Rector's letter for April Fowey News
Dear Friends
Bodies matter.
At the heart of the Christian faith is the incarnation, the claim that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1v14). God did not simply visit the earth as an avatar. Nor did he grab a human costume as a temporary disguise. He became fully human. And he did so permanently. This was no phase. He didn’t ditch his humanity on his way back to heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ is, and remains, fully human.
Our culture tends to view the body as both accidental (the product of entirely random processes) and incidental (carrying no intrinsic significance to my identity). It is simply the lump of flesh that happens to carry ‘me’ around. The real ‘me’ is who I feel myself to be deep down inside, and my body is merely a canvas on which I get to express that inner identity.
But two years of a global pandemic brought home to us just how much physical presence means and matters. Zoom, messaging, and phone calls all have their place, but they are lousy substitutes for actual flesh-and-blood time with others. Bodies matter. Being embodied is part of what makes us human and gives us our identity. You cannot fully be you without your body. It is a gift and it is part of your calling. And your way of being you includes your sex.
The Bible’s vision of humanity is there from the start, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” Genesis 1:27 (ESV). It’s not just that we made as people; we’re made physically male and female and whilst there is more to being male and female that our biology, there is not less. And, as male and female, we image God, that is we have the capacity and calling to reflect God to the world, to tend, develop and care for creation on his behalf. Both male and female display the glory of God with equal brilliance - and there is something about the interplay between the two that enriches us.
Christian apologist, Tim Keller, writes, “It is part of the brilliance of God’s creation that diverse, unlike things are made to unite and create dynamic wholes which generate more and more life and beauty through their relationships… That means that male and female have unique, non-interchangeable glories - they each see and do things that the other cannot… Male and female reshape, learn from and work together.” We need each other.
Emphasising, or even expressing, the difference sounds alien to our culture, although we often instinctively recognise it in the sense that there are certain contexts where having only one sex present is diminishing in some way. For example, what some secular leadership spaces lack if there are only men present. It’s not a question of representation or fairness but the interplay of difference which brings enrichment. Attempts therefore to make men and women somehow interchangeable miss that complementary blessing. The difference needs to be embraced and expressed.
with every blessing
Philip