Brian D. McLaren - Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words

H E WAS NAKED .

In broad daylight. In church.

He had taken off all his clothingin front of the local bishop, in front of his neighbors and peers, and in front of his angry father. He now stood before them all.

I shall go naked to meet my naked Lord, he said.

We know him as St. Francis, but at that moment he was just Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone, a young man on trial in the portico of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Assisi, Italy. Standing there self-exposed, he must have seemed more like a candidate for involuntary hospitalization than elevation to sainthood.

His father was a prosperous merchant of fine fabrics, an appreciating commodity at the beginning of the thirteenth century, when dressing up was becoming more and more essential for those wishing to ascend the socioeconomic ladder. He had accused Francis of selling some of his merchandise to raise money for a church renovation project. Since that fabric had indeed been sold and the proceeds invested in Franciss mission, Francis had nothing to offer in restitution. So he gave his father everything he had, his money, the shirt off his back, and the rest of his garments, saying, I give you not only my money, but also my clothes. In so doing, Francis stripped off this earthly identity and clothed himself in a more primal and primary identity as Gods unclothed creature, Gods naked and vulnerable child.

That wasnt Franciss only experience of public nakedness. Once, the story goes, Francis commanded his colleague Friar Ruffino to go preach in the Assisi church naked, save only for thy breeches. When Friar Ruffino complied, Francis felt ashamed for issuing such an extreme command, so he went and joined him in naked preaching (were not sure whether the breeches were included). Years later he stripped naked again and went out in the snow to make snowmenthis time in an attempt to deal with his sensual desires. One would imagine that the technique worked well enough at least for the time he was outdoors in the freezing cold.

Francis joined a long tradition of nakedness in the service of spirituality, stretching from the days of Samuel and Saul (1 Sam. 19), through Isaiahs three-year stint preaching nude (20:3), to Jesus himself. In the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus talks about turning the other cheek and walking the second mile, he says that if someone takes you to court, suing you for your overcoat, you might as well give them your other clothes too (Matt. 5:3841), implying (I think) that in so doing, your self-exposure will serve to expose the heartless greed of your opponent. Jesus lived out this teaching three years later when, by his exposure on the cross, he unmasked the brutality of the occupying Romans and the hypocrisy of the local religious establishment.

In a set of details both strange and poignant, Marks Gospel tells us that before being crucified, Jesus was stripped of his clothes three times. After the first stripping, he was mockingly clothed in a purple cloak of royalty, in which he was derided, spat upon, and beaten. Then he was stripped a second time and reclothed in his own garments. Finally he was stripped once more, and the soldiers cast lots to see who would take home his outer garment, his inner garment, and maybe his sandals as bonus pay for their days work. Hanging on that cross, contrary to our discreet religious art, Jesus was fully exposed. It wasnt until after Jesus was dead that a kind soul, Joseph of Arimathea, covered the naked corpse with a linen cloth (15:1646).

Naked we came from the womb, Job said, and naked we shall depart this life, but in between, we clothe ourselves in a thousand fascinating ways. Think of the immense variety and meaning of clothing in human societymilitary uniforms, academic regalia, religious robes; clothing as status symbol, designer labels as the mark of belonging to an in-group; festive costumes to celebrate a holiday or season; prom dress, wedding gown, bikini, burka; white lab coat, faded blue jeans, bright green shirts or bold red jerseys to proclaim political protest or team loyalty. We all learn to speak verbal languagesEnglish, Chinese, Spanish, and so onbut we all must become fluent in the finely nuanced languages of dress as well. If clothing means and expresses so much, then of course so does nakedness.

In his list of things for which there is a time and season, the sage of Ecclesiastes does not say, A time to get dressed and a time to get naked, but there are indeed such times. Without nakedness, for example, you cant go under the bright light of surgery. And without nakedness you cant enter into the candlelight of intimacy.

This is a book about getting nakednot physically, but spiritually. Its about stripping away the symbols and status of public religionthe Sunday-dress version people often call organized religion. And its about attending to the well-being of the soul clothed only in naked human skin. As a result, it must be a vulnerable book, tender in tone, gentle in touch. You wont find much in the way of aggressive arguments here, but rather shy experience daring to step into the light. Its an honest book, and I hope a practical one too, perhaps with some awkward spiritual parallels to what they used to call a marital manual.

You wont need to agree with all the planks of my theological platform. I am a Christian, and all I write flows from my experience in that rich tradition, but you may be of another tradition entirely or of no known tradition at all. Instead of seeking theological agreement, this book invites you to experiment with the naked experience of God that provides the raw material from which all worthwhile theology derives.

Theres a lot of dirty theology out there, the religious counterpart to dirty politics and dirty business, I suppose. You might call it spiritual pornographya kind of for-profit exploitative nakedness. Its found in many of the same places as physical pornography (the Internet and cable TV for starters), and it promises similar things: instant intimacy, fantasy and make-believe, private voyeurism and vicarious experience, communion without commitment. Thats certainly not what were after in these pages.

No, were after a lost treasure as old as the story of the Garden of Eden: the possibility of being naked and not ashamed, naked before God and naked before one another too, so we have no need to cover up, to protect, to posture, to dress to impress, just the freedom to be who we are, what we are, as we are (see Gen. 2:25). At their best, religious and spiritual communities help us discover this pure and naked spiritual encounter. At their worst, they simply make us more ashamed, pressuring us to cover up more, pushing us to further enhance our image with the best designer labels and latest spiritual fads, weighing us down with layer upon layer of heavy, uncomfortable, pretentious, well-starched religiosity. As someone who has experienced some of the best and some of the worst of religion and spirituality, I hope this book will help you strip away distractions and discover that precious hidden treasure, that primal gift underneath.

S O WHAT DO YOU do for a living? you might ask, if we happened to sit next to each other on a flight, mutually ignoring the flight attendants spiel about how to turn our seat cushion into a flotation device and what electronic devices we need to turn off before takeoff. Im an author, I might whisper, which might then prompt you to ask what I write books about. Id probably reply, I write books on spirituality, cultural change, and social issues, or something like that. More often than not, wed end up getting into an interesting conversation that would last until well after we reached our cruising altitude. (Unless you want to take a napI promise I wouldnt bother you in that case.)