Naked Reality
Lent 1 (A)
Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Romans 5.12-19; Matthew 4.1-11
Let’s talk nudity. I caught a couple of minutes of a radio debate about nudity on TV a while back. Needless to say it was about sex and flesh. ‘There’s too much of it, it’s gratuitous, it’s just used to sell programmes. Not that I’m for censorship, but we must educate people to use the off switch. Then the programme-makers will change.’ The man making the contrary point said people are inherently inquisitive about bodies and about sex, so there’s no way that will ever work.
But there’s the connection - in our society, nudity = sexuality and sexual desire. Indeed the connection is so strong that those who challenge it are thought peculiar and become the butt of great hilarity. Think of all the fun that was had out of the announcement that a supermarket in a south-coast resort opens late at night for nude shoppers. Or TV shows that constantly send up broadcasts from other cultures that portray naked people doing ordinary things- like shopping or singing, or whatever. The laughter comes because nudity should be about sex not supermarkets.
My good friend Dot and I got talking about holidays this week, and somehow the conversation got to French beaches and the vast numbers of totally naked people there can be on them. ‘Oh, I couldn’t be doing with that,’ said Dot. ‘I’d never go anywhere, where I thought I’d come across that.’ On one family holiday my daughter Hannah was stung by a jelly fish on just such a beach and a young mum from a neighbouring party came to her rescue. She wasn’t quite naked, but as near as makes not much difference. And it did seem strange, this naked person administering first aid. She turned out to be a Brit, and that somehow made the reflection even odder - a naked stranger from Cannock, or Clapham, or Cleethorpes, or Chester, rushing to our aid. We were very grateful for her anaesthetic spray, but standing next to her, thanking her, was a peculiar experience.
This is our way of thinking. Dare I say it comes naturally, or it appears to us to do so. But
hang on a minute, it hasn’t always been like that. In many traditional societies in the southern world, clothing didn’t cover the naughty bits at all! And there is nothing generally to suggest that those societies were sex mad — quite the opposite actually, in comparison to our own. Desmond Morris, the animal behaviourist, believes the earliest clothing was probably for carry hunting equipment and had nothing to do with concealment.
And that gets us to our first reading. After eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve for the first time realized with shame that they were naked. Whereas earlier in the story — in a part that our lectionary missed out for the sake of brevity — nakedness is given a very positive estimation and sexuality is linked to it, this is Genesis 2.24:
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife,
and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
That gives a rather different perspective on being naked than the one that generally comes tomind. For many generations, Christianity has been thought of as ‘anti-’ the body. Many of our forebears could only get away with the depiction of nakedness by giving it some religious association, like the many pictures of Adam and Eve. We need to work at a more embodied understanding of ourselves in religious terms. That’s not to condone a widespread sexualization of everything, often as a marketing ploy – but simply to question what we’ve come to accept. As crucial to our well-being as that thought might be, it’s not quite the one I want to dwell on.
No, I want to concentrate on the link between the temptations of Christ and this theme of
nakedness. So keeping with the topic of clothes, we heard how the storyteller has Adam and Eve making loincloths for themselves when their nakedness becomes a matter of shame to them. Then the passage continues, (Genesis 3.8f):
They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of
the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of
the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I
was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."
‘I was naked and I hid myself’. Out of nakedness now comes concealment. The day before,
as it were, God and humanity could have a face to face conversation, but not anymore. Now humanity is skulking behind trees; they are crossing their legs and are not sure where to put their hands. With the concealment come prevarication, avoidance, and a refusal to accept responsibility. ‘Don’t blame me, it’s not my fault,’ says Adam.
Why are these people like that? But these people are us! They’ve had everything good from God. In paradise their nakedness makes the point that everything else, everything,
is gift. They are nakedness before a wondrous world, the whole of creation, and each other – a gift from God. They’ve made a stupid, selfish mistake– but all the evidence they have to
date is that God would forgive and put it right, but they can’t bring themselves to believe it. How did they get be like that? Why did guilt and shame and cowering come to dominate? Why is fear their first impulse when they know God is near? God's nature is love and mercy, and they have no evidence to suggest anything else. They have the experience of a unique relationship between God and themselves. Why then weren’t mercy and love the things that came to mind first? But they weren’t. For Adam and Eve their nakedness becomes a threat they can’t live with it.
Choices open up before them. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ to God. Choose your distance with God – the baby naked on its mother’s tummy, the lovers embrace, the movement of water across
the flesh as you swim - OR - skulking in avoidance behind trees, hiding in the fabrication of our self-image behind fashion and style, the posturings of status, possessions and self-aggrandisement, the fabrications of our egos and our anxieties. Whichever way we chose, we’re just as naked as we ever were, as far as God is concerned. We have the choice to
live in honesty or in shame. And it’s a struggle, a real struggle.
Like having a conversation with a naked person about first aid, we seem not quite in the right place – embarrassed and ill at ease.Like a seal out of water which seems like a gigantic blob of fat and shapeless flesh. On dry land it languishes, a creature without spirit or
energy. But then, slowly, laboriously, with cumbersome movements that are almost painful to watch, it makes its way to the sea, and slips into the water. Then it becomes another creature, sleek, beautiful, at ease – perfectly in its element. That’s us in God’s love, but how hard we find it to swim in it – there’s nowhere to hide. Yet we pretend. We’re
skinny-dipping because God always sees right through the things we hide behind. It’s so hard for us to be absolutely honest; indeed we doubt our ability ever to be so. What’s that
expression? ‘She’s at home in her own skin.’ And it makes sense because so few of us feel like that. It’s a struggle. Adam and Eve’s predicament makes sense. We’ve all been there. St Paul puts it like this (Romans 5.19):
For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.
Jesus takes on that struggle in the temptation story. Indeed his whole life and death will be
about his radical obedience to God, and that ultimate obedience is all prefigured here. Is his life to be about things, about the exteriors, about wielding power over people? Is it to be about people’s adulation of him? Is it to be about his ability to influence and control?
About personal authority, his own charisma, his talents, his persona, with all the exaltation of self that usually goes with these things? Or, is his life to be about God? Will he hide in the things of human power? Or will he stand naked before the God who loves and cherishes
him?
Jesus goes tothe cross completely naked. Nude before his God – nothing to hide behind, he is dependent on God alone. Oh yes, inall those religious pictures and on all those crucifixes we see Jesus crucified wearing a loincloth, but he didn’t. We know that the standard practice of the Roman Empire was to crucify people naked – ultimate shame in death. The gospel writers make it plain that his clothes were divided amongst the soldiers. Jesus dies naked before the crowd, and naked in his loving obedience to God.
And in nakedness too, he rises. The grave-cloths, the shroud is left in the tomb. Jesus is no
Lazarus, still bound by the grave robes of fallen humanity, no he rises naked. He made the choice for God’s will, there is nothing to hide. He is secure in God. He is truly alive, and the reality of that life is that we are naked before God. He is the only one who can
cloth us without shame or sham.
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
A.M. Toplady
But there’s the connection - in our society, nudity = sexuality and sexual desire. Indeed the connection is so strong that those who challenge it are thought peculiar and become the butt of great hilarity. Think of all the fun that was had out of the announcement that a supermarket in a south-coast resort opens late at night for nude shoppers. Or TV shows that constantly send up broadcasts from other cultures that portray naked people doing ordinary things- like shopping or singing, or whatever. The laughter comes because nudity should be about sex not supermarkets.
My good friend Dot and I got talking about holidays this week, and somehow the conversation got to French beaches and the vast numbers of totally naked people there can be on them. ‘Oh, I couldn’t be doing with that,’ said Dot. ‘I’d never go anywhere, where I thought I’d come across that.’ On one family holiday my daughter Hannah was stung by a jelly fish on just such a beach and a young mum from a neighbouring party came to her rescue. She wasn’t quite naked, but as near as makes not much difference. And it did seem strange, this naked person administering first aid. She turned out to be a Brit, and that somehow made the reflection even odder - a naked stranger from Cannock, or Clapham, or Cleethorpes, or Chester, rushing to our aid. We were very grateful for her anaesthetic spray, but standing next to her, thanking her, was a peculiar experience.
This is our way of thinking. Dare I say it comes naturally, or it appears to us to do so. But
hang on a minute, it hasn’t always been like that. In many traditional societies in the southern world, clothing didn’t cover the naughty bits at all! And there is nothing generally to suggest that those societies were sex mad — quite the opposite actually, in comparison to our own. Desmond Morris, the animal behaviourist, believes the earliest clothing was probably for carry hunting equipment and had nothing to do with concealment.
And that gets us to our first reading. After eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve for the first time realized with shame that they were naked. Whereas earlier in the story — in a part that our lectionary missed out for the sake of brevity — nakedness is given a very positive estimation and sexuality is linked to it, this is Genesis 2.24:
Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife,
and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.
That gives a rather different perspective on being naked than the one that generally comes tomind. For many generations, Christianity has been thought of as ‘anti-’ the body. Many of our forebears could only get away with the depiction of nakedness by giving it some religious association, like the many pictures of Adam and Eve. We need to work at a more embodied understanding of ourselves in religious terms. That’s not to condone a widespread sexualization of everything, often as a marketing ploy – but simply to question what we’ve come to accept. As crucial to our well-being as that thought might be, it’s not quite the one I want to dwell on.
No, I want to concentrate on the link between the temptations of Christ and this theme of
nakedness. So keeping with the topic of clothes, we heard how the storyteller has Adam and Eve making loincloths for themselves when their nakedness becomes a matter of shame to them. Then the passage continues, (Genesis 3.8f):
They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of
the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of
the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I
was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."
‘I was naked and I hid myself’. Out of nakedness now comes concealment. The day before,
as it were, God and humanity could have a face to face conversation, but not anymore. Now humanity is skulking behind trees; they are crossing their legs and are not sure where to put their hands. With the concealment come prevarication, avoidance, and a refusal to accept responsibility. ‘Don’t blame me, it’s not my fault,’ says Adam.
Why are these people like that? But these people are us! They’ve had everything good from God. In paradise their nakedness makes the point that everything else, everything,
is gift. They are nakedness before a wondrous world, the whole of creation, and each other – a gift from God. They’ve made a stupid, selfish mistake– but all the evidence they have to
date is that God would forgive and put it right, but they can’t bring themselves to believe it. How did they get be like that? Why did guilt and shame and cowering come to dominate? Why is fear their first impulse when they know God is near? God's nature is love and mercy, and they have no evidence to suggest anything else. They have the experience of a unique relationship between God and themselves. Why then weren’t mercy and love the things that came to mind first? But they weren’t. For Adam and Eve their nakedness becomes a threat they can’t live with it.
Choices open up before them. ‘Yes’ or ‘no’ to God. Choose your distance with God – the baby naked on its mother’s tummy, the lovers embrace, the movement of water across
the flesh as you swim - OR - skulking in avoidance behind trees, hiding in the fabrication of our self-image behind fashion and style, the posturings of status, possessions and self-aggrandisement, the fabrications of our egos and our anxieties. Whichever way we chose, we’re just as naked as we ever were, as far as God is concerned. We have the choice to
live in honesty or in shame. And it’s a struggle, a real struggle.
Like having a conversation with a naked person about first aid, we seem not quite in the right place – embarrassed and ill at ease.Like a seal out of water which seems like a gigantic blob of fat and shapeless flesh. On dry land it languishes, a creature without spirit or
energy. But then, slowly, laboriously, with cumbersome movements that are almost painful to watch, it makes its way to the sea, and slips into the water. Then it becomes another creature, sleek, beautiful, at ease – perfectly in its element. That’s us in God’s love, but how hard we find it to swim in it – there’s nowhere to hide. Yet we pretend. We’re
skinny-dipping because God always sees right through the things we hide behind. It’s so hard for us to be absolutely honest; indeed we doubt our ability ever to be so. What’s that
expression? ‘She’s at home in her own skin.’ And it makes sense because so few of us feel like that. It’s a struggle. Adam and Eve’s predicament makes sense. We’ve all been there. St Paul puts it like this (Romans 5.19):
For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.
Jesus takes on that struggle in the temptation story. Indeed his whole life and death will be
about his radical obedience to God, and that ultimate obedience is all prefigured here. Is his life to be about things, about the exteriors, about wielding power over people? Is it to be about people’s adulation of him? Is it to be about his ability to influence and control?
About personal authority, his own charisma, his talents, his persona, with all the exaltation of self that usually goes with these things? Or, is his life to be about God? Will he hide in the things of human power? Or will he stand naked before the God who loves and cherishes
him?
Jesus goes tothe cross completely naked. Nude before his God – nothing to hide behind, he is dependent on God alone. Oh yes, inall those religious pictures and on all those crucifixes we see Jesus crucified wearing a loincloth, but he didn’t. We know that the standard practice of the Roman Empire was to crucify people naked – ultimate shame in death. The gospel writers make it plain that his clothes were divided amongst the soldiers. Jesus dies naked before the crowd, and naked in his loving obedience to God.
And in nakedness too, he rises. The grave-cloths, the shroud is left in the tomb. Jesus is no
Lazarus, still bound by the grave robes of fallen humanity, no he rises naked. He made the choice for God’s will, there is nothing to hide. He is secure in God. He is truly alive, and the reality of that life is that we are naked before God. He is the only one who can
cloth us without shame or sham.
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.
A.M. Toplady
