Missing our Church Families this Palm Sunday...

NYT guest pastor Tish Harrison Warren, a Texas Anglican:

... I miss taking and giving communion. I miss seeing hands after hands cupped open to receive. Some rough, axel grease under the nails. Some smooth and manicured. Every age, every skin color. I miss watching their faces as they receive the meal together, how tired they look, how happy some of them seem, how a few receive the bread and then close their eyes and whisper a deep, earnest “thank you,” how certain parishioners cry every single time I give them the host.

God did not sic coronavirus on us to teach us a lesson; nor does he delight in the chaos and death it is causing. God hates sickness and death. But God also lets no crisis, no suffering and nothing in our lives go to waste. God is resourceful and takes it all as the raw material of redemption.

This time of social distancing feels a little like when my friend’s mom caught him smoking a cigarette as a kid, so she made him smoke the whole pack (“You want cigarettes, I’ll give you cigarettes!”). He never smoked again. And I can’t think of anything that will make us appreciate embodied presence more than having to forgo it most almost entirely for a while.

...
The story of creation in the Bible reminds us that we humans are bodies. We are not simply brains on a stick or souls trapped in a mortal prison. We believe bodies and souls are inseparably entwined (which is why Christians and other religious groups care so much about eating, drinking and sex, not because we think the body is bad or dirty, but because we think it is mysteriously connected to our very soul, but that may be for another essay).

And we believe that God came not as a book or a codex of laws or as a hologram or a creed or an idea, but as a person in a body, Jesus. In assuming a body, God redeems embodiment itself. Therefore, we believe in the resurrection not merely of the soul, floating away to some ephemeral mist, but also of the body.

Before two weeks ago, it was pretty easy to ignore the brute fact of our embodiment. We can habituate ourselves to noticing our bodies only when we are counting up their flaws or trying to improve them, as though they are a beast to tame or marble to sculpt.

Or we can be tempted to embrace the digital revolution so wholeheartedly that we prefer the company of an avatar on a screen over the ordinary goodness of being a body with other bodies. Or we can ignore bodies altogether, focusing completely on the life of the mind. Or more often, on the bottom line.

This virus has exposed that we have whole segments of society that do not have paid sick leave, and human resource policies and cultures that depend upon overlooking the pesky reality that any worker has a limited and needy body that deserves care.