Nature and Grace: 2011

Sermon Title: Our Bodies Are a Temple

Sermon Series: Healthy Aging for and Abundant Life

Date: July 3, 2011

Last week I was at a meeting of the Pomme de Terre Ministerial Fellowship when an employee of the McCarty Senior Center came in to speak to us about some initiatives here in the county to help older adults live healthier lives. [1] As part of that presentation she handed me this refrigerator magnet with the words “Today I will … live like my life depends on it.” The magnet then has these little sections each with a phrase on it describing an action you can take to help improve your health.[2] The suggestions here include activities like “go for a walk,” “stay tobacco free,” “eat my veggies,” “call a friend,” and “follow my doctor’s orders” among other suggestions. The idea here being that you can use these movable phrases to prioritize your healthy activities for each day.

As I sat and thought about this magnet and as I played with it a little arranging my own healthy agenda, it dawned on me how basic some of this advice is. Yet for as straightforward as these suggestions are, we sometimes have extreme difficulty in pursuing these strategies that improve our own lives. I’ll be the first to admit that there are too many days when I don’t deliberately exercise or eat enough servings of fruits and vegetables. So if you are like me, and you read or hear these suggestions and think, “Why do I have such a tough time doing these simple things for my health?” you are not alone. A lot of us struggle with maintaining good habits for healthy living … especially here in our own community.

A study completed earlier this year found that Hickory County, MO ranked 102^nd out of 114 Missouri Counties in terms of health factors which takes into account a wide variety of issues such as smoking, obesity, access to health care, preventative health screenings, education, unemployment, poverty, health insurance, access to healthy foods, and access to recreation facilities. You’ve heard about bad hair days, but a far greater problem in our community is bad health days. The study found that people living in Hickory County report almost two and a half times more poor physical health day each month than the national average. On average adults in our community spend six days – that’s one-fifth – of each month in poor health because of illness or injury. County residents have almost three and a half times more poor mental health days than the national average. Adults here suffer from stress, depression, or problems with emotions about eight days a month – that’s almost one third of every month spent suffering from some mental health issue.[3] To put this in blunt terms we live in a community where being healthy is difficult. This matters to God. If it matters to God, it matters for us, too.

We worship a God who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and Jesus’ ministry fed the hungry, healed the infirmed, and raised the dead. Jesus did this to reveal who he was as the Son of God and to reveal what God’s kingdom is like. But Jesus’ ministry also teaches us that the God who created our bodies and has promised to redeem our bodies also cares about our bodies now. We learn that from Jesus’ ministry, and it is a theme that a guy named Paul picks up on as he is writing to a church in a place know as Corinth with the hope of guiding and nurturing that community in its faith.

In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Paul writes these words:

“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.” (NRSV)

Within the community of Corinth there was an attitude of permissibility that claimed that everything was legal or allowable. There was an understanding that what a person did with his or her body did not matter. Paul’s statement that the body is a temple of God’s Holy Spirit comes in a section of his letter that deals with how one uses his or her body to honor and glorify God. Paul is making the case that how a person lived and used his or her body was a response to what God had already done for him or her through Jesus Christ. So I think that Paul is saying emphatically that bodies and how we use our bodies and how we treat our bodies matters to God.

What images or activities come to mind when we hear or read the word “temple?” The temple was a place to encounter God. It was a place to be approached deliberately and with reverence; there are whole chapters of the Bible dedicated to how to approach and enter and conduct yourself in the temple. The temple is a place of worship – a place to honor and praise God. The temple is where a person went to make an offering or a sacrifice to God. When Paul says that your body is a temple, he is saying that your body should be treated in the same way. Our bodies are where we encounter God.

Our bodies matter to God because they have been given to us as a gift from God. Our bodily existence is God’s act of grace. We read in the second chapter of the very first book of the Bible that God breathed the breath of life into humankind. God breathed into the nostrils of the first human. This tells us among other things that God is uniquely present in us and uniquely invested in us as human beings – as human bodies.

“You are not your own,” Paul writes. You in all your earthly, bodily existence have been created and called by God. You belong to God. God invites us to serve, yes with our minds and hearts and spirits, but also with our bodies. Paul goes on to say that we have been bought with a price. We have been redeemed through Jesus Christ. Let us not forget that Jesus died a bodily death and was resurrected – raised from the dead – in the body. As people of the Christian faith we proclaim that we will share in Christ’s bodily resurrection as well. God in Christ will reclaim and renew our bodies … because bodies matter to God.

As people of faith what matters to God matters to us. In the Gospel of John 10:10 Jesus says “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (NRSV) God’s mission is abundant life in all its forms; yet, we find that many people do not experience the fullness of that abundant life which Christ came to share. Nearly 7 out of 10 Missourians who die each year will die of a chronic disease. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer are among the most common and costly, yet most preventable, of all health problems.[4] Paying attention to our bodies is essential for abundant living.

So what can we as people of faith do to experience in our bodies God’s gift of abundant life?

Today, I suggest we move more. We as a people are way too inactive. Being inactive may be as dangerous to our God-given bodies as smoking. Inactivity contributes to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, depression, arthritis and osteoporosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 36% of U.S. adults didn't engage in any leisure-time physical activity in 2008. More than one-third of us didn’t get up and take a walk or go swimming or go bowling or go line dancing. That inactivity has serious consequences, but it also means we are missing out on some pretty significant health benefits.

Even if you are thin, failure to get 30 minutes of exercise a day increases your risk of death and disease, but if we get more active we have a better chance of living an abundant life. Regular exercise can lower the chances of getting breast cancer by 20 to 30 percent. Exercise can lower blood pressure, reduce cholesterol, decrease the occurrence of type II diabetes. Physical activity can have an anti-aging effect on our bodies and prevent aging of our cardiovascular systems.[5] That sure sounds like a step in the right direction toward abundant living to me!

The recommendation is that each of us gets 2 ½ hours of moderate exercise per week. That’s 30 minutes a day, five days a week of some activity that elevates your heart rate. So, here’s my offer and my encouragement to help each us move in that direction. We will open our fellowship hall Mondays and Wednesdays 1-3 p.m. this month for walking laps. It is hot outside which makes it difficult to get out and get active, so come and walk here at the church where it is cool, it’s safe, and the walking surface is flat.

But here’s the other thing: if our exercise isn’t enjoyable, we are unlikely to pursue it and make exercise a regular part of our lives. So, on Thursdays from 1 to 3 p.m. we are going to gather in fellowship hall to play ladder ball. It is a simple game similar to horseshoes, and it is a fun way to get moving and walking more. If you cannot make it for walking or ladder ball, then consider joining the Wednesday morning line dancing group.

Whatever it is, let’s each of us this week find a way to move more and get more active as a way of not just caring for ourselves but also as a way of honoring God and expressing our faith in God who created us – mind, spirit AND body. If we start with ourselves, and if we start with walking and healthy recreation, we can become a force for better health in our community. Then we can say we are a community of faith that believes in healthy aging for abundant life. Thanks be to God of all creation including our bodies. Amen.