Resurrection of the Body
Second Sunday After Easter - March 30, 2008
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Please note: The following sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |
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Time for a basic catechism question: What does it mean when I use the term “body of Christ”? There are at least five right answers to the question, and they are inter-related and equally important. (1) The first answer which comes to our minds is Jesus walking around in Israel 2,000 years ago. That certainly is the body of Christ. It is how the disciples could identify with whom they were speaking. This man Jesus, God come in the flesh, God incarnate, to use the big term. (2) The second answer is this unique union of God and man in Jesus as he is resurrected and greeting the disciples, Thomas and all the rest about whom we hear in these first weeks of Easter. This is body of Christ as surely as anything. The disciples had trouble grasping this idea, but finally agree that there is continuity between the body they saw cruelly executed on Friday and the body they see resurrected and standing before them. They could recognize that it was Jesus, thus by definition, he is body of Christ. (3) On Holy Thursday, as well as each time we gather for Holy Communion, we hear Jesus own words in reference to the bread which we take, bless, break, and share that This is my body. The bread, shared in the context of this thanksgiving, is body of Christ. This sharing in thanksgiving is as surely the body of Christ as is Jesus talking with the disciples, for in this action Christ is sharing himself fully and completely, shaping us into the arms and legs of that body today. (4) And that becomes the 4th way to understand the term. We are body of Christ in this time and place. We have both the gift of Christ's embodiment and also its responsibility to speak and act in ways that are faithful to his intent. (5) And body of Christ is also the church in all times and places as it does those things that are proper to it. This is an incarnational way of talking about the relationship of God with us. This is one of the reasons that catechetical study is not boring drudgery to which we subject youth and from which they can then graduate. These are the things which are the foundation for our understanding of life and how we make any sense of it. When I meet up with a person who is utterly morose, very often that person is one who has forgotten, or these days, perhaps never heard the resurrection Gospel.
It helps us when we get to those critical times when we ask the big questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What should I be doing? And it is all tied together in the statement in the Creed: I believe in the resurrection of the body. The Body of Christ in all of its levels of meaning has been and is being resurrected, it is being transformed into God's final intention for it. It brings together the whole purpose of the church. Let's state it baldly: if there is no resurrection of the body, there is no reason for the church. There are other social service agencies. There are other venues for sociability. There are other ways of education. There are fancier concert halls. The reason for the church is in the meaning of the church's cry throughout the season: Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.
For if there is not resurrection of the body, beginning with Christ, then all else is a waste of time. Paul says it to the Corinthians: [15] If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain, and your faith has been in vain. That's it. Without the resurrection, it is all over. Forget it. Just a religious game. But Paul says to the Romans [6:4] We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Resurrection of the body means that something is different about us, not just at the end of life, but right here in the middle of things, beginning with our baptism. The transformation is underway, the transformation that will be complete only what God is finished with creation,
You see just how real this all is. The incarnation and resurrection are realities that are linked so closely together. The festival of the resurrection of our Lord has been celebrated from the very first day of the church, and later, in thinking about the implications of what resurrection means, the church also decided to celebrate Christmas. The incarnation we remember then is important because of the resurrection to which it is headed.
In deciding to be God “for us”, the Lord God has created us in such a way that we can respond to him, or try to run away from him. He isn't after robots: he could have made us that way, but he chose not to. He wants us to love him, and not merely fear him or obey him; and as we are taking tentative steps in that love, at the same time God is beginning to transform us through his love for us. The first part of resurrection is happening among us right now.
I believe in the resurrection of the body is not an arcane word game, but the foundation of the church.
There have always been those who have scoffed at this, right from the first days of the church. These days we have people who claim to be church people but who disparage the resurrection. John Dominic Crossan says: “I do not think that anyone anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life.” John Sheehan says, “Jesus, regardless of where his corpse ended up, is dead and remains dead.” Gerd Lundermann says that Peter's belief in the resurrection can be explained psychologically as the overcoming of a severe guilt complex. Robert Funk says that to claim Jesus rose from the dead is “a way of confessing that Jesus caught a glimpse of eternity.” Noman Perrin says that what happened on Easter morning is that “it became possible to know Jesus as ultimacy in the historicity of everyday.” I read his book 30 years ago and I still have no idea what that definition means. And these men are supposed to be teachers in the church! Are they wiser than scripture? Do they have a new gnosis, a new wisdom, that is greater than the experience of the church?
We know something that these scholars overlook. We've seen little hints of resurrection: We've rejoiced when an adult comes for Holy Baptism, and knows that his/her life is thereby changing. We've been there when the light-bulb goes off in the midst of a class or counseling session and a part of the body of Christ is enlightened. We've been there at the communion rail or the sickbed when a person whispers “Thank you” at the gift of the body of Christ being given to a member of the body of Christ. We're read the stories about how the love of grandmothers who, despite official discouragement, continued quietly telling the story of Jesus, and thus kept the church alive during the 75 years of oppression in Siberia, until it could come out into the open again. Week after week, we've prayed for those brave persons who confess Christ Jesus in nations and cultures where they do so at the grave risk of their lives. We've read the book of Acts and hear how Peter and Paul are changed by the resurrected Lord Jesus into the most dynamic speakers of Good News. We've seen little hints of resurrection, the beginnings of resurrection, samples of resurrection; we've heard the promises of the major part of resurrection yet to come.
Oh this resurrected body of Christ! All that it is to be will be shown forth in God's good time. We hold onto what the writer of 1 John observes: When he is revealed, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. This resurrected life is now and not yet; it is underway and yet to be fulfilled. God will take us with all of our faltering hopes and uncertain expectations and re-make us. The resurrection of the body!
Madeline L'Engle muses: The happy ending has never been easy to believe in. After the crucifixion the little band of disciples had no hope, no expectation. Everything they believed had died at the cross. Even when the women told the disciples that Jesus had left the stone-sealed tomb, the disciples found it nearly impossible to believe that it was not all over. The truth was it was just beginning.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.
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