The Body is Good

Homily for Sunday, June 29, 2025
The Third Sunday After Pentecost
Galatians 5:1,13-25

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.

When we hear these words in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we might think that Paul is saying our bodies are bad.  Even though we may have been reading Paul for years, even though we may have done a lot of maturing and therapy,and even though we may have come to a place of “body-positivity,” yet hearing these words in today’s epistle still can cause us to wonder if the scriptures are saying our bodies are “bad.”

But I don’t want to begin with Paul and the “flesh” and his letter to the Galatians; rather, I want to begin with Luke chapter 2.

I once heard a homily preached on the story in Luke chapter 2 about the Holy Family’s trip to Jerusalem – the story in which on the way home, after a day’s journey, Mary and Joseph discovered that Jesus was not with them. Luke writes, “They returned to Jerusalem to search for him,” where they “found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions.”  In his homily the preacher began:  “Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, Queen of Angels, Star of the Sea, SHE… HATH…. HAD IT!”  

The same might be said of Paul in his letter to the Galatians:  “Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle to the Gentiles, Saint Paul, HE… HATH… HAD IT!”  Paul writes to the Galatians with a full head of steam.  We see his full head of steam already in the opening – “I am astonished,” he writes, “that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you… and are turning to a different gospel…”(1:5).  We see it in his strong lines in chapter 5 – “I wish [whoever it is that is confusing you] would castrate themselves” (5:10,12).  And we see it also at the end of the letter in which Paul does the first-century equivalent of texting in all caps – “See with what large letters… I write in my own hand,” Paul writes (6:11).   With the church in Galatia, PAUL… HATH… HAD IT!

“Why,” you might ask, “hath Paul had it?”  In Galatia Paul had converted a group of Gentiles to Christianity, and Jewish Christians came and:  1) questioned Paul’s credentials, 2) asserted that Paul’s Gospel did not agree with that of the other apostles, 3) accused him of keeping from his converts the necessity of observing the law, 4) and accused him of pandering to libertines and preaching a Gospel of “anything goes.”  Paul being Paul, he was not about to take these accusations sitting down.  His letter to the Galatians is his spirited rebuttal.  

In response to those who 1) questioned his credentials, in Galatians Paul tells how he is an apostle, not because of something any person told him, but because of a direct revelation from Jesus:

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Gal 1:11-12)

2)  To those who asserted that his Gospel did not agree with that of the original apostles in Jerusalem, in Galatians Paul states that he did confer with the original apostles and that his Gospel was indeed genuine:

Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem…  Then I laid before them... the gospel that I proclaim among the gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running… in vain… And James and Cephas and John… gave me… the right hand of fellowship.(Gal 2:1-2, 9)

3)  In response to those who accused Paul of keeping from his converts the necessity of observing the Law, Paul writes things like:

-        “We know a person is justified not by works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ” (2:16)

-        And, “All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse” (3:10).

-        And again in today’s passage:  “For freedom Christ has set us free.  Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

Lastly, in response to those who accused Paul of pandering to libertines and preaching a Gospel of “anything goes,” Paul continues:

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh.

To his accusers Paul here responds that his Gospel does have “spine” and that it is not “anything goes.”  He asserts that his Gospel is in no way going to slip into proverbial “pagan excesses” such as (as Paul lists):  fornication, idolatry, sorcery,enmity, drunkenness, carousing, “and things like these.”  So, when Paul says to “live by the Spirit…and do not gratify the desires of the flesh,” he is responding to accusations of preaching a Gospel of “anything goes.” He is proclaiming that his Gospel is grounded and “spiritual,”and is not libertine and does not contravene the Law.

Should we wish for further evidence of Paul’s “body positivity,” consider his words about the bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians chapter 15:  “This perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (15:53).  Or consider also 2Corinthians chapter 5 in which he expresses hope for a heavenly body:  “For while we are in this tent [our present body]…we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor 5:4). Or consider, too, Paul’s famous example of the body in 1 Corinthians chapter 12:  “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ” (12:12).  And lest we wonder if Paul is “body positive” but not “sex positive,” remember I Corinthians chapter 7 in which Paul writes, “Let each of you lead the life the Lord has assigned, to which God called you“ (7:17), meaning being married or being single.  Though “I wish all were as I am,” he says (meaning single), “each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another having another kind” (7:7). “If you marry, you do not sin” (7:28).

In his head of steam against those who accuse him of pandering to libertines, Paul in this morning’s lesson could sound as though he disapproves of the body. But taken in the context of Paul’s wanting to establish credibility, of wanting to make clear he is not preaching a “pagan” Gospel, and of wanting to assert that he is not pandering to libertines who would do away with morality; and taken also in the context of Paul’s otherwise positive understanding of the body elsewhere in his writings, I am not hearing Paul say in this morning’s lesson that our bodies are bad.  Indeed, it would seem that for Paul, our bodies and our sexuality are God-given gifts and are good and are to be used for the good.