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| anatomy" by Ben Giles, on Flickr |
Acts 3:12–19
When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, "You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.
1 John 3:1–7
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.
Luke 24:36b–48
[Jesus said,] "Peace be with you." [The disciples] were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
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So you may have noticed that today’s gospel reading from Luke, on the surface, sounds suspiciously similar to last week’s gospel reading from John. Nope, you haven’t stepped into a weird time warp where you are stuck repeating Easter 2 over and over and over again like the movie Groundhog Day, I promise!
Today, we have another story of the resurrected Jesus showing up among the disciples. Like last week’s account from John, the disciples are gathered together in a room, hidden away. Like last week’s gospel, Jesus shows up among them and says, “Peace be with you.” Like last week’s gospel, Jesus shows them his hands and feet, and the disciples, eventually, come to believe.
What is different between John’s gospel last week and Luke’s gospel today is the question of what the gospel writers were trying to prove about the resurrected Jesus. John, I think, was trying to establish the identity of Jesus post-resurrection. Jesus appeared to the disciples and to Thomas as if to say, “hey look, it’s me, Jesus, and not somebody else!” When Thomas finally gets his chance to encounter the risen Christ, he responds with a declaration of identity: “My Lord and my God!”
Luke’s gospel is less concerned with the identity of the risen Christ, and far more concerned with his bodily reality.
Maybe it’s because tradition says that Luke was a physician that he seems more concerned than the other gospel writers with matters of Christ’s humanity, even from the very outset of his gospel. Luke is the only gospel that gives us a real birth narrative. Luke’s gospel is concerned with establishing Jesus as the real human savior for real human needs like hunger and pain and poverty and oppression. And here, after the resurrection, Luke takes care to establish not just the identity of the resurrected Jesus, but also his bodily reality. For Luke, it is important that the disciples and all of us know that Jesus, who fully died, has been fully raised.
"Why are you frightened?” Jesus asks, “And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
But even having seen these wounds, Luke tells us that the disciples, even in their joy, were yet also disbelieving and still wondering, and so Jesus takes it one step further: He said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Ghosts, spirits, disembodied souls: they do not need to eat. But bodies do.
And so he shows his hands and feet and eats a snack to prove that he is, indeed, resurrected in the flesh, because anything less fleshly would cease to be resurrection and would cease to be salvation.
In the opening stanzas of his marvelous poem, “Seven Stanzas for Easter,” John Updike writes,
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.
It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.
The heart of our Christian faith rests upon this truth that Christ was born - really born; body, mind, and spirit - and that Christ died - really died; body, mind, and spirit - and that Christ then rose again - really rose; body, mind, and spirit. He's not a ghost. He is touchable. He is hungry. He has wounds and scars. He - his body - is resurrected from the dead, so that our bodies will also will be resurrected at the end of all things.
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in the fourth century, said “That which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”
By this he means that Christ had to take on flesh so that we, as children of the flesh, might be redeemed. More than this, the very death and resurrection of Christ’s own body has united us with God and, in the words of 1 John, has made us “children of God; and that is what we are.” 1 John goes on to say that when Christ is finally revealed, “we will be like him.” Just as Christ was raised not on in spirit but also in body, so will we be like him in our own resurrection - raised not only in spirit but also in body.
This is the same message as we get in Peter’s sermon in Acts today. The crowds have just watched the apostles heal a lame man at the entrance to the temple, and they are amazed, so Peter starts preaching. He asks, ”Why do you wonder about this? Is the power to heal bodies not the very power of God, the same power that forgives sins and the same power that raised Christ from the dead?” Peter’s message here is that the power of God to raise Christ in the flesh is the power of God to forgive us and to heal our human bodies and to save our created world.
Even though we live a bodily, earthy, dirty life, I think that it is sometimes much easier for us to imagine the work of God taking place the spiritual realm, the neighborhood of the soul, the purification of minds and desires, than it is to understand the work of God on behalf of bodies, and not just human bodies, but animal bodies and plants and trees and the entire body of creation.
But when we, in our confession of faith, proclaim, “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” we are confessing that we have a God who cares about not just souls, but bodies; a God who cares not just for the heavenly realm, but for the created matter of this universe; a God who cares not just for matters of the spirit, but for matters of flesh, too.
And why is this so very important, that God cares about bodies?
It is important because somewhere, there is a transgender youth who is trying to figure out what to do with a body and an identity that don’t fit together.
It is important because somewhere, there is a 99 year old man whose joints are failing who feels creaky and useless as he waits out his days in a care facility.
It is important because somewhere, there is a 45 year old woman who has been yo-yo dieting since she was 14, who believes that her body will forever remain unloveable.
It is important because somewhere, there is a college wrestler with an eating disorder who believes that his whole worth is tied u pin how well his body can perform.
It is important because somewhere, there is an infertile couple who feel like their bodies have completely failed them.
It is important because somewhere, there is a woman with a physical deformity that makes her feel excluded and invisible.
It is important because somewhere, there is a child with leukemia who has been sick for more days in their life than they have been well.
This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ in his flesh has won for us the salvation of our bodies and the body of this world.
This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ in his flesh has ushered the kingdom of God into our midst as it unfolds here and now and in the real stuff of crumbling housing projects and cancer and the dirty feet of children whose shoes have holes and the sunken faces of families who don’t have enough to eat.
This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ in his flesh empowers us to feed hungry people and clothe naked people and march for justice and weep over prejudice and care for the frail and heal broken bodies; to care about carbon emissions and polluted water and to be conscious of how much trash we generate and which animal habitats we are destroying.
This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ comes to us each week in this holy meal, where we touch and taste his body, and remember with our hearts and our tongues and our bodies and our spirits that Christ is here, among us, and that this bread and wine that we can touch are the elements of our salvation.
Brothers and sisters, just as the disciples touched the risen Christ, in the body, and by touching were assured of their salvation, so also do we touch Christ not only in the elements of communion, but in the body of Christ gathered here. If you were to reach out and touch the shoulder of the person next to you, you would be touching Christ’s body. If you were to clasp your own hands, you would be touching Christ’s body. If you were to plant your feet firmly on the ground to feel the strength of the foundations of the earth below, you would be touching Christ’s body.
Whatever you feel about your body - love it, hate it, whether it is strong or weak, a finished product or a work in progress - your body is blessed and saved and will be resurrected, and it is given the very power of God to be a blessing in the world.
So let us close by blessing these very bodies that God has given us, through which we know God, by which we are called to be a blessing in the body of this world.
You have heard the holy and saving gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now receive the sign of that gospel on your body and in your heart, that you may know the Lord and the power of his resurrection.
As a sign of God’s endless love and mercy for you,
Receive the + sign of the cross on your forehead.
That you may hear the gospel of Christ, the word of life,
receive the + cross on your ears.
That you may see the light of Christ illumining your way,
receive the + cross on your eyes.
That you may sing the praise of Christ, the joy of the church,
receive the + cross on your lips.
That God may dwell within you by faith,
receive the + cross on your heart.
That you may bear the gentle yoke of Christ,
receive the + cross on your shoulders.
That God's mercy may be known in your work,
receive the + cross on your hands.
That you may follow in the way of Christ,
receive the + cross on your feet.
May God bring you in peace and joy to fullness of life in the risen Christ. May the God of all grace, who has called you to glory, support you and make you strong, now and forever. Amen.
(from the ELW “Welcome to Baptism” rite)
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