The Importance of Touching God

Easter 2B

John 20:19-31

Almighty and everlasting God, who in the Paschal mystery established the new covenant of reconciliation: Grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ's Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

“Why can’t we touch God?” a preschooler asked me once in chapel. Children always ask out loud the hard questions that lurk in our grown-up minds.  In chapel, I must have muttered something about God being too marvelous and mysterious to touch except in our hearts.  After all, John reassures us in today's Gospel that believing without seeing or touching is true faith indeed. If touching isn't important, though, why then does Jesus return with a real body—and a wounded body at that? Today, I side with the children: Jesus says to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side." Why, then, can't we touch God?

          [I'd like to try an experiment. I'd like any of you young children with us today to draw a picture of you touching God. What I'm betting is that you will draw a better picture with your crayons than I'm going to draw for us older folks with my words. Show me after church, and we'll see.]

          If we're going to be honest, we adults and teens have trouble with the whole concept of resurrection. We have trouble believing it; we have trouble conceptualizing it; we have trouble describing it. You might think that our struggle with the resurrection is just a modern reaction, born of our advanced scientific worldview. But look at the disciples: everyone from Mary Magdalene and the women at the tomb, to Thomas in today's lesson: they are all afraid and confused when confronted with their risen Lord.

The ink that has been spilled and the theological arguments that have been fought over explaining the resurrection fill whole libraries, and still we doubt and scratch our heads. A ghost--we could deal with that. A spiritual, disembodied feeling in our hearts--we know about those. A resuscitated body, even that—we have the medical equipment and know-how to produce that these days. But a new kind of body—a body that can walk through walls, yet still eat fish, a new body with old nail marks and spear gouges—come on, you’ve got to be kidding me! This Lent in chapel, once again one of our children put words to the problem for us: "Was Jesus a zombie, then?" he puzzled.

The body problem--It’s not just about Jesus, either, you know. We say in the Creed each week that we believe in the “resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” We are saying that we believe that our bodies will at some point rise again, that we too will join Jesus in this new kind of embodied life after death. (And no, we will not be zombies, either!) When I talk with Episcopalians about life after death, I hear about souls floating away to join with God in a kind of spiritual unity. I don't hear about bodies at all. But these responses don't represent the Christian doctrine that we officially ascribe to.

"Look," some might argue, "doesn't God have a problem with our bodies, anyway?" Doesn't the bible say that the lures of the flesh cause us to sin? Our ancient church Fathers and Mothers used to punish their bodies harshly by denying themselves sleep, food, and all pleasure. They believed that only denying the body would sufficiently strengthen their souls for heaven. Doesn’t God love our spirits best? Why not be done with bodies as soon as possible?

I wonder, though. Is it God who has little use for our frail bodies, or is it us? I remember that I didn’t have much use for my often sickly, always uncoordinated body, when I was younger. My arms were the puny ones that always collapsed in Red Rover; my feet were what tripped me up in dance class; and my lungs were what kept me home with asthma when I wanted to be out having fun. It was my mind that was my friend. It allowed me to escape my unreliable body in books and in the world of imagination. It was what brought me attention and approval at school. If I had to pick something to keep for eternity, it would be my disembodied mind or my loving soul. My body I could do without.

It wasn’t until I had children, I think, that I gained any appreciation at all for my body. The miracle of pregnancy and birth created in me a respect for what the body could do, for the way in which we are all so carefully and wondrously made. Indeed, when I think about Incarnation, about God “taking on flesh,” I think first of the baby Jesus. His silky smooth baby skin; his perfect little fingers and toes; his sweet baby smile …. If God is going to take up residence in some kind of body, the fresh, new, adorable body of a baby just might suffice.

God entering the world, loving the world, through the miracle of birth at Christmas—I have no problem with that kind of Incarnation. But our Christian faith does not just stop with Christmas. Like our bodies, the body of the sweet little baby Jesus must ache and bleed, must suffer and die, if he is to be truly human. It's important, then, that Jesus return to his disciples with his body, with the same frail, wounded body that had hung on the Cross. With a body that is hungry for some supper. With a wounded body that they are invited to see and to touch. This new, post-suffering, post-death body is also part of Incarnation.

It's important to notice that the triumphant God did not shed flesh as soon as possible. The triumphant Easter God did not come out of the tomb as a golden beam of light or a soft and loving breeze. The risen Christ came to the disciples, presenting them with his beaten-up body to touch, rather than filling their minds with some kind of spiritual enlightenment. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Touching the truth with our minds alone is not enough. We are made to touch it with our bodies. I think this is why Christian tradition clings to the reality of resurrection, even when no one can explain it to anyone else’s satisfaction … The resurrection of the dead is the radical insistence that matter matters to God," she says.^[1]

Matter matters to God. This is the lesson that we are to draw from the stories about bodily resurrection. To our doubts about the loveliness of our bodies, to our doubts about God’s commitment to our world, to our doubts about the strength and durability of Incarnation, to our doubts about the truth of Resurrection, Jesus says, “touch me and see.”

So taste God in the crisp wafer and in the wine that burns as it runs down your throat. Touch God in the warm hand squeezing yours as you pray together. See God's pain in the dark, broken corners of life. Hear God in the laughter that rings out from your family table. Smell God in the holy odor of candle wax. Feel God's scars as you carefully rub your finger across your own. Matter matters to God. All that pertains to bodies, matters to God. The resurrection of the body tells us that our salvation, our healing, our eternal life, is to be found there. Life is not just for the soul and faith is not just for the mind. Touch and see—and like Thomas, you too will have the strength to believe.

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^[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World, 62.

The Great Raptor Rescue

 Lent 2B

Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

Wow, aren't today's lessons exciting?! Their message is so exciting that Wave 3 News came out on Thursday for the first time since I've worked here. At least, I think that's why they came ... You see, the children from Louisville Classical Academy were out in front of the church with their teacher, our own Leigh Anne Preston, having PE class. All of a sudden, they looked up and started pointing and hollering about "a bird in the lamp." There was a large, red-shouldered hawk caught way up high in the hanging lamp over our main church doorway. Leigh Anne called Raptor Rehabilitation of Louisville, and they came right out to help.

As soon as I heard about the excitement, I came outside to see for myself. I looked up and gasped in self-recognition. Yes, it was truly amazing and strange, just like the Gospel. The bird's sad and frightened eyes told me the real story:

          When our hawk squeezed into that lamp, he was indeed on top of the world. He had been out hunting in the dark of the early morning. He had been successful; he had a fine dove meal in his talons, one that he had caught by his own wits and skill. He had slipped into this safe, new perch—one where he could see all around to know when enemies were approaching. He felt secure in his snug little spot. I imagine that for a few minutes, our hawk ate his breakfast with a sigh of satisfaction and a self-congratulatory wing-pat on the back.

          Until he realized that he was stuck, that is. Pretty soon, after dinner, he tried to stretch out his wings. Thud, they hit the hard glass. Panic growing, he tried another side, another angle. But nothing moved. His high and glorious perch had suddenly become a prison. As the sun rose, he could see freedom all around him. Birds flew, children ran, and tree limbs danced in the breeze. But our hawk couldn't move. He was isolated, alone. He was trapped.

He called out for help, with loud, piercing cries. He longed for his rescuer to fly in from above. He watched for a Super-Raptor with glistening wings and talons three feet long. It would swoop down from the sky. It would dash its diamond beak against the glass and shatter the evil lamp that had imprisoned him so cruelly. He would mount on its back like eagles' wings, and it would carry him away to freedom.

Our hawk stood first on one foot, then on the other, impatient for salvation from his terrible predicament. His eyes were still on the sky when the old van rumbled up to the church. Two seventy-year-old humans slowly emerged from the van and started looking around.

"That's all I need right now," muttered our hawk. "Humans!"

The humans gawked and then disappeared inside the church.

When they came back out, they were carrying the biggest ladder that our hawk had ever seen. Awkwardly, they maneuvered the ladder closer and closer to the lamp, making a terrible racket with it. They sure didn't look like they knew what they were doing. And then, putting on a flimsy-looking yellow glove, the old man from the van started climbing the ladder. His weak knees trembled, and his chest huffed and puffed, and his wife fretted for his safety down below. But he kept climbing. The ladder shook, but he kept climbing. The hawk screeched and glared and puffed up his neck feathers as fierce as he could. But the old man kept climbing. The hawk's natural enemy, he kept climbing.

Reaching the top of the ladder, the old man plunged his hand in through the sharp glass of the lamp, right into the hawk's angry, kicking talons. Gently, oh so gently, he took hold of our trapped bird. Our hawk screeched in terror and beat his wings, and the old man simply said, "Oh no you don't!" and held on tighter. Down the ladder they came together, one shaky step at a time.

"We're going to take you to our home so that you can rest and get better," the old woman explained to our hawk. "As soon as your cuts are healed, we'll bring you back here and let you fly away to freedom. We promise. Just trust us."

That was the great St. Andrew's raptor rescue.

I'd like for our children to draw the rescue for us—both the hawk and the lamp and the old man and old woman in their old van. I'd like for you to draw it on the paper in your worship bags that says "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."

When I saw our hawk in his glass prison, I saw myself. And when I saw the rescue, I saw God's love in Jesus Christ. "For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who trusts in him may not perish but may have life abundant." Thanks be to God, we have been rescued from the glass prisons in which we encase ourselves so readily.[1] We certainly don't know how to get out of them on our own. Our rescuer God takes on frail human form for the task. In Christ, our God trembles as he climbs up a Cross. In Christ, our God lets his body be pierced as we struggle and fight his loving grasp. In Christ, our God takes us down with him into the cleansing, healing waters of baptism. And in Christ, we rise with him, free and ready to fly.

We Christians sometimes like to make a big deal about the criteria of "believing" when we hear today's Gospel lesson. As if to be rescued, you have to do something a certain way or hold to some specific doctrine. Despite what we hear sometimes from the televangelists, we do not have a condemning God. It says so right here in our Gospel lesson. We have a God who loves the whole world. We have a God who refuses to condemn the world. God desires the flourishing of this swirling, whirling, broken and beautiful world. God’s light shines wherever it can in this world and seeks to transform the dark, closed off places, not to destroy them. God chooses not to judge the world. Instead, God sends God’s Son into the midst of it and uses its brokenness to lift him—and us—up into Life.

St. Paul writes in today's Epistle, "For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus … which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life." God made both humans and hawks to stretch our wings and soar on the currents of God's love for the whole world. Fly, hawks and humans, fly!

Amen.

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[1] For the "rescue" language, thank you to Bishop Owensby's wonderful blog https://jakeowensby.com/2018/03/10/looking-for-rescue/

That Glimpse that Sends Us Flying

       

 Last Epiphany, Year B

The Transfiguration

Mark 9:2-9

O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

           How many of you young people like to go down a good slide on the playground? I've seen most of you on the big, tall water slide that we set up at summer parish picnics, and I'm impressed. Even our three-year-olds climb up those steep steps and go zooming down the long slope into that cold water. And even though it's against the rules, I've seen some of you taking the slide head first, or twisting and turning with legs and arms sticking out all over as you descend. I just stand and shake my head in wonder.

You see, I have an embarrassing secret: when I was a little girl, I was afraid to go down any slides, even little ones. My parents would tempt me with an ice cream cone or extra allowance, but I still wouldn't do it. I didn't like that fast, slipping feeling, and I was afraid of falling hard onto my bottom or shooting up into the air like a cannonball. Even today, I don't like going down steep hills when I'm out hiking. I call out in a panicky voice, “Somebody’s going to have to hold my hand!” as soon as the gravel starts to slide around under my feet. I grasp for trees, even for thorn bushes, as soon as I feel like I might start slipping. I’ve even been known to sit down, bottom in the dirt, dignity abandoned, and scoot my way down a steep slope like a baby.

You might be braver than I am about sliding for fun, but what about the times when life becomes as wild and out of control as going down a water slide? What about the times when the grownups we love and depend on seem out of control, and we're afraid? What about when our own bodies and hormones change on us, and we can't even figure out our very own selves? What about all the times when the world around us gets so slippery and full of change that there's nowhere to hold on? Most of us don't like that at all, do we?

At times like that, we might even ask God to step in and get things under control for us. We often long for a God who will hold us upright when life gets topsy-turvy. We pray for God to keep us from falling on our metaphorical bottoms. But sometimes it's God who challenges us to change. Sometimes it's a glimpse of God that turns us upside down and sends us careening into unfamiliar places.

That's what happens in today's Gospel lesson. Take a look at the image on the first page of your bulletin. This is a traditional icon, or stylized image, of Jesus' Transfiguration that we read about today. You can see Jesus standing glorious and powerful in his bright robes, encased in white light. So far, so good.  You can see Moses, the mighty lawgiver, and Elijah, the brave prophet, standing proudly on either side of him. That's great! But where are Jesus' friends, James, Peter, and John? They aren't standing with Jesus on the heights. They didn't get to build a nice church up there, where they could shut themselves up with Jesus, like Peter wanted to do. Look at them lying sprawled out on the ground quite a ways back down the mountain. They look as if they have been physically thrown down from the higher slopes. Talk about scary slides! Look at Peter, covering his face. John is crouching on his knees, holding up a hand as if to shield himself from something. And James is sliding down the slope on his back, with his feet in the air. ([1]) They look like Jesus just pushed them down the big waterslide at St. Andrew's! And they don't look like they enjoyed it!

What is it about seeing Jesus filled with light that sends the disciples sliding down the mountain, dignity and control clearly abandoned? If the light surrounding Jesus is just a sign that Jesus is the Son of God, what's the big surprise? They've already seen him cure the sick and drive out demons. Why would that have pushed them over the edge?

What Jesus' early Jewish followers knew that we don't, is that this scene on the mountain is revolutionary. According to the Hebrew Scriptures, Moses and Elijah never died. Instead, they were both taken straight up to heaven by God. If Moses and Elijah are standing with Jesus on this mountain, then that means that the disciples must be witnessing a vision of heaven itself. For a brief moment, heaven and earth are one. That's enough of a sight to rock anyone's world!

But that's not all. The white clothes that appear on Jesus are a symbol for the Glory of God. God's Glory is the tremendous, powerful, awe-inspiring manifestation of God’s presence that goes before God into the world. In the Bible story, the great Moses isn't worthy even to look at God's Glory—All he's allowed to see is God's backside. But now, on this mountain, Jesus is radiating God's Glory for all to see. Here, we see the Glory of Almighty God shining in all of its fullness through a human body. Eternity enters human flesh. Divine love and grace pour forth into the world through Jesus.

What does that mean for us today? I like the way our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters put it. They believe that the light that poured through Jesus at the Transfiguration still pours into us today. They describe God’s Glory as a kind of Energy, a kind of Light that constantly streams forth from God’s hidden Essence. This Light is a gift of the Spirit. It's found everywhere but can only be seen through matter, the "stuff" of this world.

Orthodox Christians call the process of being filled with God's light “deification,” becoming God. Such language might make us uncomfortable. “Becoming God” is just for Jesus, we think. This deification isn't something that we get from being perfect, though. It's not even something that we can earn for ourselves by our good deeds. It's merely something that we open ourselves up to in prayer.

Rowan Williams describes God’s Energy entering into us like the music that pours into musicians while they are performing. In making music, musicians are carried on the tide of an energy, by a great current of music that is becoming present and immediate in their actions.([2]) When God’s energy fills us, it doesn’t change who we are, but it fills us with an energy that allows who we truly are to shine forth—beloved children of a loving God.

Listen to the way in which poet Malcolm Guite describes it:

"The Love that dances at the heart of things / Shone out upon us from a human face / And to that light the light in us leaped up,/ We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,/ A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope/ Trembled and tingled through the tender skin. Nor can this blackened sky, this darkened scar/ Eclipse that glimpse of how things really are."([3])

For me, it's when I get those little glimpses of how things really are that I get blown away. It happened to me in ninth grade, back when I was a budding scientist, born and bred. I thought church was stupid, and Christians were hypocrites. One day, in the middle of a boring history class, a teacher unveiled God for me in the simple beauty of words, and suddenly I caught a glimpse of a Light that I'd ever seen before. The ground shook, and my microscope fell from my hands. I began chasing after God, and I've never been the same.

It happened again when I was in college, buried in grades and ambition and papers to write. I wandered into a grimy, pitiful Appalachian Headstart center. And there the innocent blue eyes of a three-year-old pierced my heart. Those eyes were so clear, so imploring, so wise, that I saw all the suffering of the world in them. I saw God's Light in them. I saw the truth in them. And I saw that children matter. All children. And my world shook, and I slid down the mountain, never again free from the responsibility that that truth laid upon my heart.

My prayers for our Rite 13 celebrities today—and for us all—are lives filled with such glimpses of God's Light. Light that changes us, that fills us with love, and that throws us down the mountain, arms open in surrender, feet following Jesus on the Way.

           

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[1] See Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light, 3

[2] Ibid, 6.

[3] Malcom Guite, "Transfiguration," https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2017/4-august/comment/columnists/poet-s-corner