"Beautiful Body"

A few of you have managed not to hear this story; so the rest of you are stuck listening to it again. Several years ago, my church staff had a little party for me for my fortieth birthday. And one of the valuable gifts I received was a photo that now hangs in a prominent place in my office. You see, I’d told the church staff (ad nauseam) that I attended high school with super-model turned actress Andie McDowell. (You may have seen her in movies such as “Groundhog Day” and “Four Weddings and Funeral,” and in lots of L’Oréal commercials.) Now I used to tease my staff that I’d dated Andie and dumped her because she just wasn’t pretty enough. (Okay. That wasn’t true, but I did go to high school with her.) Secretly, my choir director wrote to Andie’s publicist and asked her to send an autographed photo with a suggestive comment. So on my 40^th birthday I opened this dazzling autographed photo of Andie McDowell that reads, “Jeff, Remember all the good times! Andie McDowell.” Unfortunately, truth be told, our “good times” consisted of Andie walking down the school halls, and my watching Andie walk down the school halls.

With lovely Andie in mind, it’s best to be honest about it. We 21^st century American Christians think human bodies are important. Our televisions, theater screens, newspapers, and websites are filled with images of bodies. We know how we want bodies to look, feel, and smell. We can describe the ideal body proportions. And we know what we’d change about our own bodies and maybe even who we’d rather look like instead.

You and I know about beautiful bodies, don’t we? Well, so does Luke. And his description is worth considering and even celebrating.

Luke says the disciples were talking about Jesus appearing to them as they traveled the road to Emmaus. And while they were talking, Jesus suddenly appeared again. He said, “Peace be with you.” But they didn’t feel so peaceful. Instead, they were “startled and terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost.” Jesus said, “Why are you scared and doubting? Go ahead. Look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. A ghost isn’t made of flesh and bone.” And the disciples were joyful, but also disbelieving and still wondering about everything. So Jesus said, “Hey, ya got anything edible around here?” And they gave him some broiled fish which he ate right there with them.

Of all the gospel writers, Luke is making a point as emphatically as possible. He’s telling us Jesus was resurrected not as a hopeful memory, not as nebulous ghost but with a body. Jesus was resurrected in a body. Why is this such a big deal?

A couple  reasons. Throughout history, there’ve been well-intentioned Christians who’ve argued that though Jesus was divine, he was not really human. He just seemed human. As one scholar describes this mistaken view, “Jesus was not a truly human being but a spiritual being who was not really subject to all the limitations and problems of earthly human existence. In him God was only pretending to be with us in the midst of our sinful, suffering, creaturely existence. His purpose was not to help us in the world but to help us escape from the world.” (Shirley C. Guthrie, Christian Doctrine, 237.)

This is the heresy or false teaching of docetism. And not only does this misunderstanding  leave us with a God who cannot empathize with humanity, it also leads us to devalue our own humanity, our own bodies. This false teaching forms an inadequate faith only concerned with “saving souls” and interested only in heaven to come, and not life right now.

But Luke tells us Jesus was resurrected in the body. Clearly, God loves bodies. After all, God made ‘em all. One writer puts it this way. He says, “God likes bodies and all that goes with them, including the really funky, fun parts. God likes bodies so much that they are front and center in the process of salvation. The New Testament seriously proposes that our bodies themselves not only will be redeemed (in ways beyond our comprehension), but also that, in Christ, they participate in our spiritual transformation, here and now.” (Robert Corin Morris, “Reclaiming the Body’s Soul: Musings on the Mystery of Matter” in Weavings, Sept./Oct. 2007, 35.)

Christian faith says that, like Jesus, we’re going to be resurrected in a body. In the Apostles’ Creed we say, “I believe in the resurrection of the body . . .” We’re going to experience a resurrection similar to Jesus’. What will that be like? Well, we don’t know everything for sure. But we have the gospel accounts with Jesus passing through locked doors, Jesus talking, Jesus inviting folks to see and touch him, Jesus disappearing and reappearing, and Jesus even eating. And one theologian summarizes Jesus’ resurrection this way. He says,  “. . . the resurrection of Jesus is neither the resuscitation of a corpse nor the appearance of an apparition. Jesus moved with a new freedom, no longer bound by space and time, yet he is still within space and time.” (Donald G. Dawe, Jesus: The Death and Resurrection of God, 113.)

We hope for that kind of resurrection ourselves “a new freedom, no longer bound by space and time, yet . . . still within space and time.” It’s almost too wonderful to believe, isn’t it? Heck, the first disciples who saw it were filled with joy and disbelief at the same time. No wonder we sometimes struggle with faith and doubt. Can God, will God, take care of my whole being, my whole self even beyond this life? Yes. The resurrection of Jesus in the body helps us with our doubts and fears, and grants us peace that passes all understanding.

And because we believe in the resurrection of the body, we also believe in caring for bodies here and now. So it matters to us that women in the Congo are being raped and sexually mutilated as a weapon of war. We care that, as Bread for the World points out, “963 million people across the world are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes–one child every five seconds.”(www.bread.org). We’re concerned about human trafficking and sexual abuse of women and children. We care about folks subjected to totalitarian and repressive forms of government. Jesus was resurrected in the body. So we do not say, “You suffering people just think about heaven and one of these days . . . one of these days.” No. God loves people, bodily people. And God wants people to live rich, joyful lives not just in heaven but right now.

A character in one of Wendell Berry’s novels describes sermons preached in a fictional small town in the mid-twentieth century. He says the preachers went to school and “. . . learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works . . .  this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me . . . I didn’t think anybody believed it. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes . . .  [T]hey signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.

“‘I declare, Miss Pauline,’ said Brother Preston, who was having Sunday dinner with the Gibbses, ‘those certainly are good biscuits. I can’t remember how many I’ve eaten.’

“‘Preacher,’ said Uncle Stanley, ‘that’n makes eight.’” (Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 160-161.)

We believe in the resurrection of the body. We believe we will get bodies even more beautiful than Andie McDowell’s. And we believe God lives and moves and works and sings and dances in these bodies of ours even now. What a strange and wonderful God we worship. Don’t you think? Amen.