Denice K. Leslie
April 30, 2006
Easter 3 B
Acts 3:`12-19
I John 3: 1 – 7
Luke 24: 36b-48

“Christ Is Risen! Bodily”

	“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! (Pause) You think I’ve lost my mind right? I’ve burned out and completely lost my marbles. The cold weather has finally departed, I mean its over 80 degrees outside--we celebrated Easter two Sundays ago and the pastor is wishing us a Merry Christmas the day before May Day. Ahuh! 
 	Well, I have news for you: All my marbles are still rolling around in my noggin. (Pound head a little): I can hear them collide! And so on this the Third Sunday of Easter I wish you a very, merry Christmas!
 	Yes, I know we celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus on December 25th in the middle of winter, but the fact is the incarnation is the incarnation.
 	Easter is about incarnation: it is about God getting fleshy with the world. It’s about God coming to us in a body—our kind of body—a human body. It’s about that body taking a beating and dying and what else is it about?? RESURRECTION! Yes! Like I said, Merry Christmas: Christ is Risen, Alleluia!
	Christ comes to us at Easter in a body—his body, like your body, like my body—only a kinda beat up body. Not the nice new soft fresh body of a baby. But still of God. Made and created by God. In the image of God. You and I and Jesus: human, truly and really. 
	Have you ever noticed how much realism there is in the Easter stories? Jesus appears to his disciples and talks to them, walks with them, eats with them. Asks them to touch him. According to television you can put your hand through a ghost. And spirits don’t eat—they don’t get hungry. 
 	Jesus is no ghost, no spirit. In today’s scripture we have a Jesus who is corporeal, scarred, hungry and talking: He says, “”Look.. and see that it is I myself….see,… a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
	And then he asks them, “Have you anything to eat? And they gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate it in their presence.”
	This is not some ethereal, spiritual presence that wafted through the doors—this is Jesus, the same man they saw crucified and buried in the tomb. The very same. 
	He doesn’t stop to explain it all. Because the best teaching is not by explanation. The best teaching is by experience. He comes and gives them himself just as he has always come: bodily.
	He affirms them and us with his bodily presence. And not only them, but our reality, our world, this created universe with all its imperfections—its scars. 
	 It’s all good. Its all real, its material and it is not suspect. It is not to be loathed as we long for the real and perfect world beyond. This is the real and perfect world of God—beat up--like Jesus but not forsaken---and not inherently evil.
	Genesis tells us, “God looked at everything he had made and pronounced it good.”
 	God comes to us as a part of God’s material creation to save us and it—to make it whole again, right here, right now. 
	That saving plan of God means life is not a test through which we must pass. God is not the master maze maker or game player or some kind of sadist. After all, even game makers provide written instructions and the rules of the game for the players. God’s rules of the game come in the form of God’s very self come to us in a very real person to show us the love of God by being in relationship with us.
	There’s a lot of talk about virtual reality these days—as if computer and internet generated reality experiences like the Matrix were more real than real life. The resurrection says it ain’t so. You don’t need to take a red pill to see the reality. You just need to stub your toe! The resurrection says real life is bodily life—life lived in relationship with God and neighbor. 
	We sometimes think Scripture is the rule book. That’s because we make it into a rule book. Scripture becomes a rigid, judgmental rule book when we as humans divorce it from the reality of our material existence, and our relationship with each other and with God. Because scripture is ABOUT our relationship with God—and if you haven’t noticed lately the people in it aren’t perfect—they’re all sinners—real people who do really and pretty messed up stuff. 
	The Risen Christ makes it pretty clear in today’s gospel: there is no understanding the true meaning of scripture—no unlocking what it’s all about without experiencing a real relationship with him—without knowing God first hand. 
 	When we know Jesus then scripture begins to make sense. The people in it begin to make sense—their experience of God’s forgiveness and grace makes a lot of sense! Because we understand the meaning of life—their lives and our lives-- from God’s perspective.
 	Our scripture from 1 John helps us here. It tells us, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
 	Children of God. That implies a relationship with a real person. God is real. The resurrection demonstrates that reality as nothing else can do. God comes to us. God gives God’s self to us. The scars on the body of the Risen Christ show us how far God has gone for us and how hollow death truly is. Jesus stands here before his disciples: the true reality enfleshed. Not just philosophically or theologically—truly. Really, real. 
	Don’t believe it? Does the resurrection feel like a huge stumbling block? Then stumble! That’s the best way to know—hit the ground hard and feel the force of it—its real isn’t it? Like your life and your world. Do you really want to believe in a God who just wandered into human existence, said a few inspirational things, pretended to suffer and then returned to a heavenly realm? I don’t. 
	The tummies of hungry children really hurt. The bodies of the abused really hurt. Those suffering from incurable disease, really suffer. Those laid off from decent paying jobs know the bitter hard taste of reality. So does God.
	 Jesus comes to us with his scars—his wounds—his less than perfect body in this less than perfect world to be with us in all its messed upness. Your life is no fairy tale. Neither is the resurrection.
	And so Jesus facing his disciples begins once again, in the words of another writer. To tell the story of God's plan to restore all of creation, from the covenant with Abraham to the exodus from Egypt, from Ezekiel's valley of dry bones to Isaiah's suffering servant. He's told them all this before, of course, but this time, in the presence of their risen Lord, the doors in the minds of the disciples are unlocked. The rejection, the suffering, the crucifixion--they weren't a detour from God's plan after all, but the final steps of God's long journey down into the plight of broken humanity. 	
	Now they are witnesses to the first steps on the other side. Not a dead man, not a ghost, but the victory of God!”
	This victory is hollow if it isn’t real. So Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend, author of Twelve Christian Beliefs that Can Drive You Crazy writes:
	“The bodily resurrection of Jesus isn't a take-it-or-leave-it thing, as though some Christians are welcome to believe it and others are welcome not to believe it.
	 Take it away, and the whole picture is totally different. Take it away, and Karl Marx was probably right to accuse Christianity of ignoring the problems of the material world. 
	Take it away, and Sigmund Freud was probably right to say that Christianity is a wish-fulfillment religion. Take it away, and Friedrich Nietzsche was probably right to say that Christianity is a religion for wimps.
	 Put it back, and you have a faith that can take on the postmodern world that looks to Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as its prophets; you can beat them at their own game with the Easter news that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 
	Those who celebrate the mighty resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, have an awesome and nonnegotiable responsibility. When we say Alleluia! Christ is risen! we are saying that Jesus is Lord of the world, and that the present would-be lords of the world are not. 	
	When we sing, in the old hymn, that Judah's Lion burst his chains and crushed the serpent's head, are we ready to put that victory into practice?
	 Are we ready to speak up for, and to take action on behalf of, those even in our own local community, let alone farther a field, who are quietly being crushed by uncaring and unjust systems? Are we ready to speak up for the truth of the gospel over the dinner table and in the coffee bar and in the council chamber? 
	This is the role that Jesus gives to the disciples and to us in this story--we are to be witnesses. Not expert witnesses, just witnesses--people who tell the truth about what they have experienced. 
	Throughout this Easter season, we hear some of the earliest of these testimonies: "I touched him, and he was not a ghost." "I saw the marks in his hands and feet; he was the crucified one." "We broke bread with him, and he ate."
	 Two thousand years later, we can still give evidence of how the risen Jesus has come into our lives and retold the story of our lives in a way that opened our minds to the truth.
	We are witnesses when we can invite someone to look into our homes, our families, our friendships, our work, our checkbook, our day timer-- and find Jesus there. 
	We are witnesses when we allow ourselves to be touched by folks who are lost and afraid. 
	We are witnesses when we live in a way that defies any explanation other than the presence of the risen Christ within us. Look, touch, see, believe! It isn't a ghost. It's the living God. Merry Christmas! Christ is Risen! Alleluia!