Body Worship

T

he story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is a resurrection story, one of a handful in the gospels that purport to be records of encounters with the Risen Lord. But more is going on in this story than a report of a post-resurrection appearance of Jesus. I believe it has something to do with worship and how we understand—or whether we understand—what worship is all about. And if we understand what worship is about, chances are we come closer to understanding what Christian life is about, and what it has to do with the life we are actually living.

Rembrandt, "Road to Emmaus"

Many are the motivations for people to worship. But far down the list of many churchgoing Christians is Jesus’ resurrection. It would strike many as phony to give that as a reason for worship, as opposed, say, to being able to pray, getting some practical guidance from a sermon, being in a supportive community of like-minded people. Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that if you are such a churchgoing person you don’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. I don’t for a moment imagine you have missed the connection between his triumph over death and what the Church has taught you about how that somehow is the lynchpin of what the whole Christian enterprise is about. Furthermore, you might even be convinced that the entire purpose of the Church is to get you ready to go to heaven when you die, a fate that awaits you precisely because Jesus actually died to make that possible.

But there is indeed a problem with Christian worship—and it is far deeper than sermons that don’t speak to us, or music we might not particularly like. The problem is that the Church through the ages has by and large failed to understand the real thrust of resurrection. This is exactly why this 24^th chapter of St. Luke’s gospel can really be helpful in our understanding what worship and therefore Christian life is really about.

Take a close look at the story. It begins with two disciples walking along on a Sunday afternoon—the day we call Easter—who are clueless about the resurrection of Jesus. They were part of the company of disciples who had heard from some women earlier that morning who had been to the tomb and, not finding the body, had seen a vision of angels declaring that he was alive. Luke has already told us that those who heard the women’s testimony did not believe a word of it, which to them was just an idle tale. Up comes a stranger our of nowhere who joins them on the road.  These two do not recognize him. He begins what is known as a midrash within this story which itself is a midrash—an interpretation, largely symbolic—of biblical texts and the events they cite. That sets the stage for the two men to invite him to stay and have a bite to eat. There is a gap in the story at that point. We aren’t told how this stranger who is a guest suddenly got to be in the position of host, whose place it was to take bread, bless and break it. But it is in that very action that their eyes are opened and they recognize the stranger to be Jesus himself. Immediately Jesus vanishes. Then it all falls into place: the midrash about Messiah, the effect that his exposition of scripture had on them, the way the mysterious appearance of Jesus tracks with the women’s story of what the angels had told them. They rush back to Jerusalem to report what had happened. They find the other disciples, discover that by this time Jesus had appeared to Simon, and as the disciples are talking about all this, Jesus himself comes and stands among them.

That is enough of the story to get at least the major points Luke is making. One is that the resurrection body of Jesus is not to be confused with his spirit in a non-physical appearance: he is not a ghost. Second, the resurrection body is not a resuscitated corpse, because he is able to appear and vanish at will, regardless of space, time, and circumstances. Third, there is continuity between Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified and the risen Jesus, inasmuch as the resurrection body bears the scars of his passion and death, which fact the disciples see in the passage immediately following the Emmaus story. Fourth, a transformation has taken place, because, though the body belongs to Jesus, it has changed to the point that he is not readily recognizable.

Now we will never know until we get to the great seminar in the skies exactly what happened to Jesus between his death on Friday and sunup on Sunday. But one thing is for certain. Something happened to the physical body of Jesus. And thus any resurrection we want to talk about has to do with the physical body, our physical bodies. And we know well enough what is going to happen to them, don’t we? They are going to die; and one way or the other they are going to return to the nothingness out of which they came: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But the church has been letting itself off the hook of talking about the physical body for too long by transmuting resurrection into immortality. The issue of what happens after death might be of great importance, but the more important thing is what the resurrection means for this life, here and now. Even the most devoted believer in an afterlife, of whatever kind, will tell you that what happens there is directly tied to what we do here. From that I conclude that it is wise to make a short list of things not to worry about and put afterlife first on that list. Concentrate on living life joyfully, lovingly, gratefully, kindly, and the afterlife, whatever shape it takes, will take care of itself. You have my word on that.

Michael Triegel, "Resurrection of Christ"

What we miss by appropriating resurrection as simply about life in another dimension called heaven or some similar name is that nothing of such a life is dependent upon the body. Think about it: there is no earthly reason why a resurrection of a body is necessary for a living presence to be experienced from the other side of death. Examples are far too numerous of apparitions, ghosts, spirits, and other nonmaterial beings. Very likely a number of people who are reading this could give a detailed account of having experienced one or more such things.

So what does the resurrection have to do with your body? And what does all this have to do with worship? Well, first, remember your baptism. What do we remember when we forget everything else about baptism? It is “down under and back up again.” It is a ritual death and resurrection. (We are in the land of metaphor and symbol here.)

Orthodox Baptism

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When we are, as it were, pulled up out of the water we are united with the Risen Lord in the resurrection. Yes, it has a future, that resurrection life, beyond our mortal death. But it certainly does not wait for death in order to begin. So whatever we do with our life in Christ we do in the very body that is reading these words right now.

Edward Knippers, "The Resurrection of Christ"

Second, what baptism symbolizes with water, bread and wine symbolize in food. The same reality, namely New Life, is expressed in both the sacraments. And because they are sacraments, baptism and eucharist are means by which we receive God—called “Holy Spirit” in Holy Baptism and called “The Body and Blood of Christ” in Holy Eucharist. The second most obvious thing about sacraments is that they are physical means of receiving God. The most obvious thing of all is that you can’t receive a sacrament without being a body.

Font, pulpit, and altar of St. Stephen and the Incarnation
Episcopal Church, Washington, DC

What do we make of Jesus’ identifying himself with Bread, which he is reported to have done more than once? Why would he have chosen wine to identify with? I suggest that these things that were in first century Judaism never used the way Jesus used them in his Last Supper (bread as human body, wine as human blood) are the key to unlocking God’s own identification with the human body. And not just the human body, but the human body as one instance of all creation. We are so used to thinking, even arguing, that God is totally distinct from the natural world that it is challenging for us to see that “God” literally makes no sense apart from something to be God of. If God is pure Being, or pure Spirit, or pure Energy, or pure Consciousness, then that Being-Spirit-Energy-Consciousness must have a receptor in order to be meaningful at all. So, in a real sense, what we proclaim about the Bread and Wine in today’s eucharist, namely that they are the means by which we receive the real presence of Christ-God, is true of everything in the entire cosmos, including you. The Incarnation neither started nor stopped with Jesus. God has been expressing God’s self from the Big Bang onwards in that enormous Body called the cosmos, the universe. And that means that there is no place where God is not, nothing in all creation that does not tingle with the atoms and quarks that come straight from the heart of Being itself, nothing animate or inanimate that is too mean to be the home of the Holy.

Priest reading The Holy Gospel
Father Sam Desordi-Leite, Sr. Priest, St. Stephen and the Incarnation
Episcopal Church, Washington

If you don’t believe it, just read the gospels, including the non-canonical gospel of Thomas. In that gospel Jesus says, “Move a stone and I am there. Split a piece of wood and I am there.” And Jesus is forever affirming people, loving life, enjoying friendship, going to the tables of friends and strangers and having a meal, drinking to the point that in his words they call him a glutton and a winebibber.  This is not the picture of someone who disdains the material world, not the profile of someone who woos us away from our bodies so that we can go off somewhere and lead a “spiritual” life apart from the bodies we are created to be.

And that is what makes good worship. Worship is acting out what we believe. And good worship does that well. Bring your entire self into the act of worship, leaving nothing out. Bring art, bring music, bring dance and celebrate life. Bring your arthritic knees, the pain in your neck, or the cancer you’re being treated for. Bring your muscular body and your tattoos.  Bring your overweight body or your anorexia. Bring your babies to be baptized and your corpses to be buried. Bring your aspirations and your shame, your vulnerabilities and your pride, your sexual experiences and your attempts to repress them. Bring your laughter and your tears. As the Ash Wednesday collect reminds us, God hates nothing that God has made. And in the words that Anglicans have been saying for hundreds of years, “Here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.” When we do that, the Bread of Life is mysteriously broken open and broken up, and our eyes from time to time recognize the One who is living within us, who only vanishes from our sight to reappear again and again, always more gloriously present with us than we’ve ever imagined.

Based on a sermon on Christian worship preached on February 10, 2019, at St. Luke’s Church Episcopal, Bethesda, Maryland.

©Frank Gasque Dunn, 2019

Body Awareness

 Luke 24:36b-48

            Last summer a friend of mine told me that she had written a book that had just been published under the title Losing Sight, Gaining Vision.  Sheridan Gates has a form of macular degeneration the onset of which happened when she was quite young.  Her adult life has been a progressive adjustment to the gradual loss of sight. 

           

            I immediately got and read her book.  In recounting her steady loss of vision, she writes about how she learned to listen to her body.  Little by little she learned to shift from seeing her loss of vision as a liability to seeing it as a gift.  Sheridan began to see herself not as a victim of illness, but rather as a healer.  And healing for her and through her for others has taken the form of learning how to embrace her body, learning that though it was losing the capacity to see, the body was learning a new way to have vision.  The body has its own wisdom.[1]

            For the last three years I have been on a pilgrimage to explore ever more deeply what the resurrection of the body actually means.  Sheridan’s book, and more recently Sheridan herself, have helped me in a process of what she and I call “spiritual coaching” to grasp that resurrection of the body is a way of life.  It is a way of embracing the body, of listening to it, of taking seriously that it may be not an impediment to spiritual life but indeed the key to it. 

            I believe that affirming the body is the central point Luke wants us to get in the gospel for today.  The risen Jesus has appeared on the road to Emmaus to two disciples who are discussing the events that ended his life—and the strange tale that some women of their group had told about going to the tomb and learning that his body was missing.  The wayfaring stranger proceeds to explain all the things concerning himself that the scriptures had foretold.  Still the two disciples do not recognize him.  They invite him in to dine with them when they have reached Emmaus.  While he is at table with them, he—the guest—takes bread and blesses and breaks it.  Then their eyes are opened, and they recognize him just before he vanishes.  They rush back to Jerusalem and tell the Eleven and their companions what they have experienced and hear from them that it is true:  the Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon Peter.  Suddenly Jesus comes and stands among them, saying, “Peace be with you.”  They are terrified, thinking they are seeing a ghost.  He invites them to look at his hands and feet, saying that a ghost does not have flesh and bones as he does.  While they are still wondering and disbelieving for sheer joy, he asks them for something to eat.  They give him a piece of broiled fish, which he takes and eats right before them. 

            Whatever else may be said of this story, it quite clearly establishes four things.  One is that the resurrection body of Jesus is not to be confused with his spirit in a non-physical appearance: he is not a ghost.  Second, the resurrection body is not a resuscitated corpse, because he is able to appear and vanish at will, regardless of space, time, and circumstances.  Third, there is continuity between Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified and the risen Jesus, inasmuch as the resurrection body bears the scars of his passion and death.  Fourth, a transformation has taken place, because, though the body belongs to Jesus, it has changed to the point that he is not readily recognizable.

            Now we will never know until we get to the great seminar in the skies exactly what happened to Jesus between his death on Friday and sunup on Sunday.  But one thing is for certain.  Something happened to the physical body of Jesus.  And thus any resurrection we want to talk about has to do with the physical body, our physical bodies.  And we know well enough what is going to happen to them, don’t we?  They are going to die; and one way or the other they are going to return to the stuff out of which they came:  earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  But the church has been letting itself off the hook of talking about the physical body for too long by transmuting resurrection into immortality.  The issue of what happens after death might be of great importance, but the more important thing is what the resurrection means for this life, here and now.  Even the most devoted believer in an afterlife, of whatever kind, will tell you that what happens there is directly tied to what we do here.  From that I conclude that it is wise to make a short list of things not to worry about and put afterlife first on that list.  Concentrate on living life joyfully, lovingly, gratefully, kindly, and the afterlife, whatever shape it takes, will take care of itself.  You have my word on that.

            So what does the resurrection have to do with this body, yours and mine?  Well, first, remember your baptism.  What do we remember when we forget everything else about baptism?  It is “down under and back up again.”  It is a ritual death and resurrection.  (We are in the land of metaphor and symbol here.)  When we are, as it were, pulled up out of the water we are united with the Risen Lord in the resurrection.  Yes, it has a future, that resurrection life, beyond our mortal death.  But it certainly does not wait for death in order to begin.  So whatever we do with our life in Christ we do in the very body that is speaking and listening to these words right now. 

            Let’s be honest.  For centuries Christians have distrusted the body, sidelined it, repressed it, despised it, all on the theory that the body is a great big problem for anybody wanting to live a spiritual life.  So we have been quite good at developing rationales for asceticism, denying our physical selves for the sake of becoming spiritually disciplined.  We have a whole gallery of people whom we honor and pretend we want to emulate—virgin mothers and other virgins, desert fathers and mothers, saints of one kind or another who practically lived as if the physical body was of no importance whatsoever.  None of that, by the way, do we see reflected in Jesus, who by his own admission came, “eating and drinking” with all manner of folk, to the point that people accused him of being a glutton and a winebibber.  Yes, he fasted and prayed, but we have no record that he spurned the body that he lived in.  That body prayed, fed, healed, taught, walked, loved, ate, drank, sweated, slept, dreamed, and all the other things (you know what they are) that bodies do, and finally died.  And all of it, all of it, was life as God, in God, with God, and for God.  So what gets in the way of our living like that?

            We have not only some Christian history to reckon with, but a good deal of secular history as well.  And generally that has led us in two directions, sometimes almost indistinguishable.  One is to believe in the exaggerated importance of the body.  The other is to repress it and all that is associated with it, especially its sexual dimensions.  And here is where resurrection can actually help us.  Resurrection is the radical affirmation of the physical, the assertion that the Creator knew exactly what the Creator was doing by making a universe where matter and spirit (energy) are not opposed, but indeed two different manifestations of the same reality.  We do not have to repress the body, even as we are disciplining it.  You can diet, exercise, do yoga, martial arts, and engage in a host of other beneficial disciplines, all without disparaging your body.  More than that, you can actually keep the second of the two great commandments—you can love yourself as you love your neighbor.  And you do not have to be ashamed of or embarrassed about doing so; for in loving your body you are loving the greatest gift that your Creator has given you.  At its best, it can be the portal of delight you can only describe as divine.

            And you can affirm your body as mortal.  Wherever you are in life right now, your body is on its way to the grave.  That has been true all your life.  Get used to it.  On that list of things not to worry about, add “my death.”  Doing away with anxiety and fear of death is not so easily done as said, but it can be done.  It takes practice.  Take a tip from Sheridan.  Don’t imagine that your body’s loss means your own diminishment.  You may very well gain vision as you lose eyesight, or gain comprehension as you lose the faculty of hearing. 

            Ironically, the more we accept and honor our physical, mortal bodies, the more we are free to let go of the useless and neurotic effort to stave off their death.  And the more we let go, the more ready are we to move into the joy of a life unencumbered by fear, powered only by love.   Living that way is living the resurrection.  Life powered by love is the Kingdom of God, where there is no more sorrow nor sighing nor repression, because the sting of death is gone, and there is no need to repress anything anymore.

© Frank Gasque Dunn, 2015

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[1] Sheridan Gates, Losing Sight, Gaining Vision: Thriving Throughout Life's Losses (Purpose At Work, Kindle Edition), see especially p. 91.