I was once asked to choose between cigarette smoking and tattoos.
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I chose neither and I'd put body piercing into this category too. Gratuitous. A self-expression I can't get my head around.
As you've finished up Friday's seafood, and no doubt some of you have already glutted on your Easter chocolate, I want to turn your attention to something stomach churning:
'He was disfigured and we could not recognise him.'
Sounds like a face with too much metal. You know the ones I mean, where you no longer notice the nose or the eyebrow - just distracting rings and knobs of silver.
Don't be fooled though, it's actually a sentence about Jesus.
His body piercing is distracting too - too bloody to recognize anything important. We've been trained to notice status by power and beauty.
Instead Jesus knows weakness, political callousness, governmental brutality, and abandonment from personal experience.
When you ask what God has done about suffering, this is Christianity's answer: Jesus suffered. His body piercings were the result of becoming sin so we could become right with God - the self-expression of the One who loves the sinner but hates the sin.
Body piercing saved my life. Gratuitous. And also a self-expression I can't get my head around.
Good Friday and Easter Sunday services at the Katherine Anglican Church are both on at 9am.