Luke 24:36b-49
Enfleshed Faith
James Sledge April
15, 2018
This
is the third and final appearance of the risen Jesus in Luke’s gospel. He
appeared to disciples on the road to Emmaus, though unrecognized until they
stopped for the evening and Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it.
These disciples hurry back to Jerusalem to tell the others. There they learn
that Jesus had also appeared to Simon Peter. As they tell how Jesus was made
known to them in the breaking of the bread, Jesus shows up one more
time.
Even
though Jesus appears for a third time, his followers still have trouble
believing it. They fear it is a spirit, a ghost. And so Jesus says, “Touch
me.” And he asks, “Have you anything here to eat?”
prompting the disciples to give him a bit of fish. Jesus has some important
things to say, but first he eats.
Something
similar happens at the end of John’s gospel when the risen Jesus appears on the
shore as some of the disciples are out in a boat, fishing. There will be an
exchange between Jesus and Peter that seems to remove any taint from Peter’s
denials on the night of Jesus’ arrest. But before the story can get to that,
Jesus cooks some of the fish the disciples have caught, and they have a nice
breakfast there on the shore. Jesus has important things to say, but first we
eat.
Both
Luke and John want to make clear the Jesus is not a wispy spirit, not a
disembodied ghost. He is fully embodied, and he easts. This is the biblical
notion of resurrection, a bodily thing, not a soul floating off to heaven but a
walking, breathing, eating Jesus. In his letter to the church in Corinth, the
Apostle Paul insists that humans will experience a bodily resurrection as well,
at the end of the age. We’ll be different, he says, but we’ll have bodies.
In
the same letter Paul writes, Now you are the body of Christ and
individually members of it. But in the centuries since Paul first wrote
this, calling church the body of Christ
has become so commonplace that we may not think much about what that means.
Bodies
are pretty much essential to doing many of the things that make us human. We
can touch someone, embrace them and cry with them when they are experiencing
loss or trauma, because we have bodies. A parent can cradle an infant, speaking
in reassuring tones, because we are embodied creatures. We can sit down with a
friend for a meal or drinks because we have bodies. We can prepare food and
feed people who are hungry at our Welcome Table ministry because we are
embodied creatures.
When Jesus walked the earth, he touched
people and healed them. He fed hungry crowds. He ate meals with people
considered to be outcasts and “unclean.” He suffered and he died, all because
he was God’s love embodied, God incarnate. And he calls us to continue that
work of embodying God’s love.
When
I start working on a sermon, I often check my computer files to see what I
preached on in the past. I typically preach from the lectionary which follows a
three year cycle, and so every three years the same readings occur. There are always
choices, an Old Testament reading, a psalm, an epistle, and a gospel. (During
Eastertide, readings from Acts take the Old Testament slot.) And I don’t want
to get in the rut of always choosing the easiest passage to preach on or doing
the same one every time.
I
didn’t preach on our gospel three years ago, but I discovered that I did six
years ago, on my second Sunday here at FCPC. In that sermon, I told a story
that has been used by countless preachers over the years. A mother is putting
her young child to bed, but something has frightened the child, and she begs
her mom to stay with her. The mother turns on a night light and tells her that
everything will be fine. “God is here,” she says, “and God will watch over you
all through the night.” But that does
not reassure the child. “I know God is here,” she says, “but I need someone
with skin on!”
One
of the most fundamental Christian doctrines is the Incarnation. The Word became flesh. God became someone with skin on.
But the Incarnation was more than an
event 2000 years ago. The mystery of the Incarnation
continues in the Church, the body of Christ. But Christian faith forgets that
from time to time. We decide faith is simply a matter of believing the right
things, being a member, or attending worship. With the rising popularity of
spirituality and contemplative practices, we can decide faith is mostly about a
private, mystical connection to God.
I’m
not disparaging worship, belief, or contemplative spiritual practices. They all
have a role to play in a mature Christian faith. But that faith still needs to
have some skin on it. It still needs to be incarnate, embodied in some way.
As
some of you are aware, one of the biggest influences on my own faith life in
recent years has been Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest who, through his
writings and teachings, has guided my own journey into spiritual practices long
neglected by American Protestants. The name of Rohr’s organization is telling.
It’s called the Center for Action and Contemplation. This is their mission
statement. “We are a center for
experiential education, rooted in the Gospels, encouraging the transformation
of human consciousness through contemplation, and equipping people to be
instruments of peaceful change in the world.”
As much as Rohr encourages people to
discover mystical union with the divine through contemplative practices, he
knows that this is not simply for its own sake. It is in order to equip us to
live as disciples, to be Christ’s witnesses,
his body in the world, the Incarnation.
We are called to be God with skin on.
____________________________________________________________________________
Our
Session, the discernment and governing council for this congregation, has been
doing a lot of work over the last couple of years to listen for the particulars
of how we are called to be Christ’s body, to enflesh our faith. If you’re a
member here you’ve likely seen the new “missional mandate” that has been in the
bulletin for some weeks now and is prominently displayed on the bulletin cover
today. Gathering those who fear they are not enough, so we may experience grace,
wholeness, and renewal as God's beloved.
As we think about how
exactly to do that, the sort of things will give shape and skin to the body,
we’ve settled on three strategy areas: Gather, Deepen, and Share.
These terms are shorthand and have specific meaning. Gather isn’t just a
group of people in the same room. Rather it is what happens when we can answer “Yes” to these
questions. “Are
we radically accepting and welcoming others, as Christ’s disciples? Are we delighting in God’s
creation of the other? Are
we experiencing life as God’s beloved creation, just as we are?”
In
the same way, we measure Deepen with
these questions. “Are we resting in God and affirming our identity in Christ?
Are we listening for the ways God speaks to and through us? Are we learning to
trust and recognize that the Spirit is at work within us?”
And
we measure Share with, “Are we
imparting the truth of who God is and what God has done? Are we joining in the
self-giving love of Jesus? Are we giving of what is dear to us to build God’s
kingdom?”
As
we move forward in this work, we will need to look carefully at our ministries
and programs to determine how they do or don’t help us Gather, Deepen, and Share.
We will need to explore what new things we need to do, where finite resources
and energy should best be utilized. And you will be hugely important in this
process.
Not
only will the Session need to be in conversation with you about how we move
forward, but you are the ones who put muscle and flesh on the body of Christ so
that it is something tangible and solid. It takes all of us together to
continue the Incarnation, to be God with skin on for the world.
And
when we do this, we will embody the words of the hymn we sing. “A new creation comes
to life and grows as Christ’s new body takes on flesh and blood. The universe,
restored and whole, will sing: Alleluia!”[1]
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