I Peter 4:1-11 "The Body Difference" Scott Hoezee

In religious circles the past ten or twenty years, there has been a certain cultural catchphrase that traditional Christians tend to speak with a sneer: it's the phrase "politically correct." The "PC movement" began in academic circles with scholars who invented whole new forms of speech to avoid even a whiff of traditional ways of talking about people, particularly those who were long marginalized or discriminated against.

Ten years ago, near the zenith of the politically correct movement, James Finn Garner, a son-in-law of some Calvin Church members at that time, both captured and lampooned the PC ethos with his best-selling book Politically Correct Bedtime Stories in which he retold classic fairy tales in politically correct language. And so in the case of "Snow White," one couldn't call her seven friends "dwarves" but instead these were persons of non-standard height, vertically challenged individuals who deserved esteem. At the end of "Little Red Riding Hood" when the woodsman (or log fuel technician, as he preferred to be called) bursts into the house to rescue Red Riding Hood from the wolf, he gets assailed for his presumptuous sexism and speciesism that asserted a womyn and a wolf couldn't resolve their differences without macho help. Having dispatched with the log fuel technician, Little Red Riding Hood, her grandmother, and the wolf set up an alternative household based on mutual respect.

Witty though all that was, the serious side of political correctness has long struck many Christians as gutting theology of its ability to make distinctions. PC speech waters down the gospel, and that's why we have often spoken of this movement with a sneer. Still, even traditional Christians like ourselves have been more affected by political correctness than we think. It is doubtful that any of us today would be happy if our denomination's Board of Home Missions reverted back to that agency's original name of about one hundred years ago when it was known as "The Board of Heathen Missions." Similarly, no matter how much you might disagree with a co-worker on matters of religion, it is unlikely that you would regularly refer to this person as a "pagan."

Perhaps that is why some of Peter's language in this fourth chapter strikes us as coming from a very different era. Peter pulls no punches here in saying to his readers that once upon a time they had led pagan lifestyles, which by implication means that the world is still filled with pagan people. But if you use the word "pagan" today, you raise up a cloud of images that tilt in the direction of devil worship or of some of the dark, mysterious, cult-like rituals that are depicted in the best-selling novel The DaVinci Code. To be considered a pagan today, a person needs to be more than just a generic unbeliever--paganism requires someone to be actively engaged in dark goings-on.

But whatever the precise definitions and connotations of the word "pagan" today, the one thing we need to be clear about this evening is that terminology aside, if we lose our ability to draw distinctions among different types of people in this world, then we may also begin to lose some of the very theological, spiritual distinctiveness that we cannot lose if we are to remain devout followers of the one Lord Jesus Christ. So tonight let's see what Peter can teach us about what makes the Christian life unique.

We'll begin where Peter begins, and that is with the bodily sufferings of Jesus. Ever since February and the release of Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, the nature and significance of Christ's suffering have been discussed more intensely than has happened in a long, long time. For his part, Gibson was as graphic and bloody as he could get because of all the theological freight he loads onto that verse from Isaiah, "By his stripes are we healed." Since humanity needs a whole lot of healing, Jesus needed a whole lot of striping. Hence, in the film, by the time Jesus gets to the cross, his body has been filleted literally to the bone. So intense were the scenes of floggings that it was almost a relief to see Jesus hoisted onto the cross because at least now no one could lash into his flesh anymore.

Some theologians objected to all that, pointing out that the movie went well beyond anything reported in the gospels. But some also complained that the intensity of the pre-crucifixion violence threatened to eclipse the fact that we are saved finally through the death of Jesus, not just the sting of the whip on his back. Also, we dare not forget what constitutes that moment when Jesus' suffering reached its hellish nadir: the moment when the Father abandoned the Son. Still, there can be no denying that the suffering of Jesus, his passion for us, has always been endowed with saving significance. What Jesus suffered physically, emotionally, and spiritually happened to him so that it would not have to happen ultimately and eternally to us. We will not know the hellish abandonment of God that Jesus experienced. Unlike Jesus, even when we die, we will do so embraced by God our Father, not left alone by him. That is true because Jesus won the victory for us.

In the meanwhile, however, we are called to an imitation of Christ. Jesus invites us to take up the cross in this life, to deny ourselves, and if need be to suffer for our faith. This is the point Peter picks up on in verses 1-2. The fact that our salvation has something to do with the attitude Jesus took toward his own flesh clues us in that our now living Christ-like lives must likewise involve our attitude toward our own bodies.

But please notice what I always point out in this connection: neither Peter nor the Christian tradition generally fosters a hatred or loathing of the body. The New Testament does not teach a Greek-like despising of the body as the prisonhouse of the soul. After all, Jesus' Easter victory was revealed precisely when he returned with his body alive once again. Easter tells us that the goal of the Christian life is not to be rid of all that is physical but instead to view the physical in a new way.

Christianity is the religion of the incarnation. Matter matters. Bodies matter. We are saved through what happened to one particular body, and so Peter suggests that this now must transform how we regard also our bodies. Peter suggests in verse 1 that if we adopt the mindset of Jesus, then we will stop using our bodies for sinful things. The difference between Christian believers and the pagans in the rest of the world is not that we try to transcend our bodies or pretend we have no interest in physical things. No, the difference lies precisely in how we engage the physical world.

But it's just at this point that Peter rightly says the pagans around us might think us strange or odd. Think of it this way: suppose that Christians said that we are totally spiritual people who have no interest in physical things and so we shun all pleasures because the body is just a temporary shell that doesn't matter. Suppose we expressed an eagerness to shuck our bodies once and for all in death, getting released into an eternity of ethereal, wispy, insubstantial realms of pure thought. If we said that, then the world around us would not find it so strange to see Christian people denying themselves all physical pleasures. They might think our overarching attitude was weird, but if they saw Christians living celibate lives devoid of sex, eating only the blandest of food, refusing ever to touch a drop of alcohol, and just generally living exceedingly austere lives--if the world saw all that, they might think it odd, but at least it would be consistent.

But as a matter of fact, Christians do not disparage the body. Instead we say that God gave us bodies exactly so that we could experience pleasure and soak up the cornucopia of creation's bounty. What is the Genesis portrayal of the Garden of Eden if not a picture of deliciousness, of sensuousness, of beauty, and of active sexuality? We say the body is good. We say our bodies will endure even death in the long run. We worship a Savior who is still now, and always will be, an embodied Lord.

By the way, Christian people sometimes forget that. In Catechism class it's not easy to ask a question that even the kids judge to be genuinely interesting. But they do perk up with curiosity when I ask "Does Jesus still have a human body?" Typically most, if not all, students say no, which presents a vivid opportunity to teach the traditional theological tenet that having become a true human being through the womb of Mary, and having received a renewed body back again in the resurrection from the dead, Jesus our Lord has now at the right hand of God, and will always have, that very body.

This is the point at which the pagans, as Peter pegs them, deem us strange. Since Christians are not ascetic people who withdraw from all bodily pleasures, there are some in the world who just can't understand why we don't go whole hog wild with them when it comes to such things. If sex is a fun thing for one man and one woman to experience together, why not a threesome or a foursome? If one martini makes you feel loose, why not a whole pitcher of them? Those who are addicted to pleasure are baffled by those who affirm the goodness of pleasure and yet still preach moderation.

But what keeps us from going overboard is the suffering of Jesus in his body. Because Jesus taught us that the secret to viewing and treating our bodies the right way; the method by which you may enjoy also bodily existence, comes not by tanking up on all the pleasure you can get but by emptying yourself. It is by giving away, and not by taking in, that we discover the full goodness for which God created us as physical beings. This clever line of thought lies behind verse 4 where Peter invokes a nice oxymoron.

In verse 4 Peter talks about "a flood of dissipation." That is a pretty good translation of the two Greek words that Peter yokes together. First, he used the word asotias, which means to dissipate in the sense of being wasteful, of overindulging in something until it is used up and so it vanishes. Usually when we say that the rain is dissipating, we mean it is ending, disappearing, drying up. But then Peter yokes that word for dissipation with the word anachusin, which means a floodtide.

So Peter is saying that when you live for only your own pleasure, when your definition of a rich, full life is consumption for consumption's sake, then what looks like a tidal wave of fullness is really one huge draining away of life's goodness. It's not a tempest in a teacup but a tempest in a toilet bowl--you are flushing away life, not enhancing it; you are whittling away at the goodness of your body, not adding to it. It's a classic example of how sometimes the more a person takes in, the emptier he feels as a result. It's the drinker's conundrum: you drink because you are depressed and for a little while, the booze helps. But in the end, alcohol is itself a depressant. You drank because you were down, but drinking makes you feel more down. The more you take in, the emptier you are. It is a floodtide that dissipates, a tidal wave of gin that ends up being dry in every sense.

Some of you will remember the clever image from C.S. Lewis's book The Great Divorce in which hell is depicted not as some great big vast region full of the condemned but instead hell is this incredibly tiny, almost microscopic place. If one day the entire universe will be the new creation or what we commonly refer to as "heaven," then within all that vastness, the region of hell could fit inside a crack in the sidewalk. It was Lewis's way of saying that hell, and those who populate it, are finally almost nothing because the substance and vibrancy of life will long since have been drained away.

Jesus Christ the Lord, Peter says, is the source of all life and so has restored vibrancy and substance to us. Jesus makes it possible for us to have rightly directed appetites through which we approach life in ways that really will fill us up instead of emptying us out. But the irony is that the filling up comes only when you first empty yourself for the sake of others.

It is no surprise, then, that after yet another rather cryptic comment about preaching to the dead, Peter launches into a section that calls for hospitality, for self-control, for serving one another because these activities are about sharing life. The person who knows that salvation came when Jesus suffered in his body also knows that now the key to life is using our bodies, and all the particular gifts each of us has, in ways that will share life.

In the past we've thought about the list of so-called "Seven Deadly Sins." But when you think about it, the common denominator of all those sins is selfishness, a radical individualism centered on your own pleasure. Pride, Envy, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Anger, and Lust all have wider, negative effects on the people around you but only because each of these sins transfixes your gaze onto your own navel. Pride leads you to want to be #1 in the eyes of others--it's all about you. Envy enters the picture the moment someone else threatens to outshine you. Sloth focuses you so much on the interior of your own mind that you no longer can generate enthusiasm for anything outside your own dark thoughts.

Greed says that you deserve the best of everything even if that means you take something exactly so that someone else can't have it. Gluttony claims that if you like something, no one may tell you how much of it you may consume. Sinful anger flares when your privileged place in the world is threatened or when the way you wanted things goes bust. And lust is all about what C.S. Lewis called the prose of sexuality, not the poetry of it because the one consumed by lust isn't interested in giving pleasure but just getting it. Pornography demonstrates that you don't even need the object of your lust to be in the same room with you for you to achieve your selfish goal. It's less complicated to be sexual and alone. But God's gift of sexuality was never meant to leave us alone. Quite the opposite!

We said earlier this evening that maintaining the distinction between the Christian viewpoint and a secular, pagan outlook is vital to our identity as Christians. But we've come to see perhaps that preserving the difference between our worldview and that of the wider society is complicated because Jesus' bodily sufferings do not make us uninterested in our bodies but actually intensifies our investment in leading a bodily existence in the right way. In the course of eating and drinking, of being sexual and engaging the beauties of God's world, we Christians draw lines that look strange, arbitrary, and unnecessary to those who cannot see beyond the horizon of the moment. But as Peter says in verse 2, that is because we keep in mind the will of God. Jesus teaches us that God's will is not for us to become world-denying, body-hating ascetics but to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus, the one who took the body he had and turned it into a font of life.

At the center of Christian existence is that moment when the pastor holds up the bread and intones Jesus' words, "This is my body." We do not feast on Jesus' spirit, heart, soul, or mind. We don't take communion to participate in Jesus' philosophy or to get enthused over the idea of Christ. No, we take to ourselves his body because by using his body in the most unselfish way imaginable, Jesus became a source of life.

For nearly 2,000 years now there has somehow been enough of Jesus' body to keep going around to nourish the souls of so many millions of his followers. The world has never before had, and will never again see, so amazing an example of what can happen when we celebrate our bodies not as our own private little pleasure palaces but as a gift of God through which we can give ourselves away in order to build up and enhance the goodness and joy of all those around us. This is how we praise our great God in Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power for ever and ever, Amen.