Top American Values: #4 Health and Fitness 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 A Sermon Preached by Becky Sechrist on 1/28/07 I’ve been thinking about how to address this sermon topic this week. I’ve been thinking about it in all those down moments. While I was lifting weights, while I was walking my dog, while I was waiting for my soup to warm up. I also thought about it while hurtling down the highway at 65 mph, late for my next meeting. Oh, and while I was popping popcorn. During the Sundays of Epiphany, we are exploring the results of custom research by GfK. In 2005, they determined the top 10 American Values, and we are looking at the top seven, in ascending order. Stable Relationships, Justice, Friendship, Health and Fitness today, and then Freedom, Family and Honesty. The purpose of the report was to inform marketing strategies, but we’ve been exploring what the church has to say about these very same values. We’ve also been collecting reflections from you and from others on each of these topics. Given your reflections for these week, you have the same mixed feelings that I do about this topic. Let’s not even mention that I’m doing this with a cold. I don’t need to tell you how marketing responds to the value of health and fitness. The question for us, is what does the church have to say to this value? On this Sunday, when we celebrate the contributions of the United Methodist Women, it’s easy to look at how the UMW has advocated, on a policy scale, for the health of women and children around the world. They have lobbied governments and provided funding and personnel for safe drinking water, access to health care, and the regular vaccination of children. But when we look at a topic such as health and fitness, the conversation gets pretty personal pretty fast. On that personal scale, we have the words written by Paul in the letter to the Corinthians. Our bodies are a gift from God, he reminds them, and we have a responsibility to treat them as if they were as holy as the temple. In fact, each of our bodies are little temples, since the Spirit of God resides in each of us. And we know so much more now than Paul ever did about how to take care of our bodies. We build bone density through calcium and weight bearing activities. We use physical therapy to repair an injury or to compensate for bad body structure. We take ginseng and do crossword puzzles to keep our brains supple. We take zinc and vitamin C and echinacea to fend off colds. We know the dangers of cigarette smoke and other carcinogens. We consume foods with beta carotene and antioxidants to hold cancer at bay. Antibiotics can cure all manner of ills. We know how to repair and bypass the arteries in and out of our hearts, and there is medication to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. If you wear out your knees or break your hip, we can just replace those joints. And we have some success transplanting organs into our bodies to replace the ones that don’t work anymore. When you look at all the science and resources at our fingertips, there is no reason that every one of us should not be tall and thin and blonde. With all of this ability to care for our bodies, what would Paul say if he were writing to us? I think it’s possible that he might remind us that although our bodies are gifts from God, to worship them is its own form of idolatry. We’ve almost gone around full circle. If I get a cold, as I did this week, I immediately look to the factors that caused it. Did I get enough sleep? Did my nephew sneeze on me? Did I remember to wash my hands enough? Is this a sign of stress? If I just took better care of myself, I wouldn’t be sniffling and coughing today. And while there is a grain of truth in that, it’s not that much more of a leap to question why you have cancer, or how you had a heart attack, or whether your auto immune disease is a result of your lifestyle. And if I remember my theology classes correctly, that idea that my illness is a result of some shortcoming, some sin, is one that the church rejected about 2000 years ago. In Jesus’ time, people assumed that illnesses, diseases, even accidents were some kind of punishment from God. As a result, those who were ill or injured, or somehow not “perfect” were often excluded from full participation in the life of their communities. They couldn’t go to the temple, they couldn’t have regular jobs, and sometimes they were considered unclean, which meant that anyone having physical contact with them was also unclean until he or she could go through a cleansing ritual. So, Jesus went around healing people, curing the blind, the lame, the leprous, the deaf. And to mixed reviews. The healed were restored to their communities, but some were unsure what to do with their newfound “in” status. And some of the insiders found this ability to eradicate the punishment of sin a little disturbing to their understanding of order. In one of the healing stories, recorded in John, Jesus is asked by his followers, “Who sinned? This man, or his parents, that he is blind?” As Jesus heals the man, he responds, essentially, “Neither.” As Jesus healed, he was as much bringing health as he was restoring community. And his actions were as much a commentary on communities that exclude as they were about the health of others. The word the church has to offer on health and fitness is not healing, but wholeness. And, sometimes, valuing health and fitness gets in the way of understanding ourselves as whole. “Speaking of Faith” had an interview this fall with Matthew Sanford, and I highly recommend that program for your listening. You can find it at www.speakingoffaith.publicradio.org in their archive section. Matthew Sanford was in a car accident at the age of 13 which left him a paraplegic. Today, he is a yoga instructor, and he has a more complete understanding of his body and its wholeness. Because of the injury to his body, he has had to understand wholeness in a whole new light, and it was an understanding that took him awhile to get to. Dan mentioned Eugene O’Kelly, chair and CEO of KPMG last week, and his book My Last 100 Days. Eugene O’Kelly found a whole new understanding of wholeness, even as the outward appearance was that he lost his health. Wholeness comes from our understanding within, more than it has to do with our physical, mental, and emotional capabilities. If you converse with people who are part of the deaf community, you may be surprised the find that a number of them don’t really wish they could hear. In fact, if offered the “gift” of hearing, many would turn it down. They don’t see their deafness as a disability, but instead as simply another way of being in the world. Their wholeness has nothing to do with the ability to hear. It has to do with who they are. I have a good friend with a pre-school aged child. Over these next months, he is undergoing testing for autism. Coming to this decision to test has been very hard for her. You see, her son is a wonderful little boy. He is creative, he is funny, he is delightful, he is stubborn, and as we sit and talk and she tells me about the funny, frustrating, amazing, problematic things that he does, she has begun to acknowledge that each of these things may also be symptoms of autism. She loves her child, and she loves the way he sees the world. She loves his quirky, eccentric personality. She loves his ability to draw amazing pictures, while acknowledging that he doesn’t talk very well or very clearly. She is torn about what this label of “autism” might mean for his life. Will it open doors that he might need help with? Or will it paint him into a box where his gifts might be missed? What is clear, though, is that even if he gets this medical label of autism, she thinks he has amazing gifts to offer the world. She understands that he is whole. Do you know yourself to be whole? It might be a lot easier to determine if you are healthy or if you are fit, but I think the question for the church to ask is, do you know yourself to be whole? As a church, we walk a fine line. Our bodies are gifts from God. And we do have responsibility to take care of them. I continue to lift weights in order to build strength and create bone density. I take my multi-vitamin every day, and I try to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, I walk regularly. And I encourage you to care for your body as well. But we also seek wholeness. A wholeness that surpasses our physical health and abilities and encompasses all of who we are as beloved children of God. Amen.