Friday in Lent 1

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)

Here's one way of looking at the torture debate. Is is all right to waterboard the temple of God?

Is it all right to leave depleted uranium (DU) lying around to be absorbed by the temple of God?

Is it all right to deny health care to the temple of God?

Is is all right to stand by and watch tens of thousands of temples of God be destroyed by hunger, disease, war, or--for that matter--by bureaucratic policies?

Is it all right to lay of thousands of God's temples in order to preserve the over-inflated paycheck of one CEO (or even a dozen top officers)?

Note: the word "you" in the Greek text of these verses is plural. This temple of God bit is not about private individualized spiritual experiences. It is about us all.

Jesus went out again beside the lake; the whole crowd gathered around him, and he taught them. As he was walking along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax-collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax-collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’

Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

‘No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’ (Mark 2:13-22)

The concept of an Anglican Covenant is an old wineskin, if you ask me (which you didn't, I know). I have no doubt that Jesus hung out with disreputable persons. I find attempts to preserve purity both unconvincing and blasphemous. God sanctifies as God wills and all God makes is holy. It may get tarnished and twisted and need to be restored to its intended purpose but God does not abandon it. God is an adequate defender of God's own self. Our task is to share God's love and invite others into a transforming experience. God will handle the transforming. I do not need to make anyone conform to my concept of what God wants to do with him or her. I do not need to have everyone look, think, or act alike--a gross blasphemy against the creative variety God displays.

Because the Collects I put at the end of these posts comes from Lesser Feasts and Fasts and are thus the collects appointed for the weekdays of Lent, they are the prayers of the Church to which I belong and may not express things with exactly the theology or tone I might choose if I were writing them. Today I feel led to comment. I do not believe in spirit-matter dualism. They are two sides of one created reality. (Yes, the Holy Spirit is uncreated but I am not talking about the divine exception.) To me it is rather like matter and energy: we do not yet know of one without the other. Or the wave-particle nature of light. I thus cannot feel comfortable with assigning them a hierarchy. (I am no Platonist.) Spirit and flesh are both to be subject to God, in tandem, harmonized. So I post this prayer but I cannot honestly pray the part about subduing flesh to spirit. Both need sanctification equally, neither is prior to the other. I am an incarnational thinker who takes a very Genesis view of "nefesh" (the clay and breath--matter and spirit--together make the living soul--souls are not discarnate).

Lord Christ, our eternal Redeemer, grant us such fellowship in your sufferings, that, filled with your Holy Spirit, we may subdue the flesh to the spirit, and the spirit to you, and at the last attain to the glory of your resurrection; who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
--the BB