"A Body Beyond Fear," a sermon presented by the Rev. Jane Butterfield, Mission Personnel Officer of the Episcopal Church, on April 15, 2004, in Christ Chapel

 (Acts 3:11-26; Luke 24:35-48)

 Once again we gather to ponder the nature of Jesus’ Resurrected Body, as the Easter Week lections invite us to do every year with the very same sequence of stories.  It is one of several pleasant luxuries of Easter Week after the labors of Holy Week - as though we are being invited to join Jesus in the victory celebrations! 

 Monday we saw Mary Magdalene and the other Mary running, fearful and joyful, to tell Peter and John and the others what the mysterious young man at the empty tomb had told them – that Jesus had risen.  When, all of a sudden, there is Jesus, standing on the path, right in their way!  Immediately they recognize him, fall down in awe and seize his, presumably flesh and blood feet.  I picture him smiling broadly!

 Tuesday, John’s Gospel offers a slightly different account.  Mary has brought John and Peter back to verify that Jesus’ body is no longer there, and then she is left alone, weeping, when a man she presumes to be the gardener, comes up to comfort her.  She only recognizes that it is Jesus when he speaks her name. 

 Yesterday Luke tells the heartwarming story of two disciples, sadly walking along the road to Emmaus and talking with a supposed stranger until …they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

 Rich and mysterious, these stories are all about the body in-between the rigors of death and the perfect freedom of heaven; this body in which Jesus made numerous appearances before he ascended to heaven – out of their sight.  And it is a good thing that Jesus did move on, out of their sight, as the Jesus movement might well have been arrested, spending its energy on rushing around to the next possible sighting, had he not ascended.  Then his promise, “You will do greater things than these because I go to the Father” might not have been fulfilled.  But for now, in these harrowing days fresh with the horror of his tortured body, they needed to see his body whole - this mysterious resurrected body.

 Today Jesus appears again.  Suddenly he is with his disciples as they are ruminating over the Emmaus appearance.  And how do they react?  Well, they are terrified, startled.  They think they are seeing a ghost!  Did he come in the door?  Did he walk through the streets outside?  Had anyone else seen him?  They are afraid: is he angry with them for abandoning him?  Does he think they are cowards?  Millenia later we still ask questions from the cool safety of distance:  does this body conform to the physical laws of the world we inhabit? 

Jesus cajoles, challenges them out of their fear: “Why are you frightened?  Why do doubts arise in your mind?  Look at me, touch me - see the wounds in my hands and feet.  It is I myself.”  Fascinating!  Then he says, “Ghosts do not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”  And to prove it he eats a fish.  Do resurecct4ed bodies have digestive systems, can they eat – do they need to eat? Will we get one too?  Will we recognize loved ones as they arrive in heaven?  Will we recognize our resurrected self?  Will we be able to say, “It is I, myself,” after nurturing this self along all these years?

 We have been ruminating on these details ever since. “While in their joy, they were disbelieving and still wondering.”  It is as if the entire Church is still sitting in that room throughout Eastertide - in joy, disbelieving, wondering about these things. 

 I think this state of being describes seminary communities more than any of the Church’s institutions.  It may even be that this sort of pre-mission state of reflection, fact-gathering, discussion – wondering about the nature of these things and getting a grip on what-all really happened - is a special vocation of the seminary community as it prepares leaders for God’s mission in the world. 

 But today Jesus appears with a mission:  He wants to move the disciples beyond the paralysis of confusion and grief, beyond the fears that arrest them – to take up that mission call: “ Do you get it now,”  Jesus seems to be saying?  “The Messiah is to suffer, to rise from the dead on the third day.  See, it is I, myself.  Ready to go - so you get ready too. Now,” says Jesus, “leave fear behind.  There is work to do:  repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in my name to all nations beginning from home– Jerusalem” – to Rome, Asia Minor, Ethiopia, India, up into France, across the channel to England, Ireland – from Greece to Russia, from Spain across the ocean, from England to the shores of Massachusetts.  From the Episcopal Church USA to China, Japan, Zimbabwe, Tanzania back to the rich, powerful USA and on to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq …. Around and around the world and always out into the by-ways and highways of every human community throughout this fragile earth, our island home:

 He has burst his three days’ prison

Let the whole wide earth rejoice:

death is conquered, we are free,

Christ has won the victory.

 You are witnesses of these things, Jesus declares to his followers and all of us today., These who have been tutored by him for three years. Now, get ready to go to be a witness.

 He is not asking them, nor will he ask us, to go where he has not been.  Today Jesus appears to us with the same message:  don’t be afraid, just go.  Not only will you be witnesses of what you have seen and heard and experienced up to now; you will continue to be witnesses of what you will see, what you will hear and what you will experience as you go into the world and experience what God is still doing in the body of Christ that is the world-wide Church.

 I suspect that if we had been in that room with the disciples we too might have been paralyzed with fear.  Fear - the fear of death and all it’s minor offspring – is a continuing threat to God’s mission.  The English language undoubtedly has more words for fear than the Eskimo language has for snow.  Selfishness, greed, pride are some of the more subtle derivatives of fear.  Fear beckons us away from the freedom and fullness of Eucharistic living.

I grew up in the 50’s in an idyllic valley called Chiltonville, a few miles inland from Plymouth Harbor.  We were many children from big families and we had lots of free time in the summer.  One of our most exhilarating past-times during the blissfully long evenings was to scare ourselves silly by stretching out on the very old graves in a neglected cemetery beyond the big cow barns of Forges Farm.  The first person to get up and run was the chicken of that night.  I applied myself to this mild encounter with death with a degree of seriousness that makes me wonder even now.  I used to lie there thinking into my chosen grave:  those bones, the dust, the unknown life beneath me until all the fear had drained out of my body and I became perfectly calm, comfortable on the slightly mounded grass..  “This is good training,” I can remember thinking with the melodrama of childhood, “Training for the real scary things that life might serve up.”  This was staring the tiger down.  I felt more alive and grateful for life as I walked out of the dark cemetery with my chattering friends, back to our large, lively families.

There was also a ghost in our neighborhood.  He was tall and skinny with a big hole in his cheek and he spent nights in the old wooden swivel chair in the barn’s office.  One night Trishie Meyer and I coaxed each other to check him out and sure enough, we saw him.  We had a mission that summer – to tell everyone in the neighborhood about the ghost – that we had seen him and we could describe him in detail, harrowing as it had been!  But the real thing that had happened was that we overcame our fear of death, to some degree.  All summer we felt stronger, safer, and more prepared for whatever life might bring on.

 There is a ghost here in Rather House too.  Every community seems to have its resident ghosts.  We heard a lot about ghosts when we lived in Zimbabwe because death was so present.  The most frightening ones are the Ngozi because they come back still angry, to wreak vengeance on their enemies.  I expect every culture has a cosmology of ghosts – those who stand between life on earth and the afterlife – they come and go, restless and strangely imprisoned and resentful.  Ghosts frighten us because, I think, they embody our guilt and our fear of death in all its many forms.

 So Jesus tells the frightened disciples that he is not a ghost, but a flesh and blood body – whole and glorified.  He has gone beyond the in-between, beyond the power of death, beyond the pettiness of avenging spirits, beyond the jealousies and grudges of human society, beyond the politics of personal and corporate power.  All that is rendered – well – almost ludicrous in its smallness now that Jesus is standing whole before them - and us.  Do you fear Rome?  Do you fear the Commission on Ministry?  Do you fear your own weakness?  Do you fear your neighbor’s power over you?  Do you fear the possibility of your children’s death?  Your own?  I did and do.  But when Jesus stands before me, whole, those fears fall in ashes around his feet.

  “See, it is I, myself.”  Not just an idea; nor an avenging phantom.  “Get up and walk with me,” he seems to say, “We will have splendid adventures and nothing can separate us from the love of God poured into us by the Holy Spirit.”

 Yesterday I read an application for mission service from Sarah Gardner, a 56 year old writing teacher from Highland, New York.  Sarah has been teaching immigrant students at a public college near New York City.  Her students come from every corner of the world, often as refugees.  She writes that it is not unusual to have more than a dozen nationalities represented in a classroom of fifteen students and she, as a writing teacher, comes to know her students very well.  “Were I to become, “ Sarah writes, “a stranger in a strange land I would at the very least have these many hundreds of plucky, energetic models to emulate.”

 But Sarah’s readiness goes way back to when she was twelve years old.  “Late one night,” she writes, “I was alone and terrified. God came and filled me with comfort and reassurance.  He promised me that no matter what happened, He would be there with me.  It was a very persuasive experience; it is still palpable for me.  In the 44 years since that night, my relationship with God has flowed and ebbed, but has been constant.  I want to do all in my power to relieve human misery, to celebrate God’s love in service to humanity.  Once I venture outside the predictability of my comfortable routines, I will truly have to put my trust in the Lord – in ways I can’t even begin to imagine.

 In February I celebrated my 56th birthday in wonderful health, and like an alarm going off in my head, I recognized that this is the time.  My two children are independent adults, so I have both health and freedom.  Yes this is the time. Thus this application”

 Jesus is with Sarah as she discerns her next steps.  He is with each and all of us today and every day.  It is he himself and no ghost.  We will know when it is time to go on with him.  May we rejoice and be glad this day and on that day.  Alleluia, Christ is Risen.