Wholiness

"My heart and flesh cry out for You the Living God - Your Spirit's water for my soul. I've tasted and I've seen...come once again to me - I will draw near to You, I will draw near to You."1

The reality of our psychosomatic (psukhē = spirit, soul; soma = body) wholeness was made evident to me in a significant way recently. Experiencing brokenness and turmoil in our congregational life together has resulted in numerous physical manifestations of illness, hurt and restlessness. Similar to a therapist that I read about who endured a violent verbal assault from a client with serious anger management problems. This verbal assault was so intense and unexpected that it seemed to penetrate his body like a blast from a shotgun. Shaken to the core, he realized that he needed to bodily work out the effects of the attack. After an intense cardiovascular exercise, he began stretching out his body. One stretch required him to lie flat on his back, as he laid there in cruciform position he suddenly experienced a profound identification with the crucified Christ, who willingly received brokenness into His body and offered back forgiveness and healing. This spiritual experience came through the body, as all of our experiences of God do.2

"Separation of body from spirit has been a destructive habit of mind whose damage we are still in the process of calculating."3 The effects of a dualistic cast of mind are both deep and far reaching. We have been able to justify the ways that we've violated our own bodies, the bodies of others, the Body of Christ, and the physical world because of this nasty habit. This is the result of ascribing ultimate reality to the "spiritual", with a simplified definition of non-physical, and only limited reality to material. Such thinking is utterly un-Biblical.

Scripture instructs us that the temporality of the physical world is the result of brokenness and sin. It is certainly true that created things only have a contingent reality. The only ultimate reality is the Lord God, creator of heaven and earth, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End of all things - YHWH (I Am; I Will Be). It is this God who created us as whole beings who live within the context of a web of relationships. Thus, broken relationship with the source of life eventually leads to death - Scripture is quite clear on this. This brokenness is fleshed out in the whole web of relationships into which we were created and given our being. What others do, think, and say affects me and vise versa. It is apparent that this Biblical vision has not shaped our own perspective - it is evident through our body-life. We only have to open our eyes to witness the reality of our brokenness and the continued fragmented thinking that permeates everything.

"A healthy understanding of the body - our own physical bodies, the body politic, the earth as 'body,' and the Body of Christ - rests on several key ideas: interdependence; adaptation; growth and change; need for nourishment; need for cleansing (reformed and always reforming); need for redemption and transformation (hope in 'resurrection of the body'). These ideas come together in the Lord's Supper, where we are reminded in an intimate, physical way how God enters into our very physical lives - becomes flesh, again and again - to complete the work begun in us."4

Lord help us recover an authentic understanding of humanity through Christ...teach us genuine wholiness. Until next time - blessings in Christ ~ RLS

1. Better is One Day

2. John Mogabgab, "editor's introduction," Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, Vol. XXII, No. 5, p. 3.

3. Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, "This One Body," Weavings, Vol. XXII, No. 5, p. 9.

4. Ibid, pp. 11-12.