The Resurrection of the Body

A sermon for St John United Lutheran Church
on the Second Sunday of Easter, 2010

Acts 5:27-32
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

O God of life, you reach out to us amid our fears with the wounded hands of your risen Son. By your Spirit’s breath revive our faith in your mercy, and strengthen us to be the body of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

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And I believe in the Holy Spirit
The holy catholic church
The communion of saints
The forgiveness of sins
The resurrection of the body
And the life everlasting.
Amen.

Last week Pastor Carol suggested that Easter might well mean more than just the resurrection of one man or even more than just life after death for individual souls. It’s fitting, then, that our Word for this week takes us even further into this theme of an Easter season with extraordinary ramifications far more far-reaching than they at first appear.

To see what they might look like, I invite you to imagine, for a moment, that you are with the disciples, “later that day,” when this story takes place.

They have locked the doors. They are terrified. And they have good reason to be – though the reason John gives is not quite it. I imagine the Roman secret police were just as if not more frightening than other Judeans. Roman foot soldiers, acting under orders, had executed Jesus just three days prior. The disciples’ grief was still fresh, no doubt – but their fear was fresh, too, and it seems the very real fear that one of them might be next was so pressing that it caused them to lock all the doors of the house.

Yet locking the doors could not keep the community safe. Fear crept inside, an insidious disease seeping under the doors and through the cracks in the floor. Once inside, fear bred into paralyses of panic, bruises of betrayal, and the dull numbness of despair.

They had given up everything for a new kind of life, a new way to live. But now the lynchpin upon which everything depended had snapped, had broken – like their leader, who was treated like a criminal and executed. They kept hoping for a miracle, but none came. So he died. He died, like so many others, as if there was nothing special about him. And now it was over.

What could they do but gather together and share their grief?

It was then that it happened.

He was suddenly there, among them.

Present.

And that is when several things happened, in rapid succession. If you forget what they are, you need only remember the creed, for the whole story is contained right there, in the third article. You can say it with me, if you know the words and feel so inclined.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit
The holy catholic church
The communion of saints
The forgiveness of sins
The resurrection of the body
And the life everlasting.

On the same day that his own life and mission triumphed over the grave Jesus went to perform the first miracle of his risen life: He went to resurrect the body. The body: the holy catholic church, the communion of saints that is his very body in the world. At that moment the body of Christ was as good as dead, disciples huddled inside a room whose deadbolt locks kept them so firmly inside, so firmly underground that their little locked room might as well have been a tomb. The body of Christ had given itself up for dead.

Enter the newly risen Jesus, through the locked doors. Like Yahweh breathing life into Adam with his own God-breath, Jesus breathes new life into this lifeless body of disciples with the Holy Spirit, the very breath of God, the very oxygen of the church. Jesus lives again, earth can breathe again – so pass the Word around before loaves abound!

And what Word to pass around? A word of peace, perhaps, a word of shalom – shalom, this word with which Jesus greets his beloved body of disciples. Peace to you, he says, shalom, three times, as if to be sure that we get it.

Then he does what the dumbfounded disciples needed him to do at that moment: He showed them what Peace to you, shalom meant, through his actions and through his words.

He showed them his wounds. And then he spoke to them about forgiveness.

Let me say that again: He showed them his wounds, wounds he still carried even in his risen life, visible wounds inflicted by Roman soldiers and less visible wounds inflicted by his closest friends. And then he spoke to them about forgiveness.

If you forgive anyone’s sins, they’re gone for good. But if you don’t forgive sins, what are you going to do with them?

For a people paralyzed by panic, for a people bruised by betrayal, for a people dull with despair, these are words that can spark hope, words that can begin healing, words that reveal the first steps of new life. Peace to you, shalom.

In this little Easter story we find Jesus resurrecting the body through the reconciliation of God’s peace, God reconciling the world to Godself. It begins in the body of Christ, as the disciples are reconciled to Jesus, and then reconciled to each other, and then reconciled to the one member of their group, Thomas, who was not with them the first time. One by one Jesus begins to find the lost sheep, all those whose panic paralyzes them, whose betrayal bruises them, whose despair leaves them numb and unable hear good news.

Jesus resurrects them by reviving their faith, our faith, and reconciling us all to the beloved community. He does this not just for our own sake but for the sake of the world outside our locked doors.

Just as the Father sent me, he says, I send you.

Jesus sends us, that we might go forth, out through our locked doors for mission, the mission of reconciliation in all the myriad forms it takes.

Those who are hungry being reconciled with those who are full through meals served and shared.

Those who are homeless being reconciled with those who are sheltered through shelter given on cold spring nights.

Those whose rights are stripped from them being reconciled with those whose rights are so far protected through advocacy and prayer.

A ravaged creation being reconciled with those created to be its caretakers through community gardens, environmental cleanup days, and policies that protect wild life in all its forms.

This is what the body of Christ has been resurrected for, after all, this sending out for mission in the world.

And this life of living out the mission of forgiveness, reconciliation, shalom for the whole world – this is the life everlasting.

And it is, finally, what we proclaim when we say that

We believe in the Holy Spirit
The holy catholic church
The communion of saints
The forgiveness of sins
The resurrection of the body
And the life everlasting.

Amen.