Sunday, April 19, 2015
First Congregational United
Church of Christ – Sermon by Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
Go back with me in time a couple of weeks.....back on Palm
Sunday, we gathered here and celebrated the triumphal entry of Jesus and his
followers into Jerusalem. Then we heard the stories of Jesus’s final days on
Earth and stood as witnesses at the cross when he was crucified.
Most of us have heard the stories of Jesus’s death and
resurrection so many times, we could practically recite them in our sleep. But
one of the things that’s interesting about all these stories is how they subtly
(and sometimes not-so-subtly) differ from each other. Every once in a while,
I’ll be reading one of these stories and I’ll think, “Wow. I’ve never noticed
THAT before!”
And so it was earlier this week when I was flipping through
the Gospel of Matthew. We didn’t read that particular account during Holy Week
this year, so it had been a little while since I’d read it. But what I found
was this…after Jesus died, around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the temple
curtain was torn in two and there was an earthquake…you probably remember that
part. But what comes right after that was surprising to me: the Gospel of
Matthew says that as the Earth shook, there were many graves that were opened
and lots of people (dead people) got up and walked into Jerusalem and were seen
by many.
Woah. Say, what? I thought Jesus was the only one being
resurrected. Turns out there were a bunch of people resurrected? What on earth?
For thousands of years now, humans have struggled to
understand what the story of Jesus’s resurrection might mean for the rest of
us. Those of us who grew up saying the Nicene or Apostle’s Creeds in worship
probably remember that line about “the resurrection of the dead.” That part’s
not about Jesus’s resurrection…it’s about the particular belief that our own
fate as humans is intimately tied up with Jesus’s. The concept of the “the
resurrection of the dead” is a way of saying that, someday, bodies will be
raised up from their tombs and the same bodies we once had here on Earth will
live again. Kind of like what happened in Matthew right after Jesus died.
I don’t know about you. Maybe you dig this idea. It sounds
pretty far fetched to me.
But I think it gets an important theme that runs throughout
the gospels, in particular, the narratives about Jesus’s death and resurrection
and that’s this: bodies matter.
In today’s story from Luke we have one of many
post-resurrection accounts of an encounter with Jesus. They sort of all start
to get jumbled in your head after a while, right? Mary at the tomb with Peter
and the beloved disciple, Mary and Mary at the tomb when the earthquake comes,
the disciples locked in the upper room and Thomas sticking his hand in Jesus’s
side, the story of the two people on their way to Emmaus when Jesus approached
them on the road.
The passage from Luke that we just heard comes right after
that Emmaus encounter. The disciples are gathered together in Jerusalem and
these two friends come back to tell them about their encounter with Jesus as
they broke bread together. Suddenly, Jesus appears among them and says, “Peace
be with you.”
But they don’t feel peaceful at all! I guess it’s kind of
like when the angel appeared to Mary and told her not to be afraid. Angels and
resurrected people only tell you not to worry when they know you’re going to be
worried.
Who wouldn’t be worried? It’s a dead dude standing there in
their midst! They assume he is a ghost. That’s the only logical explanation.
But….the author of Luke is very careful to assert that he is no ghost. That
seems to be the whole point of this story. Jesus says, “Look! Touch and see! I
have flesh and bones!” And he even asks to eat some food…further proof that he
is a real, corporeal human being – not a ghost.
Now, I know we’ve ventured into some pretty bizarre territory
here. You may be sitting there saying, “Does she really expect me to believe
this nonsense?” The answer is, “No. I don’t.” I mean, it’s fine with me if you
do believe it. It’s fine with me if you don’t. It’s fine with me if you change
your mind from time to time, too. I personally don’t ultimately think that what
we believe about the exact nature of the Resurrection matters too much in the
whole great scheme of things. But…BUT! I’d be an irresponsible preacher if I
didn’t point out to you that it seems to matter to the early followers of Jesus
quite a lot. They were convinced they had seen the literal flesh-and-blood
Jesus and they wanted to make sure that we knew that he wasn’t a ghost.
Once again: bodies matter.
Bodies mattered to the early followers of Jesus. Bodies
mattered to Jesus himself – why else would he have spent so much time around
those who had such conflicted and painful relationships with their own bodies?
He could have just been a great teacher who stood up on a mountain and waxed
eloquent about the nature of God and other existential truths. He could have
spent all of his time reading and writing.
But he didn’t. Instead, he spent his time placing his body squarely in the middle of the messy humanity he encountered. He spit in a blind man’s eyes and healed him. He touched those with leprosy and who were hemorrhaging that others refused to touch. He broke bread and passed around fish and fed those who were hungry. He sat down at the well with the woman and asked her for a drink of water – a basic need we all have because we are all living in bodies. When he encountered another woman who was about to be stoned by an angry mob, he didn’t preach a long sermon. Instead, he simply put his body right in between the woman and the crowd and said very little.
Jesus ate and drank and slept and ran and laughed and danced
and sang and cried and turned over tables…and felt the warm oil caressing his
face when a friend anointed his head…and shook the dust off of his feet when
things weren’t going well…and gently bathed the feet of his followers…and rode
a smelly beast into Jerusalem for his final victory lap.
The book we’ve been reading in confirmation class tells this
lovely story about the bodily reality of Jesus.[1]
One of the authors recalls talking to his daughter about God when she was very
young. She was scared of the dark and he reminded her that she didn’t need to
be afraid because God was with her – even though she couldn’t see God, she
could be assured God was there. And the little girl said, “I need God with a
skin-face on, daddy.”
God with a skin-face on. Regardless of whether you believe
Jesus was God exactly or perhaps just another one of us messy human beings
infused with the Divine, it does seem to me that Jesus was God with a skin-face
on in many ways. One of the most mysterious and amazing blessings of being a
human is that we are all God with a skin-face on. We are all the embodiment of
the Holy, created in the image of the Divine, called to love and care for one
another just as God has loved and cared for us.
I think sometimes we have a tendency to want to
compartmentalize our faith. To pretend like it’s only about words on a page, or
prayers that we say aloud, or the great intellectual calisthenics we like to do
when we’re debating some cool theological concept or an intriguing passage of
scripture. Faith is something we think about, ponder….but only with our heads
and hearts.
Our faith ancestors, though, call to us to do more. They call
us to a faith that is fully embodied. Totally corporeal. Fleshy. Carnal. A
faith that encompasses our entire bodies, not just our brains and hearts.
Our faith is not separate from what we do. The two are
completely intertwined. And the way our bodies experience the world and act in
the world is all tied up with who we are as people of faith.
God is not absent from the room where the new mother labors
to bring new life into the world. There is blood and a few stray curse words
and some fear…and God is right there, laboring alongside the woman as
co-creator of the new life that is emerging.
God is not absent from the playground where the children run
and jump and wave sticks at each other. There are skinned knees and nursery
rhymes and new games invented…and God is right there, gleefully laughing with
the children as they experience the goodness of living and breathing.
God is not absent from the kitchen where the man prepares a
meal for his grown children who are home for a visit. Can you see now the
hands, creased with wrinkles and slowly moving as they dice the onions and stir
the pot? God is right there, enjoying the goodness of offering hospitality and
care.
God is not absent from the bed that the two lovers share. The
connection, the care, the vulnerability, the trust, the pleasure…all are
wrapped up in God’s good gift of sexuality and the connections that are forged
there are the ones that sustain humanity.
We are not spirits floating around without bodies. We are not
bodies devoid of spirit. Instead, we are holy messes of skin, bone, flesh, and
the divine. We are infused with the very breath of God. Our faith is meant to
be embodied because our bodies matter to God.
All let me be very clear: all of our bodies matter to
God. The person who is transgender whose body is threatened daily by those who
are fearful? That person’s body matters to God.
The woman who walks out of the abortion clinic with her head
down because she cannot bear to see the angry faces screaming at her? Her body
matters to God.
The fast-food worker who punches the time clock and walks off
the job to stand in solidarity with her co-workers to demand fair compensation?
Her body matters to God.
And I can’t help but think of the bodies of Walter Scott and
Eric Harris. Scott, who was shot in the back while running from Officer Michael
Slager. And Harris, who spent his last few moments in his earthly body, pinned
to the ground fighting to breathe and hearing the officers above him callously
and cruelly hurling expletives his way, telling him they didn’t care if he
could breathe or not.
But God cared. God was there watching all of those bodies struggle with each other and God cared that Harris couldn’t breathe. Just as God cared that Eric Garner couldn’t breathe. Just like God sat vigil with the body of Michael Brown as it lay in the street for hours in the hot August sun.
Our bodies are known fully and loved fully by the God who is
the very source of our being. We are – all of us – created in God’s image….and
our bodies, of every structure, size, age, and ability; bodies of every gender
and ethnicity….our bodies are holy.
We are called to live an embodied faith. One that cares for
bodies, cares about bodies.
A faith that calls us to steward our bodies as best we can. A
faith that calls us to remember that God is present in each and every body and
that we called to treat all of humanity with dignity and respect. We do all of
this in the name of the one who came and embodied faith to its fullest, so that
we might have life and have it abundantly. Amen.
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