James 24:7

I visited with Stanley Hauerwas several years ago in his office at Duke.  He was kind enough to take some time with me to talk about whatever I had on my mind. 

I cannot remember everything we talked about that day but I do remember that I asked him about something I had read.  Someone recounted the story of a hospital stay the very active Hauerwas endured.  

In the article he spoke about how Duke seminary students came to visit him but only showed up as "shimmering masses of availability."   At the time I was teaching seminary students about pastoral care myself so I asked him what he meant by that.

He told me that they came prepared to do whatever it was he needed doing but didn't come prepared to render ministry to him.  In other words, they didn't know what to do  but only waited for him, the sick one, to tell them.

I asked him what he would have preferred.  He said that he would have preferred it if they had brought him some of the bread and wine that was used the previous Sunday in the worship service at his church.

He went on to explain how isolating a hospital stay can be and how cut off from ordinary life he felt during that time.  Partaking of part of the bread and wine his community had used the Sunday before would have helped him feel joined to the community.

He went on to tell me that he went every Thursday to the Duke Chapel for Eucharist.  And then he said something I'll never forget: "Jim, this business of being a Christian is some real fleshy sh*#!"

He went on to remind me that we lived in bodies, that Jesus had 'in-caranated', that we were part of the BODY of Christ and that we love best when we love in the flesh...i.e. body to body, face to face, person to person.

I've never forgotten that conversation and only in part because of Hauerwas' colorful way of putting things.  I've thought about it many times as I have spent more and more time online...casting disembodied messages into cyberspace.  (Oh, how I love it though!)

I've been thinking about this idea of the sensual experience of God.   If Christian faith is "some real fleshy sh*#", then why is so much of it shoved up into our heads?  Why is so much of it about words and arguments around words?  Why isn't more of it sensual?

I'm going to riff on that a while.  However, until I do that think about the words of Hauerwas and the words of this old hymn by Bonar (1855) and then ask yourself: "Is there a place for the sensual encounter with God?"  (emphasis mine)

Here, O my Lord, I see thee face to face;
here would I touch and handle things unseen;
here grasp with firmer hand eternal grace,
and all my weariness upon thee lean.

Feast after feast thus comes and passes by;
yet, passing, points to the glad feast above,
giving sweet foretaste of the festal joy,
the Lamb's great bridal feast of bliss and love.