Tuesday 24 January 2017

THE BODILY INCARNATION

'One of the central Christian doctrines, the incarnation, is itself an endorsement of our sexual humanity. For Jesus had a body, Jesus was a body. Jesus touched the bodies of others, the disease-ridden and deformed as well as the beautiful. He was kissed, stroked, and anointed in return, even by a woman of doubtful sexual reputation. Jesus' body needed food, drink, sleep, comfort and exercise, and when he washed or swam he was probably naked. Nothing could be more convincing of ultimate honor of human sinews, skin and bone than the reality of Emmanuel, God bodily with us.' 
Elaine Storkey, The Search for Intimacy, p.192.