Yesterday, speaking of Sex and the Church, I hinted at the fact that the word “sex” is code for power and is also code for sensuality.
Church officials for the most part love power or at least are good at exercising it; otherwise they can’t remain in their place. Sex is code for power because human hierarchical relationships have a hidden sexual structure. Hidden, that is, until somebody reveals it. I am not talking about specific sexual relationships — which may or may not be existing — but about the sadomasochistic structure of all kinds of domination and submission dyads within the human species. Therefore, also within the Church, whenever blind obedience is requested.
Even today, as I have learned in my role as a spiritual counselor, the repression of sexual desire is a powerful tool of power and domination within the Catholic Church. The overt renunciation of sexual life — whether or not coupled with hidden sexual relationships — keeps vesting the individual priests or nuns with power, even though the same people are also controlled by their “superiors” acting more or less consciously like a sadistic dominus or domina. Sex is a powerful signifier, regardless of the actual performance of sex acts.
But sex also is code for sensuality. In the Catholic Church, the outward ban on sexuality corresponds not only very often to domination patterns, but also to the negation of the meaning and value of sensuousness and sensuality. The word “flesh” with its adjectives “fleshly” and “carnal” come to mind as catalysts of the disregard for the sensual, sensuous, and sexual aspects of human life, which in extreme cases has become a sort of hate of the bodily life of humans.
The history of the negation of the sensual by Christians is long and complex. One of course wonders how this can be for a religion that claims to have at its center the Incarnation of God in human flesh: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Many theologians in the 20th century and in the first quarter of the 21st century have tried to tackle this seemingly monstrous contradiction.
Matthew Fox has emerged early on as one of the main authors in this field, mainly for his direct, provocative, and perceptive positions, often couched in alluring and poetic ways. I would like therefore to offer for your meditation the following paragraph from Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh:
One things about flesh is its transitoriness. All flesh dies. Like the grass, as the Scriptures say. This means that all flesh is only with us for a while. One more reason not to ignore it or to take it for granted or to fail to take delight in it. Flesh is for joy and wonder and delight. This is Sabbath — to take note of the flesh in all its abundance and uniqueness and softness and firmness and color and sound and smell and taste. To enjoy it — which is not the same as exploiting it or controlling it or abusing it or making a pleasure-object of it. The object is to enjoy it. To pay attention.
Matthew goes very far, by comparison with some of his colleagues, when he says: Flesh redeems. How can he say that? At most, in traditional Christian parlance we say that flesh is redeemed, which often means purified and de-fleshed. His reasoning is that flesh can become a redemptive force when we acknowledge the new history of the cosmos with its (approximately) 13 billion years and counting. When we know it, we become grateful and reverent toward our bodies, toward food, toward flowers, toward forests, toward soil, toward other animals and birds and fishes and toward other human beings. Gratitude and Reverence heal. They redeem. (…) Flesh redeems because it awakens awe and wonder and delights. Awe is redemptive.
Banner Image: The Word becomes flesh every day: “Mother’s Love.” Photo by Andrae Ricketts on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you agree that flesh can be redemptive? How is that the case for you?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society pp. 39, 43-44
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
WHEE! We, wee All the Way Home: A Guide to Sensual Prophetic Spirituality
Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic–and Beyond
Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest
Prayer: A Radical Response to Life
4 thoughts on “Flesh and the Church”
I just can’t compute how a Church whose creed rests on what it calls the “Mystery of Incarnation,” i.e. as John 1-14 puts it: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” has such a history of demonizing the flesh and its attributes. Of course sexuality can be used in unhealthy ways, so can speech, and food, and water, wine, work, play, religiosity and anything else. Is not the mission of the Church to foster healthy communion IN the flesh and spiritual growth IN the flesh? I sometimes wonder if trouble doesn’t start with Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” Watching the Sunday night movie on a black and white TV was a family ritual when I was a child, and every now and then my mother would shout, “close your eyes!” Two actors French-kissing was our fig-leaf moment (although I confess that I did, sometimes, keep a narrow slit between my closed eyelids).
Flesh is integrated with spirituality, We’re human and Divine in Our Soul’s uniqueness within Our Wholeness/Oneness of All Our LOVING Diverse Evolving Co-Creation Cosmos, in All Sacred physical/nonphysical dimensions/beings, ETERNALLY….
Jesus came not to abrogate the Law but to fulfull it. He is God’s peerless representative (“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” [John 14: 9]), and so his words and deeds set the standard for human thought, desire and action, as we believe humans are made in God’s image and we strive to follow and grow into his likeness. Athanasius is revered for writing that Christ, God’s son, became human so that people might become God. Many people of deep faith strive to be blessed with union with God. Life is more complicated than the sixth commandment can cover, and of course limited humans can overdo their attention to one aspect of human life. We recall that Jesus taught one commandment is supreme, and it has two dimensions, to love God above all and one’s fellow as oneself. Jesus charges his followers/friends to know the truth about life and to follow his example, to manifest our love for him.
First of all, Jesus was Jewish, and Jewish ideas about marriage were, and are, much more sensuous. We can’t judge ancient Judeo-Christianity by our own society’s standards. We live in a very restrictive culture.
Second, Jesus said, and showed by his actions, that women and slaves were EQUALS to men, even to kings. You can “ascend” the (Mystical) mountain (learn and grow specifically in this Mysticism) if you choose/are chosen, but it’s not essential or even practical for most people. Most people don’t. So everyone starts out equal, in the flesh. Many of the contemporary ideas about sexuality are based on misogyny and status of men, and are incompatible with Jesus’s ideas, BECAUSE of his core, Sacred Mysticism.
Jesus became incarnated so that Jews — and other people — could learn about Mystical religion FROM HIS SACRED EXAMPLE AND HIS TEACHINGS. He taught the FUNDAMENTAL religion, with its core Mysticism, for people to use “in the flesh”. Sexuality was, and is, one essential part of the whole picture.
Jesus taught Mysticism by living, preaching, dying, and resurrecting as A Mystic while being THE MYSTICAL ONE.