BROTHER 'ASS' ~ 10/5/10

I remember being happy with my body until one humid day in 7^th grade when a Senior in high school asked me why my belly stuck out. Thus began my own self-conscious obsession with image.

The human body is a funny thing. Venerated and despised, abased and exalted, it is tent and temple, all in one.

C.S. Lewis had this to say of the human body.

"Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called it the prison or the 'tomb' of the soul, and of Christians like Fisher to whom it was a 'sack of dung,' food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St. Francis expressed by calling his body 'Brother Ass.' All three may be—I am not sure—defensible; but give me St. Francis for my money.

         Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body.”

So the body. I read this quote and suddenly understand with renewed clarity why it is God chooses the human body so many times as His object lesson for explaining what His Church is like.

”Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)

There are many who love to criticize the Church, who make into sport the art of church-bashing. To these, the Church is described like a ‘tomb,’ a travesty of nature, a sham. The way I hear some people talk about the Church, it might as well be a ‘sack of dung.’ And so, with such trite talk the people of God and the world alike critique His bride to His face. I think this neither a good idea nor a fair view.

There are also those who would over-spiritualize Christ’s bride, making the Church out to be an air-brushed supermodel on the cover of Vogue or Rolling Stone Magazine.

It’s all ‘glorious,’ everything’s glorious. This Church gets placed on quite the high pedestal, like a trophy on the mantel over a roaring fireplace, never touched by the everyday world unless picked up and dusted off by the passing housemaid. But… I wonder about those who think this way—do they actually attend a church steadily? As much as I love Christ’s church, I think this neither a good idea nor a fair view.

No, “give me St. Francis for my money.” The truth is somewhere in-between I think. Not the positional truth, mind you, but the practical truth. Because in practice, the Church “is a 
useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body.”

And of that absurdly beautiful body, I am a part.

Surrounded By Grace,

Josh