you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
1 Corinthians 6:20 (NIV)
Honor Takes a Body
Six people carry a casket, and the weight of it is real. There’s a moment at the church door where they have to shift their grip, and nothing is said about it then or later. Whatever honor means at a funeral, it gets done that morning with shoulders and forearms, by people who took the day off work to be there.
Corinth had a problem with sexual morality, and Paul says this while he is talking to them about their bodies. He tells them their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and that they are not their own, because they were bought. Then he asks them to honor God with their bodies.
The request is physical. Almost everything that reaches another person travels through arms and legs, and through hours nobody gets back. The groceries that showed up during the worst week of somebody’s life were picked out by a man pushing a second cart through the same store after his own shift, guessing at what that family eats.
The body itself was bought, the whole of it, and that changes who it works for. Some days a body has almost nothing left in it, and the honor available is small. In another letter Paul writes about something in his own flesh he asked God three times to remove, and grace came back instead of removal. He went on working in the body he had asked to have changed.
The price was paid for the body you are in today.
They set the casket down on the rollers, and the man who had the heavy end works his fingers open and shut, then puts his hand in his pocket.
A Prayer to Remember
I’ve been honoring you with my head, and that has never cost me anything. I have treated this body as the part of me you would rather not discuss. It was bought too. Today it is tired and slower than it was, and I am bringing it to you anyway.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
