1 John 1:1-3

Do you see? Do you see me? After years of masked faces, of digitally choreographed conversations, of cropped torsos, do you see? We all know these separations, precautions taken in the midst of a pandemic. Just as we now know the feeling of embrace, of full bodies seen, of voices heard, of air re-awakening lips as we peel the paper filters from our faces and are allowed, again, a complete physiognomy, a complete body. But, these demarcations are not the only things obscuring bodies in this space, in this time. 

There are white phallic pillars of tradition, of pretense, of privilege, blotting out black, brown, fem, trans, other abled, curvy, sensual, sexual, physical bodies. There are chandeliered dreams of another facade scarring this stolen land in the name of a whitewashed ecology, placating disenchanted bodies.
There are the rectangled faces that coat the walls of our learning spaces, the mostly homogeneous framed smiles of past communities, the pixelated profiles of a present community, flattened, squared, separated, indiscernible except, every once in a while when we catch a reflected afterthought of our own faces glancing back at us. 

There are the policies, the forms, the committees, spoken and unspoken that tirelessly redact those transgressively titillating bits of our bodies. There are the collars pulpits ontologies doled out to acceptably normative bodies. There are the scars of scriptures written through histories onto present flesh. There are the inherited moralities that shame our moving forms into rote rhythms of submission. There are constructed deconstructed reconstructed borders pressed upon our visceralities.

Do you feel? Do we feel the pieces kept from these spaces?

Do we see the sunken pools beneath the eyes of those kept up at night by anxiety, by a newborn baby, by too much because there is too little, by difficult news, by waiting? Do we miss those absented by the policies that forget the necessary tendings of life? Do we embrace those bodies that refuse to slide comfortably into the spaces perpendicularly apportioned for the betterment of our learning? Do we hear the flagrant silencing of voices? 

And what about your own body? What pieces have been marked as transgressive? Can you see the correcting? Can you feel the insidious containment of flesh?

It needs to be said that we are here, that we have chosen to don these masks, abide by these regulations. I've allowed my body to be hidden by the podiums of privilege. 

And to be honest, sometimes I wonder, if these boxes are necessary, I wonder if these pillars can be taken down, if the pews will give way, if these scriptures can still preach. 

But friends, let me say this, there are bodies here. 

And we know a body. 

We know a body who, in the face of a deadly denial of the flesh,      moved.

We know a body who, when, crucified by the wooden lines of unjust authorities, answered with life, a life of awkward beginnings, a life of teenage wandering and rebellion, a life of good wine, sensual connections, physical rage, and lots and lots of shared meals.

When dismissed by the business of the world, when insulated by the altars of individualism, when abstracted by intellects, Christ offered a body. 

We believe not only in a God, but in a God incarnate. The Word made flesh. Dwelling among in through us. And we have heard this life. And we have seen this life. And we have touched this life with our own hands.

God is revealed.

There are fragments, but there is flesh.

There is this body, this curvy, fem presenting, openly loving body that continues to desire. There is that body and that body that rearranges classrooms to make space for other bodies. There are those bodies that show up again and again in these spaces, knocking on doors, filling inboxes, raising hands, gathering signatures, refusing the peripheries. There are those bodies that carry life, that nourish, that remind us of the work of tending. There are those bodies that dare to palpitate with hope. 

There are these bodies. 

And we must move these bodies to the awakening rhythm of the Holy Spirit. We must work to remove the mantle of oppression and allow redemptive grace to fondle our surfaces.

This won’t be easy. Because institutions are afraid of bodies. Institutions are afraid of non-white bodies. Institutions are afraid of menstruating bodies. Institutions are afraid of ancestral bodies. They are afraid of connected bodies, of loving bodies, of sexual bodies, of worshipping bodies. Institutions are afraid of our bodies. And in this fear bodies will be ignored, undercut, wounded, isolated. Bodies will be imprisoned, raped, burned, disenfranchised, subdued, beaten, killed. 

But bodies will be. Flesh will be. The Word will be. 

And as we witness this Word, this flesh, we must testify to it and declare the life revealed. 

Friends, let us declare life. 

Let us feel the ache of our living flesh and write these visceral realities onto academic theories.

Let us imprint these spaces with the sweaty and tearful marks of vulnerable bodies. 

Let us dance circles around these hegemonic pillars. 

Let us smell the earth as it is aroused by the sun. 

Let us add orgasmic cries of ecstasy to the melodies of our hymns. 

Let us hunger for a shared meal, let us crowd around tables, let us be filled with the presence of each other. 

Let us look at one another. Let us hear one another. Let us touch one another. Let us be known by one another. Let our bodies proclaim the Word

…so that we may have fellowship, so that we may be, together. 

Amen