Sermon: God with Skin On

Luke 24:36-48

God with Skin On

James Sledge                                                                                       May 19, 2019

I’ve likely told this story before, but it seems worth retelling. A mom is putting her young child to bed, but he’s frightened and begs her to stay with him. She does those things parents do, explain that there’s nothing to be afraid of, remind him that she’ll be just outside his room, and so on, but none does much good. Finally she says, “God will be right here the entire night.” But the boy protests, “I need God with skin on!”

You can’t really blame him. God can feel pretty wispy at times, an idea or concept without a lot of substance. If I’m really frightened, a concept may not feel all that comforting. If I don’t have enough to eat, saying “God loves you,” won’t do much good.

The whole Jesus business is, in part, about giving God some skin, about a God that removes some of the wispiness and lets us say, “Oh, so this is what God is like.” Yet modern Christianity sometimes minimizes the skin on part, preferring God as concept. And so Jesus the man, the Jewish rabbi, gets turned into Christ, a not quite human figure without all those messy particulars of skin and bodily functions and Jewishness. Sometimes it’s easier to run a religion where God is a manageable concept without too much skin.

The gospels, however, go to great lengths to insist on the fleshiness of Jesus, not just before his death and resurrection but after it as well. Our reading this morning is one of several that go out of their way to keep Jesus’ skin on. People are invited to touch him, and, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus eats in two successive stories.

On the day of resurrection, two disciples meet Jesus as they walk to Emmaus but don’t recognize him. Only when they stop for the evening and share a meal where Jesus takes bread, blesses and breaks it, do the disciples realize it is Jesus.

They rush back to Jerusalem and are telling the others what happened when Jesus shows up once more. He invites his friends to touch him, to see that he has skin on, then he asks, “Have you anything to eat?” And he eats the fish they give him.

This might seem a totally unnecessary detail unless you’re determined to present the risen Jesus as a fleshy, with-skin-on sort of God. For the gospels, and for biblical faith, bodies are not a problem to be overcome. Salvation is not about a spiritual existence apart from the body. Christian faith is a messy, incarnate faith where God has skin on, and where following Jesus with our earthly bodies is as much the focus as what happens when we die. Christian faith only works when it is embodied, when it has skin on.

Perhaps that is why the Apostle Paul and others found the image of Church as the body of Christ such an attractive one. “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it,” Paul wrote to the congregation in Corinth. Each person brings gifts and abilities that give flesh to the body, that put skin on it.

When it is functioning as it should, the Church makes Jesus present to the world, continuing his work of sharing God’s love, lifting up the downtrodden, offering healing and hope, reconciling people to God and one another. When functioning as it should, the Church is more than people seeking their own salvation, fulfilment, enlightenment, or a spiritual pick-me-up to get them through the week. It is God with-skin-on in and for the world.

FCPC’s new missional mandate understands that, expressing our call to embody God’s love by “Gathering those who fear they are not enough, so we may experience grace, wholeness and renewal as God’s beloved.” And the new structures that you’ve been hearing about in recent weeks are meant to focus us better in the work of putting skin on God’s love.

There are many ways in which we already embody God’s love to the world. Hundreds of people experience God’s love in tangible ways each month when they gather with us at Welcome Table, when they feel the presence of God in worship, when they learn of God’s love in Godly play. But there is more we are called to do such as addressing systemic issues like racism and economic inequality, reaching out into our community to gather in those who need to experience grace, wholeness, and renewal, being open and welcoming and hospitable to all sorts of people, people who might never imagine that they would welcomed here, that they would find God’s love with skin on for them here.

Our new ministry structures of Community Building, Mercy, Worship, Justice, and Spiritual Growth address facets of Jesus’ call to embody God’s love. But living bodies have much that is hidden and unseen, blood carrying oxygen to the muscles, bones that provide framework and structure. Bodies are complicated, messy things, something we sometimes forget when we spiritualize faith too much.

I mentioned how Welcome Table puts skin on God’s love, and we have a special hunger offering that helps with the cost of Welcome Table. It feels good to give money knowing that it goes to feed hungry people. But without a Fellowship Hall and our big kitchen, Welcome Table couldn’t happen. If we didn’t pay the electric or gas or water bill, there would be no Welcome Table. Without support staff to keep the building and appliances working, to coordinate the website and the scheduling of volunteers, there would be no Welcome Table.

Without people and giving and work that goes on in the background, the body could not function, and there would be no Welcome Table, no Youth Group, no Godly play, and so on. The Church, the body of Christ, needs those who support and strengthen the body in order to do its work of embodying God’s love for the world.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. It takes every single one of us doing our part, giving our time, our financial resources, our gifts to support the work of the body, if the love of God is to take tangible form in the world. And when each of us does our part, whatever that part may be, the body of Christ takes on flesh, and God with skin on is here, in and for the world.

Over a long period of study and discernment, the leadership of this congregation has developed a new missional mandate, along with new mission priorities and structures to support these. During this spring (with a break for Palm/Passion Sunday and Easter) the sermon and a presentation from various church leaders highlights one facet of this Renew process and its new structures. This means we are not following the usual lectionary scripture readings. Today’s focus is on  Ministry Support, one of the new ministry teams of our new structure.