I’m betting most of us are pretty good at brushing our teeth. If you were giving a kid some advice or pro-tips for brushing their teeth, what’s one thing you would tell them.

[Take responses from the congregation.]

That’s good! Those are all helpful. Tish Warren writes, “This morning, I brushed my teeth—a mindless habit ingrained in me since before I can remember. I do so morning and night almost every day. I say ‘almost’ because, at times, the sheer necessity of daily teeth brushing leaves me feeling restful and like a defiant teenager, I rebel against the system. I do not like having to do anything every day. There are days, every six months or so, where I go to bed without brushing my teeth. Just to prove I can. Just to prove that I am not a slave to my molars. It’s ridiculous, and possibly a little unhinged. But the needs of my body are so relentless that they feel burdensome and demanding. Teeth. So needy.”[1] We all have bodies. Big or small, rich or poor, weak or strong, we all have bodies, and we all have to figure out our bodies and what they are for. Did you ever ask yourself why? And why would Jesus be interested in how we brush our teeth? Some of the keys lie in our passages today.

The first thing we learn is that our bodies matter. I mean that literally, because our bodies are physical and take up space. They have different shapes, colors, and abilities, and figuring out our bodies, living with our bodies, using our bodies—they are all things we have to do. It’s something God wanted to figure out too, and that’s why Jesus came. From Hebrews, we heard, “Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood…” Because Jesus had a body, and figured out how to live with it, and love God all the way, it means that our bodies are good things, even holy things. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, “Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit?” I think that’s cool, but doesn’t God understand how gross our bodies can be? We all have to go to the bathroom several times a day, all have to eat and drink, all have to brush our teeth, and our bodies make rude noises and smell bad, and still God gives them to us, and God experienced a human body through Jesus. That means that our bodies—with all their grossness, messiness and problems—are not just things to be used, but something sacred to be treasured and cared for. That Jesus had a body means all bodies—even yours, even mine—are sacred.

The second thing we learn is that our bodies were made for a mission. Jesus’ body was. From Hebrews we hear, “Since the children are made of flesh and blood, it’s logical that the Savior took on flesh and blood in order to rescue them by his death.” Tom Long suggests that we might think of Jesus and his story in a startling way:

Of the several views of the atonement found in the New Testament, here we see an image of Christ as the liberator, the one who breaks into the slave quarters and sets the slaves free. The [writer] pictures all humanity as slaves and the devil as the heartless slave master. Every slave master has a whip, a means of power and fear and control, and the devil’s whip is death. All human beings are “held in slavery by the fear of death”(2:15).

The slave camp must be liberated from within, thus Jesus had to become a slave, had to come under the whip, had to submit himself to the power that makes of human life a toilsome servitude. He shared, then, what all the slaves share—flesh and blood and death (2:14)—so that as a slave he could lead the uprising against the slave master.

As a slave, Jesus refused to obey the slave master. Instead, he obeyed the One who sent him, and trusted God to keep the promise. He knew, of course, that his defiance would force the demonic slave driver to apply the whip of death, and he did.[2]

That’s Jesus mission! The Message puts it this way: “By embracing death, taking it into himself, he destroyed the Devil’s hold on death and freed all who cower through life, scared to death of death.” Now that we are broken free, our bodies are made for that same mission: to use our bodies to live for God, to fearlessly do what God wants us to do, just as Jesus did. Paul continues in 1 Corinthians: “Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.”[3]

Which, in a curious way, brings us back to brushing our teeth. Brushing our teeth seems so monotonous, that I wish I didn’t have to do it—and I would take a pass on eating, drinking, using the restroom and clipping my nails too. Did you know, if you brush your teeth twice a day for at least two minutes, you spend more than a whole day brushing your teeth every year? I have better things to do with my time, don’t you? And Jesus, I would rather not have to give my body and mind sleep, or have to rest. But Tish Warren writes, “…when we denigrate our bodies—whether through neglect or starting at our faces and counting up our flaws—we are belittling a sacred site, a worship space more wondrous than the most glorious, ancient cathedral. We are standing before the Grand Canyon or the Sistine Chapel and rolling our eyes. But when we use our bodies for their intended purpose—in gathered worship, raising our hands or singing or kneeling, or, in our average day, sleeping or savoring a meal or jumping or hiking or running or having sex with our spouse or kneeling in prayer or nursing a baby or digging a garden—it is glorious, as glorious as a great cathedral being used just as its architect had dreamt it would be.”[4]

Yep, our bodies are messy and gross, and still they are what God has given us. In fact, that we are loved in the midst of our messiness, is a sign of God’s grace, God’s love that comes to where we are, not where we wish were. Jesus didn’t die on the cross when we were just showered and teeth brushed, and Jesus didn’t give His life because we were already perfect. Jesus came into our messy lives and died before we were ready because of our need. So as we love and care for our bodies, and care for others in the messiness of their lives, we are showing ourselves and others the same kind of grace we have received. Paul writes, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.”[5] All we are, every moment, so the life of Jesus may be evident in our lives, even in brushing our teeth 

[1]Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices for Everyday Life (Downer’s Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2016), pp. 37–38.

[2]Thomas G. Long, Hebrews, Interpretation Series (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997), pp. 44–45,

[3]1 Corinthians 6:19, The Message translation.

[4]Tish Warren, op.cit., p. 45.

[5]2 Corinthians 4:7–10