The Body of Christ: Sermon, April 28, 2019

Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the religious authorities, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Now Thomas, called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord.”

So he said to them, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
John 20:19-31, New King James Version

We have read every word of the story in John’s Gospel of the death and resurrection of Jesus, beginning on Good Friday with his trial, execution and burial, through his grave being found empty on Easter morning and his appearance to Mary Magdalene. And today we pick up right where we left off in the Easter Sunday service, and we are now at the evening of Easter day. Remember that morning two of the male disciples had seen that the tomb was empty, the body of Jesus was not there, and then Mary Magdalene had come and announced to all of them that she had seen Jesus.

Now, here they are, still in hiding, for fear of the authorities who might be coming for them next. They must have been anxiously debating what this empty tomb and Mary seeing Jesus could mean. And Jesus himself comes and stands among them, even though the doors are locked, and greets them: “Peace be with you.”

So much of this Easter story deals with Jesus appearing in his resurrected body that I want to talk about this. On Easter morning his body isn’t in the grave. The cloths in which his corpse were wrapped are lying there as if the body just vanished. John is making the point that the risen Christ encountered by the disciples is the same as Jesus of Nazareth who they followed until his death. He shows them his body. He speaks. He can be touched. In other stories he holds things, he starts a fire, he cooks, he eats. He isn’t a ghost, or a reanimated corpse like a zombie. These were common in stories told at that time, and the Gospel writers want to rule this out. He is the same person as before.

But he is also mysteriously different; he can appear and disappear, he can go through or around locked doors, he isn’t always easily recognizable to friends who have known him for a long time. So Jesus is alive, but changed somehow.

On this evening of the first Easter, Jesus shows his disciples his hands and side, still bearing the wounds of his crucifixion. He does the same a week later, when Thomas is there. This means more than just proving that he is indeed the same man who was crucified. The body of Jesus is important in Christian thought, because we believe that, as we say in A New Creed, Jesus is the Word made flesh. John expands on this at the beginning of his Gospel: the Word, the divine, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. The Word became flesh. The divine became human, in the body of Jesus – the body that is raised from death by God’s power.

And that resurrected body continues to carry the wounds of the nails and the spear, suffered for us. This is a powerful image for all of us. But it is tremendously meaningful for disabled people that the Word made flesh, the divine incarnated as human, has physical impairments. The Christ is disabled. His resurrected body, which presumably could have been without blemish, remains broken. For disabled people, who bear the marks of disability in their own bodies, this is truly liberating.

When we talk about the body of Jesus, we may not be speaking literally. We may be following the Apostle Paul, who calls the churches to which he is writing “the body of Christ.” The church is the continuation of the risen body of Jesus. In Scripture the church is born when the Holy Spirit is sent upon the followers of Jesus, as Jesus promised. In another story, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Spirit comes at Pentecost, after the final appearance of Jesus following Easter. Here, in John, it is on this Easter evening, as Jesus breathes on his disciples, an act of creating, just as when the world was formed, God breathed life into the first human. Jesus says, “receive the Holy Spirit.” He gives them the authority to forgive sins. The church has begun. This is an in between time, after the resurrection but before Jesus ceases to appear to his followers in his risen body. This is a transition period, from being able to see and touch and hear Jesus physically, to Jesus being present in the Holy Spirit. The church is to continue as his body.

We have been hearing a lot about churches lately. Church is guaranteed to get on the TV news twice a year, Christmas Eve and the Good Friday and Easter weekend. But there were also the terrible attacks on Easter worship services in churches in Sri Lanka. And the week before, the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

There was much emotional reaction to that fire, from people who have been to Paris and visited the cathedral, and from those who have never been there. Crowds of Parisians stood watching the fire and singing hymns. I think the response to the fire tells us something about the church as the body of Christ. We know, in our minds, that the words of the song are true: "the church is not a building, the church is not a steeple, the church is not a resting place, the church is a people." Church can be anywhere, for God can be anywhere. The psalm says, if I could fly on the wings of the dawn, to the farthest side of the ocean, even there God would be with me. Church can be outside. It can be in a house. That’s where the first churches were. Before our ancestors could build churches on the Canadian frontier, they worshipped in houses and outdoors. I have a drawing of Presbyterians in Upper Canada celebrating communion outside. In Beijing, China, I was told that there are 100,000 worshippers on Sunday, but only 21 Protestant church buildings, so many people attend at 500 affiliated meeting points in houses or offices or warehouses.

And yet, although we don’t need dedicated church buildings, we want sacred spaces. Every major religion has some kind of building for worship: a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, a gurdwara. We can trace this progression through the Bible: God was worshipped at rough open-air altars, then at dedicated holy sites outdoors, and in a tent traveling with the people of Israel. King Solomon built a small temple; it was destroyed by invaders. The temple was rebuilt; it was destroyed. And the Jewish people continued to worship in synagogues.

Sacred buildings speak to us. They can be beautiful in their simplicity, like the Methodist chapel at Upper Canada Village. They can be lovely in their ornate art and exquisite architecture, like Notre Dame. They embody the body of Christ, with memories of generations who have gone before, and artifacts of the long-dead but remembered faithful. We are devastated when we lose them. Also last week, the United Church at Pacquet, Newfoundland, burned, and the members of that community were as much in grief as the people of Paris. In both places the heart, the centre, with all of its memories and associations, is gone.

And yet there is resurrection. The body of Jesus, which was broken and died on the cross, was raised from the grave. The body of Christ, the church, burned and blasted and broken in fires, in bombings, in floods, in scandals and decline and doubt, will rise again, as sure as springtime returns to bring new life to the barren land. The body retains the wounds it has suffered, but it still brings peace, forgives sins – and celebrates God’s presence, lives with respect in creation, loves and serves others, seeks justice and resists evil – and proclaims Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. For in life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God.