How do we preach our faith as physical and alive when the Body we are supposed to love is nowhere to be found?
Gospel Reading: John 20:19-31
For Sunday, May 1 , 2011: Year A - Easter 2
The Sunday after Easter is the least attended worship service of the year. The next least attended is the Sunday after Christmas. I guess folks feel like after all the gearing up and looking forward to the big events of the church year, they want a break; we need a rest.
Packed House
Taking some time to rest and recuperate after we have had a baby is understandable; it takes a lot of out of the Body, but after a resurrection? It seems like that would be energizing, revolutionary, invigorating, and world changing. A lot of babies have been born, but no body has ever risen from the dead before. After declaring the resurrection, I would think the following Sunday would be packed.
This weeks Gospel reading seems to support the idea, that it is not a week to take off, but a time to get a lot done. There is certainly a lot of theological work John is trying to get done in these verses 19 – 31. It starts with the confirmation of the literal, physical resurrected body of Jesus vere homo. Then to John’s very quick version of the Great Commission, and onto a one verse Pentecost. This is followed by one of the hard questions in this text: if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain them they are retained. It really can’t be that the crucifixion and the resurrection of the Christ was to give the power of eternal forgiveness of sins to the whims of humans? But I will leave the exploration that hard question to others. I am interested in the Body.
Vere Homo
After crashing through all that at break neck speed, John slows it down to spend the majority of this verses focusing on his Body. Thomas says he wants to see the Body, see the wounds. Jesus arrives and very graphically shows him the wounds, and in a very intimate gesture, invites him to place his finger/hand inside them. There can be no doubt that this is the Body of Jesus the Christ, very man, very God.
That Jesus literally, physically rose from the dead is the foundation of the Christian faith. This Sunday’s reading starts and ends with it, giving just a verse each to the Great Commission, Pentecost, the rest is all about the Body. After so much emphasis on the Body of Jesus through the Lent and Easter seasons, how do we preach with out one? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe? There really are not any other options are there?
The Hardest Question
How do we preach our faith as physical and alive when the Body we are supposed to love is nowhere to be found?
Russell Rathbun is a preacher at House of Mercy in St. Paul, Minnesota, the author of Midrash on the Juanitos (Cathedral Hill Press, 2010) and the curator of The Hardest Question.
