2012
Sermons
Dez 30 - Jesus Must
Dez 30 - I Will Not Forget
Dez 28 - Hear, See, Do
Dez 27 - Fresh Every Morning
Dez 24 - The Fullness of Time...for Us
Dez 23 - Emotions of Advent: Graced Wonder
Dez 16 - Confused Anticipation
Dez 9 - Moods of Advent: Anger
Dez 2 - Moods of Advent: Anxiety
Nov 25 - Not Overwhelmed
Nov 18 - Piles of Troubles
Nov 11 - Thankfulness
Nov 4 - The Communion of Saints...
Okt 28 - Look back, around, ahead!
Okt 21 - Consecration Sunday 2012
Okt 14 - The Right Questions
Okt 7 - God's Yes
Okt 6 - Waiting
Sep 30 - Insignificant?
Sep 23 - That pesky word "obedience"
Sep 16 - Led on their Way
Sep 15 - Partners in Thanks
Sep 12 - With Love
Sep 9 - At the edges
Sep 2 - Doers of the Word
Aug 26 - It's about God
Aug 19 - Jesus Remembers!
Aug 15 - Companion: Gratitude
Aug 12 - Bread of Life
Aug 11 - God's Silence and Speech
Aug 5 - One Faith, Many Gifts - Part 2
Jul 29 - One Faith, Many Gifts
Jul 25 - Rescue, Relief, Reunion, Rest
Jul 22 - Faithful Ruth, Mary, and God
Jul 15 - New World A-Comin'
Jul 8 - Take nothing; take everything
Jul 1 - Laughter
Jun 24 - Salvation!
Jun 17 - Really?
Jun 10 - Renewed by the Future
Jun 3 - Remember, O Lord
Jun 3 - Out of Darkness, Light!
Mai 27 - Dem bones gonna rise again!
Mai 20 - It’s all about me, me, me.
Mai 13 - Blame it on the Spirit
Mai 12 - More than Problems
Mai 6 - Pruned for Living
Apr 29 - Called by no other name
Apr 22 - No and Yes
Apr 22 - Who's in charge here?
Apr 22 - Time Well-used
Apr 15 - The Resurrection of the Body
Apr 8 - For they were afraid
Apr 7 - It's All in a Name
Apr 6 - For us
Apr 6 - No Bystanders
Apr 5 - The Scandal of Servant-hood
Apr 1 - Two Processions
Mrz 28 - The Rich Young Man, Jesus, and Us
Mrz 25 - The Grain of Wheat
Mrz 18 - Grace
Mrz 14 - Elijah, Jezebel, and us
Mrz 8 - The Best Use of Time
Mrz 7 - David, Saul, and Us
Mrz 4 - Despair to Hope, for Abraham, for Us
Mrz 2 - The Word and words
Feb 29 - Jacob, Esau, and Us
Feb 26 - In the wilderness of this day
Feb 22 - It Doesn't End Here
Feb 19 - Why Worship?
Feb 12 - The Person is the Difference
Feb 5 - Healing and Service
Jan 29 - On the Frontier
Jan 22 - What about them?
Jan 15 - Come and See
Jan 14 - Joy and Pain at Christmastime
Jan 8 - To marvel, to fear, to do, and thus believe
Jan 1 - All in a Name
The Resurrection of the Body
Second Sunday of Easter - April 15, 2012
The writer of 1 John uses wonderfully convoluted language to say it:
We declare to you what was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our own eyes,
what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life –
this life was revealed
we have seen it and testify to it,
and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and revealed to us –
we declare to you
what we have heard and seen
so that you may have fellowship with us;
and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
Those who wrote the Creed in the succeeding centuries gathered it with all of its implications into a single phrase:
I believe in the resurrection of the body.
The Gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of the Easter season every year is the story of Thomas and his growth in faith,
so that finally he could say to Jesus “My Lord and my God.”
And again, the Creed- writers' summary of the story is apt:
I believe in the resurrection of the body.
We gather from time to time in this Nave for funerals and memorial services.
We acknowledge that illnesses and disease take their toll so that the old kind of life cannot be sustained.
There is one thing that we do not do at such events.
We do not stand up and say together:
“He or she will live on in our memories.” or “His or her spirit will never be defeated.”
Instead, we say together the words we have been taught to say from childhood:
I believe in the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting.
We say that Sunday after Sunday in the Creed, and
at a funeral, we say that especially with our loved one in mind.
There are some who think that we gather here only for “spiritual” things.
But Christianity is very much about bodies, incarnation, God in the flesh.
The Word became flesh and lived among us, as the Gospel of John says.
There are other religions which try to get away from the body,
that denigrate the body,
in which dis-embodied souls fly off to nothingness.
That will never do in Christianity which is inescapably material.
We are bodies; we are the bodies God gave us,
bodies that are among the things which God from the beginning of creation declared to be “very good.”
We are the bodies which God loves and will love, forever.
So the resurrection of the body is a very significant event.
The first witnesses all speak of an empty tomb.
The resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is not a Hollywood spook.
What has happened is the eighth day of creation, when everything that was recognizable about Jesus was fashioned anew into body.
No, not exactly the same body,
suffering the excruciating pain of crucifixion, but closely enough to be recognized by his companions when they got over the shock of bumping into this new reality.
When he showed them his hands and his feet,
when they heard his voice,
they joined Mary's confession:
“It is the Lord.”
A dis-embodied soul is an impossible concept for Christians.
What makes us unique is precisely all of those quirky things of body; the tone of voice, the manner of walk, etc.
Without body, these things have no meaning.
The ancient Greeks taught the immortality of the soul –
that there is some indestructible little bit of us that floats off to the underworld, to the land of shades, where we are fleeting shadows.
What an ultimately depressing idea!
Christians across the centuries have been tempted to fall victim to the idea of the immortality of the soul, but we have been rescued by our Hebrew heritage which has stressed the unity of the entire person.
We cannot be separated into parts without ceasing to be who we truly are.
With that in mind, the Good News of Easter leads us to say several more things:
(1) God our maker, loves all of us that there is to love – body, mind, personality, and spirit – the whole thing.
--Bodies that waste away in illness,
--minds destroyed in dementia,
--spirits clouded by doubts,
--personalities squandered by cruel oppression
All of this is desecration of the person-hood given us by God.
It shall not remain so!
The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is God's announcement that death in all of its forms shall not win forever.
(2) God loves us just not in general, but each of us in our distinctiveness.
Someone said “I love humanity; it's people I can't stand”.
That person is not speaking for the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The way a lover talks about that certain little smile, that gentle caress---
God loves us in our individuality.
(3) Yet another implication is to say simply and directly that bodies matter.
Now that it is spring and near the day that some call “Earth Day”,
more profound than merely going outside and hugging a tree is to confess that this body with all of its sags and imperfections and recent repairs
is yet designated by God as the temple of God's Holy Spirit.
Paul gives that designation in 1 Corinthians.
That not every-body has bread enough to survive is more than a political issue.
It is an issue of the faith in ...the resurrection of the body... that needs to be active in love for all of the body.
That I am too soon ready to give up on someone by saying “People never change” is more than a matter of local politics.
It is trumped by the confession of faith: I believe in the resurrection of the body, which is to be transformed at the end, and the first steps of that transformation are underway even now.
That some despise the body so as to wish to destroy it
early on – by abortion
midway – by alcohol, drugs, or bullet
late – by euthanasia....
These are more than political issues.
They are matters of hearing the promise of God clearly in faith.
I believe in the resurrection of the body.
Two eight-year old girls heard a sermon in which the preacher proclaimed the text “Now, you are God's temple.”
They got the eight-year old giggles and began to refer to each other as “Temple One” and “Temple Two.”
That's it! They got the preacher's point.
Because of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, we say for all of us
I believe in the resurrection of the body.
It is a new day. Things are changing.
Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Amen.
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Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |