“Flesh and Bones”

Rev. Alice Hildebrand
First Congregational Church of Deer Isle, UCC
Sunset Congregational Church, UCC
Luke 24:36b-48

I don’t know how many of you saw The Ellsworth American for April 16th – in it was the first article of the series on the “relevance” of the church which I told you about a few weeks ago.  And, the conclusion one would have most likely drawn from the article was that relevance in a church is measured by number of folks in attendance. And, I have to admit, it’s an assumption that I might have made myself at some point, because I think we are encouraged, generally, to think of “success” in terms of “bigger;” “more;” “greatest number;” and so forth.  Well — I am a pastor, and a member, like many of you here, of a mainline church, this church – and we do not have 300 folks in attendance on a Sunday morning.  But we know that we are relevant.  And I am glad that the premise of the article – “mainline in decline,” a very familiar refrain – made me think again about what relevance really is.  (And by the way, the second article in the series, appearing this past week on April 23rd, gives a very different take on relevance from the first one.  Read both!)

Despite the pop Christianity idea that Jesus was a marvelous CEO, a highly efficient manager and organizer of people, who psyched out what would best motivate his leadership team in order to produce the best results for the Kingdom of Heaven, the actual evidence from the Gospels is rather that Jesus moved from place to place and person to person in a casual way, stopping to preach and heal and feed wherever there was need, wherever people came to him.  It may have been one lonely Samaritan woman drawing water at a well, or a crowd of five thousand on a hillside – he gave complete attention to whoever was present, and didn’t hold back.  One person’s soul, one person’s pain and struggle, was as relevant as the souls and the needs of a vast crowd.  He wept over the death of Lazarus no less than he wept for the city of Jerusalem.  He was relevant because of who he was, not because of his “numbers.”  He was relevant even when he went off alone to pray – which he frequently did.

This morning’s story from Luke is classic Jesus.  By our system of naming days, Jesus died on a Friday, and as Luke tells it, was laid in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, his body un-anointed because it was by then so late in the day that the Sabbath, the day of rest, was beginning.  The next day, Saturday for us, the women who had prepared the spices and ointments for Jesus’ burial observed the Sabbath, and rested.  When they went to the tomb on our Sunday morning, early, they found to their surprise that it was opened up and Jesus’ body gone.  Two angelic figures told them that Jesus was risen, and they went to tell the rest of Jesus’ followers, who didn’t believe them.  Later in the day, two of these followers are on the road from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, and they meet up with the Risen Jesus, although they don’t recognize him until the very end of the encounter, when he sits to eat with them. Luke says, “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”  They immediately leave Emmaus, and return to the city where the others still are, and are just telling them that they have seen Jesus, that he is risen, indeed, when he appears amongst them again.  And despite the fact that they are in the midst of talking about his appearance on the road to Emmaus, when he is suddenly with them, they are startled and terrified.

Classic Jesus – showing up un-announced, at suppertime, with the little people, on their home turf, bringing a simple greeting of peace.  No flashy entrance with angels, choirs, thunder, and lightning.  Classic disciples, too – Clueless, as they have been through much of their time with Jesus when he was alive!  “You say you saw Jesus? Jesus who?  Where?  What was he doing? Well, but who are you to say a thing like that! Yes, I know he said he’d never leave us, that he’d see us in Galilee, but how could that be true? Oh, my gosh, yikes, what’s that, it looks like Jesus – but it must be a ghost!!”  And what does Jesus say to them?  “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”  Flesh and bones … can’t get much more basic and down to earth than that.  And then, before opening their minds to understand the scriptures, he asks for something to eat.  Classic Jesus.  The physical is the foundation for the spiritual.  Nourishment for the body precedes nourishment for the soul. Jesus, the Incarnation – the enfleshment – of God.  God known in the physical, the tangible, the concrete, the specific.  Jesus, the intersection of God’s infinity with time and space.  The disciples give him a piece of their broiled fish.  He eats it.

Jesus was a man who lived a very long time ago, in a small, unimportant place; but we also understand Jesus as God wearing flesh.  God with us.  The embodiment, the incarnation, of God’s love.  Not enough for God to be the transcendent — all powerful – omniscient — everywhere.  God wants to be with us. We are flesh and bones, and within our flesh and bones we experience God.  The scriptures tell us Jesus was born in a stable.  They say he worked with his hands to make a living until the day when he was called out into the desert to be baptized amongst sinners. They tell us how he loved the little people, the irrelevant people, the ones who came to hear him speak and followed him all the way to his cross.  Jesus has died.  So very long ago, so very far away. Yet they tell us he is Risen.  They tell us he is everywhere in the world.

Which brings us again to relevance – what is relevance?  How do we determine what or who is relevant?  Is it numbers?  Is it size? Is it newness?  Is it tradition? Or is it presence, respect, honesty, compassion, quiet doing of what needs to be done?  We so want our religion to be a matter of grandeur and glamour – yet Jesus our teacher was a humble person.  And the Risen Christ who can be known everywhere in creation, revealing God to us, is wounded.

The fact that we are considering this matter of relevance during our Earth Day worship deepens our reflection; for in our human rush to grow, to advance, to amass wealth and fame and power, we have so often assumed that the health of the ecosystems of ocean or woodland or meadow are irrelevant, compared to what we have called “progress.”  Focused on our desires, figuring out the quickest ways to get ourselves to where we want to be, we have overlooked the quiet ways of earth. Like Jesus, the earth is unimpressed by wealth and power – the sweet blessing of rain falls on the just and the unjust, the sun rises in exquisite beauty for the sinner and the saint, the trees leaf out, the flowers bloom, fish and birds and animals live their lives. Like Jesus, the earth and its ways reveal God’s love and purpose – an unending, freely offered gift.

What is relevance?  Flesh and bones.  Bread and fish. Water, air, earth.  Things seen – and things unseen.  Oxygen. Carbon dioxide. The delicate balance that makes our atmosphere.  Geothermal vents in the deepest parts of the ocean floor, discovered only in the last 20 years to be teeming with life.  Entire ecosystems in the tops of redwood trees. Also only discovered in the past twenty years.  Bacteria.  Microbes.  Cells.  Creatures whose names and purpose we don’t yet know.  What is relevance?  Bedrock. Unseen veins of mineral. Aquifers deep underground.  Light shining in darkness.  Breath of life.  Hope known in community, word of comfort, of truth. One person sitting alone in prayer, opening heart and mind to God; by so doing, beginning to change the world.

In the words of theologian John Cobb, Jr., from our liturgy this morning — “Since what makes for life and love and hope is not simply the decision of one individual or another, but a Spirit that moves us all, I do not have to suppose that my own efforts are of great consequence in order to believe them to be worthwhile.” [John Cobb, quoted by Jeanyne Slettom, at the Process and Faith website, http://www.processandfaith.org/]  What is relevance?  Flesh and bones.  Thin skin of life-giving earth and air.  Human longing to be loved, to be at peace, to be good, to be one with God.  Simple human work for the well-being of others, human obedience to the nudge of God.

Christ is Risen, Christ is everywhere Risen though wounded, and by our faith, and with our flesh and bones, we make Christ’s body whole.  Amen.