Becoming the Body

April 6, 2008 (Luke 24:13-35)

Our passage this morning has a rich and meaningful tradition that has shaped

many faith expressions. The image of two people walking alongside each other with

Jesus appearing to them is formative for the movement called spiritual companioning

where, like on the road to Emmaus, small groups of people travel alongside each other by

listening to each other’s story. The one listening then pays attention to how Christ might

be present in their lives. Others have taken this passage as a model of Christ as a pastoral

care giver. The context is one of grief and crisis. The two individuals traveling together

have just experienced loss; not only the loss of someone close to them, but also the loss

of their hopes and dreams for the people of Israel. Jesus comes alongside them and

simply listens to their story and remains present with them through their grief. These are

helpful images of this passage and I am sure there are many others but this morning I

want to ask a particular question or series of questions of this passage.

We have just passed Easter Sunday and proclaimed the resurrection, which we

hold as our hope for the future. But Christ did not ascend directly into heaven, his body

continued to move about and encounter people. So what was Jesus doing during this

time? What is the purpose for the types of visitations he makes before he ascends into

heaven? Why didn’t he just stay on earth? What has changed after the resurrection? His

body seems somehow different and the Gospels make sure we are aware of that. People

close to him do not recognize him. He can walk through walls and will vanish in an

instant. Just what is going on here? Is this part of Jesus’ life also significant? How so?

How is this event, this encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, part of the larger

story that also includes us as the church?

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 It is all too common to say that the goal of the Christian is to imitate Christ, to be

followers of Christ. We wrestle with the parables that Jesus told us. We try to live an

ethic of neighbourly love. However, is it also possible that we can learn something from

the actual body of Jesus? If it was only important that certain teachings were given and

certain actions performed then that could be have been done by someone else. But it

seemed to be important, indeed crucial, that the one true God took the form of a body and

lived among us.

Before you think it is silly or irrelevant to pay attention to how Jesus’ body is

dealt with in the Bible think about the role of the body in our culture. I can’t image that

there is anyone here who is not concerned about the body. Advertisements, music

videos, movies and artists centre on bodies to communicate their message. In fact this

Sunday we are beginning an adult Sunday School elective using a book called Body Talk

that explores the overall health of our bodies. Many of us don’t really even feel

comfortable in our own bodies or feel uncomfortable talking to our children about bodies.

We discipline our bodies, we indulge our bodies and we fight over what certain bodies

can and cannot do. We say that bodies with one type of plumbing can only be married to

bodies with another type of plumbing. We say that once a body has begun to be formed

it is sacred and must be protected. We argue over how much a body should be covered.

Much of the world still says that those with a certain body will have more rights than

those with another type even if it just means that your body happened to be manufactured

with another colour. We think that within the body are laws that determine how we will

act. We want to categorize the body. Years ago there was a reoccurring character on

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Saturday Night Live named Pat. People could not figure if Pat was male or female. It

drives us crazy to live with ambiguity or uncertainty when it comes to our bodies.

The body is a scientific, political and religious reality. If you are still not

convinced I suspect that most of you have heard about the episode on Oprah where a

person who was born biologically female, lived as a man by having mostly cosmetic and

hormonal medical procedures, married a woman and now because his wife could not

conceive decided to have the child himself as he still had the internal reproductive

organs. Did you follow all of that? Makes for good daytime programming but it has

stirred up legal, medical and religious controversy . . . all because of the body. What is

the limit of what we can and should do with our bodies? How do we make these

decisions? What are our bodies in relationship with God? It is not quite as simple a topic

as it first appears. And, it turns out that paying attention to the body of Jesus may just

help us out.

When it comes to Jesus we often don’t want to think about his body. It is strange

that something as important as God taking the form of a body is largely neglected in how

we read the Bible and how we think theologically. While we will return to our story on

the road to Emmaus let’s take some time to look at and think about the body of Jesus. I

am indebted to the theologian Graham Ward who has taken much time and effort to

explore Jesus’ body as a significant and central theological expression in the gospels.

Ward reminds us that right from Jesus’ birth we are confronted with something odd.

Never mind the story from Oprah but here we have a virgin apparently giving birth and

what’s more it is a male. Now I am sure they were not thinking of it at the time but it

takes the male Y chromosome for this to happen. Less then normal circumstances none

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the less, a story prone to some suspicion and skepticism. As Ward works through the

gospel accounts he notices that theologically speaking Jesus’ body is not stable. His

body did not follow along a fixed and static trajectory. When Jesus goes up to a

mountain with Peter, James and John it says that he was transformed, he morphed, his

whole appearance was dazzling white and then a cloud covered them and God spoke.

Jesus’ body was not limited to being a biological male. It was much more abundant,

through his body the presence and glory of God is revealed in beauty at the

transfiguration.

Ward goes on to look at the last supper that Jesus has with his disciples. Once at

the table Jesus says and does something strange. He takes a piece of bread, breaks it and

the then holds it up and says this is my body. We as a church of course still wrestle with

what exactly that means but the intention is that indeed somehow the body of Jesus is

present to all believers and it is to be his body that should sustain them. His body here is

understood as neither male nor female, it is food, sustenance.

At the crucifixion there is yet another transformation of Jesus’ body particularly

as Jesus’ side is pierced on the cross. John records that from Jesus side a sudden flow of

blood and water poured from him. This final outpouring of blood and water can be

viewed theologically as the life of the church, as a birthing event. In this way the

biologically male body of Jesus is framed theologically in the feminine as a mother

birthing the church. It may seem odd or even uncomfortable to view Jesus as feminine or

as mother but I suspect that it is due to the role that we give biology. Men simply are not

mothers, as we see with the buzz from Oprah. This was not an issue for the ancient and

medieval church where it was quite appropriate to understand Jesus as a mother who

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births, nourishes and cares for us. In the absence of females some abbots in early

monasteries looked to Jesus to form an appropriate mothering role for their monks. It is

still difficult for us as we say that our bodies are comprised of two different, actually we

call them opposite genders. In fact some writers even think they came from different

planets. How could one person shift between the two expressions? Even after significant

shifts in our understanding of gender we are still cautious of being identified too closely

with the other gender. In the Gospels the body of Jesus is always important and that he is

male is important but it is not as important as his body being a medium for God’s work

and revelation and this will always been something beyond the categories and limits that

we place on bodies.

This brings us to the resurrection. Here Jesus appears to take on almost ghost-like

qualities where he disappears or walks through walls and yet he also asks for food to

point out that he can still eat, that he is still a human body. He still moves and breathes in

his body but it is becoming even more unstable, more mysterious. What is the point of

Jesus’ body in these stories? What is teaching us about his and our own bodies?

First there is Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene outside the tomb. Mary

came early in the morning to the tomb only to find that the stone was removed and Jesus

was gone. She ran back to the disciples to tell them that Jesus had been taken away. The

disciples joined her at the tomb and then it says that after they left she stood outside the

tomb crying. She looked into the tomb again and this time saw two angels seated on

either side of where Jesus would have been laid. At this time Jesus appears behind Mary

but, like our companions on the road to Emmaus, she does not recognize him.

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It is when he says her name that she recognizes him, calls out teacher! and holds on to

him. But he tells Mary not to cling on to her. In an ironic twist Jesus tells a woman who

has no formal power in their society not to try and control and possess his body. She has

lost him once and does not want to let that happen again. Relationships, though, require

respectful space even and especially between genders. The church and the western world

in general has had through much of history a possession over women’s rights in public.

This is an inappropriate use of our bodies.

It was in fact only some time in the 1700s that women were considered as distinct

from men. Most models for understanding humans at that time placed women as an

inferior form of a man. Men had clung onto women as a possession, an object to be

controlled. And so in this ironic twist Jesus reminds Mary that we cannot and should not

control another person, another body. We also cannot withdraw and reject either and so

we draw close to people as Jesus did so that we can cross boundaries whether they are

boundaries of gender and grief as it is here or across any boundary that keeps people

nameless and debilitated. Intimacy, however, cannot occur if someone attempts to

control or manipulate the other. We have to leave room for the mysterious and

unpredictable held in our body and in the body of our neighbour.

After appearing to Mary Jesus appears to the disciples, but the disciple Thomas

was not with them and when they tell Thomas that Jesus had risen he says that he won’t

believe it unless he can stick his hand into Jesus’ wounds. Thomas got his chance as the

text says that Jesus appeared to them again a week later. Jesus approaches Thomas

directly and tells him to place his hand into his side. Here again is an intimate scene

between two bodies. And again it is ironic, at least in our culture that it is between men.

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Jesus allows himself to take what seems to be almost a feminine posture of receiving

Thomas in this scene. Even the most sensitive man can withdraw from opening himself

in vulnerability to another man. Men have built up too much power over history in our

culture and resist the risk losing more of it. But Jesus says that this, this is what our

bodies are for. By opening up our wounds we may yet help others to heal. Here the

lesson is opposite from Mary. Mary was not to cling to Jesus body. Thomas was

isolating himself whether it was to protect himself or reject others it doesn’t matter. Jesus

is now showing Thomas that we must draw close to others and we must often cross

boundaries to do it. To isolate yourself or reject others is also to close off the type of

mutual intimate relationship that Jesus was establishing between bodies.

There are numerous recent books being written by men talking about men’s crisis

of identity in the church. I find it fascinating that in nearly all responses the answer is a

turn into some sort of hypermasculine man’s man. The new Christian man is rugged,

wild, raw and dangerous. And it is fine to be all those things. In fact it would be helpful

to allow more faithful risk taking in a culture that demands we always play it safe. There

is a place for unrestrained expression of faith . . . but . . . if that expression leads to

segregation or the rejection of other groups then it cannot be holy. It seems as though

part of the feminist movement was the ability for some women to integrate aspects of a

more traditionally masculine self-understanding. Men it seems had to respond then by

becoming even more masculine. There is no doubt that both the men and women

following Jesus were in the midst of rugged and wild experience. In fact it says explicitly

that the doors were locked, as they were likely in fear of what some religious leaders

might have done to them. They did not conform passively to their religious structure.

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But for this expression to be sustainable and for it grow it is necessary to open yourself

up vulnerably to those around you. We must expect and embrace that these intimacies

will take both feminine and masculine expressions, regardless of what type of body we

have.

This brings us to this morning’s story. The story is not unlike Thomas as these

two are leaving Jerusalem discouraged, not knowing that Jesus was alive. They were

trying to figure out just what happened and what it meant. Jesus, his body again

mysterious, comes alongside them asking questions. The three of them walk and talk for

awhile until they reached the village that the two were traveling towards. Jesus seemed

to be traveling further along when it says ‘they urged him strongly’ to stay with them for

night. They sat down to eat and there Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, broke it and

gave it to them. It says, “then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” The

imagery is of course draws us to the last supper. This time before they were able to

respond as Mary and Thomas were able it says simply “and he disappeared from their

sight.” His body in this story begins as a stranger but becomes their guest and is the

transformed into bread, as their shared fellowship and sustenance. How does this

happen? Jesus is revealed to them as they welcome the stranger into their midst.

Here the body of Jesus, as the bread of communion, is present to the extant that

the stranger, the one unknown to us, is welcomed in. This of course reminds us of the

need to love our neighbour like the Good Samaritan but it also, again, tells us something

of Jesus’ body. It comes alongside us a stranger, not fully known or revealing itself. It is

the openness to intimacy in all these occasions that allows God to become known.

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 Jesus’ body does appear in many respects to be unstable. It is not fixed and

constant. This is contrary to our culture. We want so much to be certain of knowing why

I am this way, or why men or women are that way, or why Muslims are that way. These

definitions create boundaries that exclude. It is not that differences don’t exist, we are

most certainly not all the same, but we must allow our bodies and our differences to be

changed and transformed as we allow ourselves to be open to others. Our passage this

morning reminds us that the purpose of our bodies is to create spaces with one

another where God can be revealed and where God transform us. In all of the

encounters mentioned here some sort of revelation or new vision occurs.

We are also drawing close to another event that involves Jesus’ body. May 1st is

Ascension Day. The book of Acts tells us that the body of Jesus ascended into heaven

before the disciples’ eyes. Jesus says earlier in John, “if I do not go away, the Helper will

not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus’ body now opens itself up

finally and fully to those who believe in him. The Spirit that dwelt fully in Christ is now

coming into the world in a new way. This becomes central for the Apostle Paul who

recognizes that now it is the church that is the body of Christ. So if we are to be the

church, which is the body of Christ, we need to be reminded of the significance of Jesus’

own body on earth. Paul, again, calls us to this as well.

We cannot let the biology or gender of our body define us, we cannot let our

social position define us, we cannot let our economic position define us. Our bodies find

meaning and purpose only as they reside in the body of Christ. Paul says flatly that

“there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in

Christ.” We have our meaning spiritually and theologically in Christ. Here our bodies

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become so much more than our cultural and biological definitions and so too is the body

of your neighbour. Any labels we allow to be placed on a person or group limits the

ability for God to be revealed through them.

As a church we are long overdue in revisiting our definition and purpose of the

human body. We have accepted the idea that bodies are to be clearly identified and

defined and then set into specific roles or categories. It doesn’t matter if these are liberal

or conservative categories. The body is a strange and mysterious place. This can

certainly lead to our own discomfort in how understand our own bodies or talk about it to

our children. We would just as soon have some control over our bodies so as to not have

any surprises. But that is not the theological vision for our body.

The body of Jesus remained mysterious with its significance changing depending

on the relationship. What was consistent in Jesus’ body was that he never used it to

control another person. Jesus also treated every other body as worthy of respect. In this

way he used his body to stand between those with power and those without. Jesus knew

that in every relationship when properly approached there is space for God to act and be

revealed. Jesus said earlier in Matthew, “For where two or three come together in my

name, there am I with them.”

That is the point and purpose of our bodies and of the church as the body of

Christ, to create spaces where our wounds are revealed, where people are released from

possession, and where the sustenance of Christ can nourish. Our culture tells that our

bodies are machines for consumptions, trophies to be displayed and objects to be

controlled. Jesus came and demonstrated that any time two bodies gather the one true

can be present in power and glory. Amen.

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