2 CORINTHIANS 5:2-6:9

Week of March 7-13, 2011

Kimberly Beyer-Nelson

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:2-6:9

 Awaiting the New Body 

1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. 

6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 

I am a Hatha Yogi, as well as a Hatha Yoga therapist. I spend a great deal of time in the body; enough to have realized that to be “embodied” is also to be more than the anamayakosha (the body of food, the “gross“ physical self). In this passage, we are all called to realize that, in every aspect of our daily life, we are on that divine razor’s edge of being awake and asleep, being naked and clothed, being burdened and being held. The key is the awareness we bring to the other elements of this amazingly complex being called our self. In the yogic tradition, this would also include the breath, the processes of the mind, the tickle of intuition and the center of calm abiding and finally union with God. I like to think that the transformational aspect of Christianity is this very awareness and its near child, choice. In each moment, we are given a choice to be larger than what we usually believe we are, to expand our perspectives beyond our own noses, to go beyond the literal and concrete to the more subtle and flexible. And when we choose awareness, we cannot help but please Him in which we live, move and have our being. Amen.