Bodily Discipleship

Our bodies are important to God.  Our act of discipleship is about our lives now; it is about what we do with this material body.  We must resist the dualisms that would pit spiritual against physical, heaven against earth, the tangible against the intangible.

Naaman has a great feat to accomplish to win his body back.  It is a task worthy of Quixote in its foolish simplicity.  He must simply dip himself in the muddy Jordan.  

The psalmist cries forth praises to the God who has healed him.  After all:

“What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?”

Jesus chooses to make the leper clean.  In his body he proclaimed the secret.

Paul tells us to follow him in disciplining our bodies, to make them serve the God of our soul. Discipleship is just that, exercising our whole being to the honor of God: body, soul and mind.