Christian & Tattoos

Several months ago I was finishing a retreat at a mountain top monastery in Santa Barbara. On the last day the Prior preached. He began by referring to the last addition of The Christian Century. The lead article is entitled, "The Christian & Tattoos - Marked"... it was the center of his sermon.

After briefly restating the article, he said, "...that getting tattooed seemed to be a kind of sacrament, a way of bearing in the body and before the world something about one's deepest identity. And that, in a world lacking in 'rites of passage,' it becomes an experience that our American culture by and large lacks."

"Christ himself is marked. Our tradition teaches that the resurrected body of Jesus -- that mysteriously transformed yet recognizable human presence, that flesh bearing the wounds, the very scars of the life-giving passion -- is not discarded or thrown off or transcended, but is exalted and honored and seated in the heavenly places. It is a radical claim ... a challenge to our own experience of living in these particular bodies, in this material world. It reminds us that we -- body, soul, spirit, and our whole creation has an external and exalted destiny.

"Jesus is marked. And so are we. Each of us bears the 'imago dei', the divine image, whether we are aware of it or not. And each of us who has been baptized within Christ, bear his mark, his cross, his wounds on our soul. We, each of us, have been tattooed, if you will, into God's gang, God family ... thought we all too often betray those marks by our hatred and disobedience. But it is there.

"I wonder this morning what would happen if our marks, the tattoos of our faith, were to suddenly become visible. What would they say, what would they portray? What would the world read on our bodies/our souls/our lives/our action individual or corporately on that Body which is Christ's Church?

"I have to remind myself: I do have some choice. And the question I ask myself today is: What does the tattoo of my life say to me, to those around me, and to a suffering and fragile world? And what would I like it to say? Were I to visit a tattoo parlor this afternoon what would I have inscribe on my arm, my forehead, my heart? Sh'ma Yisroel? Simul Justus et Perccator? God is Love? Jesus is Lord? God be merciful to me a sinner?

"What would you choose; for in a sense we must choose daily, hourly. What would you choose? May God grant us all the grace to choose well.