When Jesus is asked which commandment is the greatest, he responds, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” So far in this sermon series, we’ve explored what it means to love God with all our hearts–our cardia–our passions, our desires, and the importance of discerning whether our desires are godly desires. We’ve learned that loving God with our minds involves a willingness to ask questions, to go searching for Jesus, and to allow God to surprise us with what we find. Last week, Pastor Jeff talked about what it means to love God with our soul–with our psuche–the part of us that makes us who we are. We are called to love God with our thoughts, with our desires, and with our inmost selves. What part of us is left?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your strength.”

There’s a scene in the movie Mean Girls that helps explain why I was terribly unexcited about drawing the straw for talking about loving God with our bodies. In this scene, Cady Heron–a naive, teenage girl who spent the first 15 years of her life homeschooled by her researcher parents in Africa–is standing in the bedroom of Regina George and her friends. Regina and her friends are staring into a mirror and talking about what they don’t like about their bodies. One says she hates her hips, and another says she hates her calves. One says she has “man-shoulders,” and another criticizes her nail beds. Cady thinks to herself, “I used to think there was just fat and skinny. But apparently there’s lots of things that can be wrong on your body.” All the girls look at Cady expectantly, waiting for her to point out something she doesn’t like about herself, and the first thing that comes out of her mouth is, “I have really bad breath in the morning.”

Every single day, so many of us are encouraged to have an unhealthy relationship with our physical bodies. Almost every ad on TV is for a product to fix something about our bodies. Photographs of models in magazines are so photoshopped the end result hardly looks like the original person anymore. In part due to this push of advertisements and social media, tweens and teens spent more than 20% more money on skincare products last year than in years past, some of them even going to dermatologists hoping for botox or for cosmetic procedures to try and prevent or slow down the aging process. The hashtag #skincareroutine on TikTok has over 77.3 billion views. Isn’t that staggering? 

Taking care of our bodies is a good thing. Caring for our skin is a good thing. These are healthy things for us to do. The problem is, we are saturated by ads and social media messages telling us that our bodies are bad. We are reminded over and over again that our bodies are imperfect. We are encouraged to hold up a mirror to our bodies and find fault with every wrinkle, every gray hair, every skin blemish, and then find a product or a treatment that can “fix it.” 

The church should be a place where this message is met with resistance. God loved humanity so much that God sent Jesus into the world to save us. God didn’t despise human flesh; God took on flesh and became human and walked among us. Jesus ate food, got his hands and feet dirty, and probably had sun-kissed skin from all that walking outside. Jesus got hungry. He had aches and pains. He cared about the physical suffering of others and healed their diseases. God cares about our physical bodies so much that Jesus became embodied so that he could fully redeem humanity. 

In 1 Corinthians 6, the apostle Paul says, “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are beneficial. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything…Or 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? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” The people in the Corinthian church had questions about faith, life, and how to function as a church, and so they wrote to Paul with their questions. Paul wrote back to them, and his letters often referenced their original concerns. Here, the people in Corinth are living by the saying, “All things are lawful for me.” 

At the beginning of the Christian movement, conflict arose in the church about how many Jewish laws new converts to Christianity should follow. Eventually, in Acts 15 at the Jerusalem Council, it was decided that new followers of Jesus would not need to adopt the whole of the Jewish law. There were three requirements people needed to abide by, but the rest was set aside as “not necessary” for Gentiles who were coming to faith in Christ. Can you imagine the relief for these people who were newly coming to faith? 

In Corinth, it seems people were taking that relief to an extreme. They were overjoyed by the freedom to do as they pleased, and they were engaging in all kinds of things that were harmful–both to each person, and to the whole church. Paul says, “Just because it’s allowed, doesn’t mean it is good.” Or, as we often say to others, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” As a kid I thought adults were so lucky that they could eat cookies for breakfast if they wanted to because no one would stop them. As an adult, sometimes I wish I had an adult around to tell me I’ve had enough cookies and if I eat more of them, I will have an upset stomach. Just because there isn’t a rule against it doesn’t mean it is helpful or beneficial. 

As people created by God, we are called to care for our bodies. Our bodies aren’t disposable. We don’t just “shuffle off this mortal coil” as Shakespeare once wrote in Hamlet. Our bodies will fail us at times. Each of our bodies has different abilities and limitations. Even still, our bodies are important. We love God with our bodies by remembering that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit–creations worthy of care and love. Now, we may not always agree on the best way to care for our bodies, and I think that’s OK. Each of us has to discern what it means to take care of our bodies, without going to the extreme where we make our bodies the most important thing about ourselves.

I wonder what would happen if we resisted the message that our bodies are bad or broken and in need of the latest and greatest product. Maybe the next time an ad comes on TV or social media that urges us to look down on our bodies, we say out loud (or quietly to ourselves) that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, worthy of care and love. We love God with our bodies by taking care of them, and by seeing them as beautiful creations of God.

Our bodies are beautiful creations of God, even though they are also limited and endure so much. We face illness and suffering. Our parts don’t always work as they should, and we each have our own challenges as we live in these bodies. We have things about ourselves we wish we could change, and we have days where it is tough to get out of bed because of all the aches and the pains. We love God with our bodies by caring for our bodies, and by showing grace to ourselves in our weakness. We love God with our bodies by worshiping God by the way we act with our bodies in this world.

This morning, we have the opportunity to experience with our bodies the goodness of God. We will gather around the Lord’s table to taste and see. We will reach out our hands and hold the bread, and we will lift the cup to our lips and taste the sweetness and the sourness of the juice. As we do this, we remember the sacrifice of Christ, who gave his body and shed his blood so that we might have eternal life–right now in our bodies, and in the life to come.

As you receive this meal, take a moment to allow your senses to take it in. What do you see, smell, and hear? Allow the bread and the juice to awaken your sense of taste. Feel the earthiness of this meal, and remember: Jesus took on flesh to redeem it, not to discard it. You–in all your imperfections, in all your uniqueness–were created by God, and you worship God just by being who you are. May God be glorified in us. Amen.