and Don’t’s - well mainly Don’ts. And if you listen to any group of pastors chat, you’d think that sexuality was the ONLY thing we have to talk about.

What people could be hearing from us is the blessing that sexuality is; the act of...(whole thing here)