Theology

Reading Scripture through Embodied Eyes

Engaging our senses can help us connect with the Bible in a more holistic way.

A colorful eye, ear, nose, mouth, and hand on a bright pink background.
Christianity Today September 23, 2024
Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Pexels

We all lead diverse sensory livesโ€”in the form of memories, reflections, emotions, and events that become embedded into our embodied lives.

It is through our five senses that we encounter the world, and these experiences get encoded into the fabric of our beings to be later recalled, from compassion and peace to trauma and violence. In other words, our physical senses matter to how we walk through this life. But more than that, they reflect the creativity and beauty of God himself.

We are all gifted with varying abilities to sense the worldโ€”to see, feel, hear, smell, taste, speak, and move. And I am convinced that if we pay attention, we can harness these abilities to experience more of Godโ€™s goodness. Just as โ€œGod saw all that he had made, and it was very goodโ€ (Gen. 1:31a), we can participate in the beauty and magnificence of Godโ€™s created order through our bodily senses.

Part of how we experience and understand the good world God made is by touching the soft fur of a kitten, by tasting the sweetness of a luscious berry, or by hearing the melodic song of a bird. If God has created us to be in relationship with himโ€”and if we are invited to love him with our hearts, souls, minds, and strengthโ€”then we should relate to him with our entire embodied selves.

But do our physical senses matter in how we read the Bible? As you might guess, the short answer is yes. I believe we can engage God through his Word in a more embodied wayโ€”to live out more fully the psalmistโ€™s invitation to โ€œtaste and see that the Lord is goodโ€ (Ps. 34:8).

Yet here is the problem: We often limit ourselves to engaging with God through a text. Surely, the revelation of God as expressed in the Word is critical. But this revelation is much more than collections of letters on a page, accessed only by reading through sight or sound.

The words on a page in a biblical text articulate a world that mirrors our ownโ€”they contain a series of narratives about sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. Which means our sensory lives can access the sensory aspects of Scripture. But where in the Word can we begin?

Perhaps we could start with the Word himself, described in John 1 as the person of Jesusโ€”to bring our sensory lives into conversation with a good God as revealed through the Word made flesh.

All four gospel narratives animate the works and words of Jesus using multisensory language, each contributing to a vivid portrait of believersโ€™ relationship with him. This approach will take what is tangible in our worldsโ€”our own sensory experiencesโ€”and harness them toward two goals.

First, our sensory knowledge provides an entry into exploring the sensory world of the gospel narratives as understood by ancient readers. Second, these sensory findings resonate back onto our own sensory worlds and can give us a more embodied understanding of the text.

In the Gospels, we hear Jesus compare the kingdom of God to an extravagant dinner party where all are welcome. God is the compassionate, generous host, and he serves the finest food and drink, that all might enjoy this joyous union together (Matt. 22). Jesus plays host when he embodies this generosity in remote places, feeding people who need hope and a filling meal. And ultimately, Jesus claims to be the very bread of life (John 6:35) that we consume to find true and lasting nourishment.

As we continue to โ€œchewโ€ on Jesusโ€™ invitation to the banquet table, can these metaphors teach us something about the quality of our interaction with Jesus?

Have you ever eaten a memorable meal and talked about it for weeks afterward? Do certain foods carry so much significance that they are served only on important occasions? What kinds of routines do you have in your life involving certain foods?

Coffee is for first thing in the morning, vegetable stew is for dreary winter days, garlic mashed potatoes are only at grandmaโ€™s dinner table, and baked-from-scratch red velvet birthday cake is so decadent that we eat it only once a year. We have habits and rote practices around foods that nourish us and that call to mind certain seasons, people, joys, and sorrows in our lives.

Or letโ€™s reflect on the physical acts of eating and drinkingโ€”we interact with food and drink daily and continually to stay alive. Our relationship to sustenance is not a one-and-done, all-you-can-eat buffet that sustains us for a lifetime. Instead, we eat and drink routinely, habitually, waking up each day with new caloric needs. This is a dynamic existence, one that manifests a continual dependence on nutrients for survival.

Have you ever been hungry? Sure, every day. We wake up with the need to eat and drink, and our hunger goes away with each meal, but then it returns. In other words, we will never outgrow our dependence on nutrients.

This might go against our instinctsโ€”to say that we will be forever dependent. In the modern, well-fed, individualistic waters in which we swim, the tide flows in the direction of independence. We raise our up-and-coming generations to develop into self-sufficient, autonomous human beings who can take care of themselves.

It can be easy for our hearts to default toward searching for the kind of peace fueled by our own internal reserves. We find comfort when we can control the fortifications we have constructed around us. We are accustomed to an โ€œI can do it myself because Iโ€™m capableโ€ approach to life. We never want to put others out. Or maybe we donโ€™t want to appear weak.

Itโ€™s only when we are confronted with threats to our independenceโ€”whether through sickness, economic challenge, physical or relational loss, or mental-emotional-psychological painโ€”that our equilibrium gets thrown off. Such challenges force us into a dependence that feels unnatural and is mostly countercultural.

We often respond by fighting against our dependencyโ€”we seek relief from it; we want it to end; we donโ€™t find โ€œpeaceโ€ until our internal reserves of self-sufficiency are restored. These are the times when we let others into our needโ€”when we are desperate, when our resources are depleted. But we always hope that itโ€™s temporary.

But this sense of dependence is very key to our hunger for Christโ€”when we are most in touch with our dependence, vulnerability, and need, we are in the ideal posture for finding Jesus. Those who recognize their hunger are the ones who tend to clamor for the next meal, to gather the manna from the ground, and to hang on Jesusโ€™ every word and follow him no matter what.

I worry about living such a life where I endlessly and unthinkingly invest my energies into my own self-sufficiency and autonomy. How might this inhibit me from knowing my hunger and my need for Jesus, the living bread?

My independence could easily lull me into this notion that I have control and set my heart into a posture that keeps Jesus at armโ€™s length: Iโ€™m good. Iโ€™ve got this! Itโ€™s the same message we tell our friends and neighbors: Donโ€™t worry about me, Jesus. Iโ€™ll let you know when I really need you. We end up saving Jesus for times of emergency. But we need food every day.

As we consider Jesusโ€”the living bread whose once-for-all sacrifice of flesh and blood sustains us into eternityโ€”can we also consider how this union with him is continuous and ongoing?

This is exactly how we see this play out in Scripture. Day after day, God rained down manna from heaven to feed his people in the wilderness. Jesus similarly provided a feast for a crowd, and he did so with compassion and welcome. And he also offers himself as the meal: โ€œThose who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in themโ€ (John 6:56 NRSVue).

This sounds to me like a constant interaction, one that never ends. Itโ€™s marked by welcome, ongoing presence, sustenance, and meeting continual need. We need never be without him.

Content taken from Engaging Jesus with Our Senses: An Embodied Approach to the Gospels by Jeannine Marie Hanger, ยฉ2024. Used by permission of Baker Academic.

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