By the Rev’d Hilary Willett
Season: 4th Sunday of the Season of Creation
Readings: Prov 31: 10-31 | Jas 3:13-4:3 | Mark 9:30-37
When I was a child, I remember sitting out in the garden. I was sitting with my neighbour and friend, and we were making mud pies.
I can’t remember why my friend and I were so riveted by this activity. My usual modus operandi at that age was to read books and swim. But for some reason, on a particularly hot Christchurch day, after running through the sprinkler, my friend and I spent a couple of hours playing with the mud the excess water had formed in the soil.
But one thing I do remember, I loved the feeling of the squishy soil. It’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but for me, it was cool to the touch, had an interesting texture, and watching it dry on the skin was a fun experience. Very quickly, my friend and I were covered. A couple of slimy gremlins who thought it would be fun to cover ourselves in mud and then dry ourselves out in the sun so that we had a kind of crusty earthen armour on.
Bizarrely, both of my parents were deeply unimpressed by the mess we had made. My mother didn’t think much of my dirt-armour and only focused on my totally wrecked clothes! My Dad seemed to only notice that we had wrecked a decent chunk of the lawn!
As a child, I really couldn’t see what the fuss was about. Now… I can maybe see their point. Trying to get sun-dried mud and grass out of your hair is… an experience. But, somehow, even though I can now look back on this experience as an adult, there is still the little kid in me that is like—that was really fun.
In today’s readings, we have three passages of scripture that talk about wisdom. Proverbs talks about the wisdom of desiring a trustworthy wife rather than chasing beauty (Prov 31:10-31). In James, we see the two different kinds of wisdom compared with each other—a wisdom that is focused on materialistic ambition and a wisdom that is focused on selflessness (Jas 3:13-4:3). And, in Mark, we see the wisdom of Jesus, flipping status and privilege on its head, telling his disciples to become “last” for the sake of God (Mark 9:30-37).
Many of these messages are very familiar to us. We have heard the importance of not valuing superficial things—beauty, material objects, and status. Consistently, the message of scripture reminds us of wisdom: “look beyond, perceive more deeply, look at the heart” (see Eph 5:6–10; 1 John 4:1). These messages are still true today. Trustworthiness, selflessness, and humility are as crucially important for us as they were in the time of Paul, Jesus, and various sages of the First Testament.
However, in the spirit of looking a little deeper, I’d like to observe something that I think is sometimes missed when we reflect on passages like these. It is something called “Cartesian Dualism.”
Cartesian dualism is the view that there is a split between the mind and the body. They can interact with each other, and there are different views about this, but essentially, the body is material, and the realm of thought is immaterial. This view was proposed by Rene Descartes. Some of you may know his famous saying “Cogito ergo sum”—“I think, therefore I am”.[1]
Descartes essentially separated human beings into two parts: the body and the mind. The part of us that is physical and the part of us that transcends the physical. In many ways, Descartes’ motivations were lovely. He wanted to provide a rational basis for the immortality of the soul. That while the body may decay, the mind can live on and does in the afterlife.[2] However, implicit in his division of body and thought is a hierarchy. The physical erodes while the unphysical endures.
Since Descartes, there has been a significant critique of this point of this philosophy. A much greater awareness of the impact of the physical on our minds has contributed to this, with some modern psychologists remarking that a more accurate statement would be “I feel, therefore I am”.[3] Disability theologian Dr Coralie Bridle also implicitly challenges this dualism, asking what happens to the salvation of those who will never be able to hold complex thoughts.[4] However, perhaps one of the most significant protests today, in the middle of Creationtide, comes from an environmental perspective—that our division of mind and body is destroying the earth.[5]
However, body-mind dualisms are not new. During the first and second centuries, a philosophical movement occurred that sharply divided the physical and the non-physical. This movement was called Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a perspective that saw spiritual things as “good” and physical things as “bad.”[6] Actually, we possibly see some of the influence of this perspective on our James reading. The wisdom that is good and selfless is from above, transcendent. The wisdom that is ambitious and selfish is “earthy, unspiritual, devilish” (Jas 3:15).
Human beings have struggled with the body and the physical for a long time. We are very quick to write it off as the problematic part of us. It is the mind or the spirit that transcends, but the physical, in its constant movement towards erosion, is inferior. Some might even say that it is a necessary component of religion. In order to believe in a higher power, consciousness, or force, we must naturally believe that there is an unseen, unphysical thing that is superior. In order to believe in an afterlife of any sort, we must have a somewhat tenuous relationship with our bodies and the physical world, which are doomed to pass away.
But, in Christianity, we actually receive a rather large challenge to this thinking. God, throughout scripture, seems to have a deep preoccupation with physical beings. They declare the created world as good (Gen 1:1-31). They are constantly worried about the physical plight of the poor and oppressed (Isa 58:5-12). They are right in the thick of our politics and heartache. God talks about injustice, causing the land to “vomit up” corruption, like there is a real connection between us and the land (Lev 18:24-28). When Cain kills Abel, the earth cries out (Gen 4:8-12). Rather than focusing on the matters of a transcendent heaven, God focuses on people and on creation. To the point where God joins in, becoming one of us, and as Eugene Petersen puts it, “moved into the neighbourhood” (John 1:14, The Message Translation). The incarnation of Jesus is perhaps the most anti-dualistic moment in history, where God profoundly declares love for creation and the desire for regeneration. Jesus sums this up when he teaches us how to pray: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:9-11).
This is not a small statement. The radicality of the Christian gospel is that we genuinely believe that the earth, the cosmos, will be renewed. That, like Jesus, we will be raised.
Christianity is not a religion that is compatible with a rejection of the physical world. The mind and the spiritual are fundamentally intertwined with the spirit. Our faith is embodied and rooted in the earth. Thus, when the earth suffers, we suffer in body, mind and spirit. Sometimes, I think we are still slightly wedded to a faith that will watch the earth burn, to a faith that will take us away from this place into some intangible realm when we die. But this is not the trajectory of the Bible. It wasn’t what happened when Jesus was raised, and it’s not the creed we proclaim. We believe in the sacredness of the physical, the incarnational.
Sometimes, care of our environment can feel like a less important Christian occupation—just moving chairs the Titanic. “The earth is doomed, or else it’s fundamentally less important, so we should focus on the imperative things like reading the Bible daily, tithing, and confessing our sins.” Don’t get me wrong, those things are significant. But environmental care is just as vital. And actually, perhaps there is something profoundly wise in Jesus taking a little child in his arms and saying to his disciples, “in welcoming the child, you are welcoming me.” Because ultimately, this is an invitation to welcome and honour the least.
For how long have we treated the earth as “the least”? Placing ourselves over and above the earth, valuing the non-physical over the physical, we have allowed extreme environmental damage. We are to “subjugate” the earth rather than care for it like a child. We distance ourselves from the physical world rather than acknowledge our intimate connection with it. I felt that connection with the earth when I was a child, making mudpies and earthen armour with my friend. I was fully embodied in that moment. I loved the earth. It was my playmate and joy.
God has always been a God that comes close, incarnates into the physical, blesses the earth, and listens to its cries. This is the wisdom of God. Not to value the spiritual over and above the physical. Not to divide the seen and unseen. But to value them both as essential to flourishing. And, this Creationtide, I invite you to do the same. Be invested in our world. Listen to the earth’s cry and respond to it. Rediscover your embodiment, your joy in nature, as creatures of the earth. And, in doing so, may the realm of God may come on earth.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/mind-body-dualism
[2] https://iep.utm.edu/descartes-mind-body-distinction-dualism/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20deepest%20and,from%20that%20of%20the%20body%20(
[3] https://dailynexus.com/2023-05-11/i-feel-therefore-i-am-leading-neuroscientist-antonio-damasio-speaks-on-human-consciousness/
[4] https://broadviewvillage.ca/presence-to-participation-webinar-5/
[5] https://steelysteelman.medium.com/what-is-the-most-dangerous-thing-in-existence-bb55294391c6
[6] https://www.britannica.com/topic/gnosticism