|
Catholic monk and scholar Bruno Barnhardt, in Second Simplicity, writes that “the church fathers regarded both the eucharistic body and ecclesial body with Paul’s firm realism: the realism of bodily mystery.” Translated, Barnhardt claims that the church fathers taught the elements of the Eucharist constitutes a physical union with Christ, not just a spiritual union. Likewise, the Body of Christ, the Church, was seen as a physical extension of Christ in the world, not simply selves apart from the physicality of Christ. But, both the Eucharist and the Church were uprooted from grounding in the physical. “The body of Christ, that is, comes to be no more than an institutional church with its doctrines, laws, sacraments, and ritual.” The physical union came to be understood as “mere metaphor” or “a purely spiritual communion.” The bodily aspect of Body of Christ, marked in the New Testament writings, became “reduced to abstractions or ‘mere poetry.’”
Gnosticism and Gnostic tendencies in religion, at core, seeks to escape the physical in an exaltation of disembodied enlightenment. The flesh is seen as a dispensable impediment to spiritual liberation. This Gnostic tendency can be found all the way from Christian fundamentalism to new age philosophies. Also, it is found in Eastern approaches that see the flesh as needing to be devalued in pursuit of a mental-like enlightenment.
Understanding of the relation between “physical” and “spiritual” shapes ideas on such teachings as the Incarnation of Christ and the resurrection of both Christ and others. One is more likely to be open to espousing such teachings as the Incarnation and a bodily resurrection when she sees “physical” and “spiritual” not as oppositional but as integrated aspects, or processes, of a single whole.
What is the grounding in body, the flesh, the basis of an embodied faith? This is the “flesh” of body, earth, environment, persons and peoples of the earth, and cosmos. Therefore, the environment, in inner and outer aspects, is “embodied Spirit” or “inspired Body.”
Sophia, or Wisdom, the energy of the feminine principle, is an aspect of the whole of God. This Wisdom became an important teaching in Judaism just prior to the time of Christ on earth. Likewise, the New Testament, as in St. John 1, is influenced by the movement.
Barnhardt writes that this Sophia “constitutes the invisible union of inside and outside, of explicit with implicit, of revealed with latent, of the circumscribed with the open, the ecclesial with the universal, institutional with cosmic.” Wisdom, as God-expression, is integrative. God is, therefore, integrative, or unitive. As part of this Expression, Wisdom is an aspect of the Word.
Without this feminine principle operating, the church tends toward a masculinity that veers into demythologization (i.e., seeing the Bible as myth to be decoded, decontextualized, dehistoricized), metaphor, intellectualization, and repression of the intuitive, sensing aspects of the faith journey. Thinking about faith and doing good works is pronounced and the intimacy of Communion is lost.
The church lost balance by repressing this integrative Wisdom aspect of the Word. In such a system, then, there is lack of unitive energy to bring the pieces together into a sense of inherent wholeness. Therefore, the process of spiritual formation must be a process of embodied aspiration and action, one that integrates all aspects, inner and outer, of Christian discipleship into a whole. Otherwise, we move from one piece of the communal pie to the next, never integrating the differences in union. So, in the integrative, the work of caring for the buildings or having a prayer service are equally imbued by the Spirit and directed to bringing honor to the Presence of Christ among us. Likewise, male and female, both as tendencies in both genders and as gender classifications, have equally full participation and responsibility in the body of Christ, as each equally expresses Christ.
Barnhardt observes, “The body of Christ must be unitive not only intensively (joining many persons in communion), but also extensively. It must, that is, have a universal scope, in some way comprehending all creation.” The “energy relates to the movement of history and to the movement of personal life, to sexuality as well as to spirituality and work.” Succinctly, I frame the contention this way: We cannot take all of God from any aspect of creation, for all of creation is equally reliant on and the expression of the whole life of God. Everything is equally grounded in God, for God cannot be parceled out into, divided, and reduced in any way. God is the Irreducible.
The “body of Christ must be body and related to our human physicality in its depth and breadth,” writes Barnhardt, and it must be “body and matter openly and universally, and therefore beyond denominational bounds." This body must be “inclusive of all humanity and the cosmos,” while closed and open. In its closed, or particularized, meaning, body of Christ refers to a specific group of humans, “the sacramental organism of the church (… baptized believers in Jesus Christ)” and “coextensive with all of humanity and all of creation.” Why can body of Christ have these apparently divergent meanings? For the unitive energy of Christ joins that which no other energy can join; this energy reconciles the apparent opposites and, then, can hold them in an apparent tension without them falling apart. Therefore, being unitive, body of Christ embodies both the particular and the universal. Indeed, Sophia, as the “wisdom of Love … is Christ outside Christianity, the presence of God outside and beyond every representation of God and every boundary line.”
Therefore, in one sense, the spiritual Journey is a fleshly Journey taking place within a particular environment, among a particular community of faith. But, in this Journey we tend to move from the particular to the universal. Once we grasp a sense of the particularization of Spirit, we can move to see that particularization open to the universal. However, that does not mean the particularization is dissolved at all. Particularization exists within the cosmic, and in Wisdom both honor the other. The particular is explicit in the cosmic; the cosmic is implicit in the particular. Microcosm and macrocosm are part of one Dance of Divine Reality.
Our spiritual aspirations and actions, as well as our Communion with Christ, take place within the grounding of embodied Spirit. We discipline ourselves to become embedded in the particulars of our faith and environment, and this opens to the intuitive sensation of Love as all-embracing. Through Grace, we can move to appreciate and hold, even if in some tension, both the this-here and every-where processes of Christ. We cannot do this, however, without surrendering to this Love. Love, then, works its integration within and throughout our whole embodied Self, until we sense as Spirit senses.
Spiritual Exercise
1. Which describes your position best? Explain.
a. Only other Christians are my brothers and sisters in Christ.
b. Everyone is my brother or sister in Christ.
c. In one way, my brothers and sisters are other Christians; but, in another way, everyone is my brother or sister.
2. Do you agree or not with the following statement? Explain.
Not everyone in the churches is in the Church.
3. Do you agree or not with the following statement? Explain.
Many outside the churches are in the Church.
3. What does “body of Christ” mean to you?
4. Define in your own words “embodied Spirit” and “unitive Spirit”?
Prayer
Thank you for my body, the earth, the sky, and the galaxies. I rejoice in the gift of my being given a place within the vast universe. I am an expression of Your Word. I pray to respect everyone as part of your body. Amen.
-Brian K. Wilcox
OneLife Ministries is a pastoral outreach and nurture ministry of the First United Methodist Church, Fort Meade, FL. For Spiritual Direction, Pastoral Counseling, spiritual formation workshops, Christian meditation retreats, or more information about OneLife, write Rev. Dr. Brian K. Wilcox at briankwilcox@comcast.net.
Brian's book of mystical love poetry, An Ache for Union, can be ordered through major bookdealers.
Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors
The People of the
United Methodist Church
|
