"At Peace With Your Body"

 

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The First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland

“At Peace With Your Body”

Rev. Amy Morgan

April 11, 2021

John 20:19-31

19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were gathered together, with the doors shut for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, "Peace be with you!"

 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

 21 Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."

 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.

 23 If you forgive and set loose any sins, they are set loose and forgiven; if you retain them, they are retained."

 24 Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.

 25 So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."

 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"

 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Do not become unbelieving but believing."

 28 Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!"

 29 Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

 30 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.

 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

“Check out my new podcast.” This was the subject line of an email that popped into my inbox this week. It was from no one I’d ever heard of, and I was about to delete it as spam. But then I saw the name of the podcast episode: “At Peace with Your Body.” 

I could care less about some Body-Peace coach’s advice on how to navigate the body-love map. But it immediately struck me that everything in today’s scripture reading is about finding peace with your body. And it struck me that peace with our body is something we are all desperately longing for right now. 

I’m not talking about peace with the body that has gained 15 pounds or lost flexibility or aches in new places every day. I’m talking about the corporate body, the body of community, the body politic, even the body of Christ. All those bodies we are connected to through the ligaments and sinews of relationship.

This is the body that is in conflict at the beginning of the story we just read. The disciples have shut themselves up in a bunker of safety and security. Now, it seems likely that by evening the day of Jesus’s resurrection, his disciples would have heard the accounts of Mary and Peter and the other disciple.  

But instead of rejoicing and telling everyone about this great news, the disciples are holed up together, doors shut and curtains drawn, as the scripture tells us, “for fear of the Jews.” 

Their connection to the Jewish body (and remember, all the disciples at this point are Jewish) – a body grown out of centuries of history, language, and culture, not to mention religion – has been damaged. Now, this reference probably has more to do with the conflict that existed between the community of early Christians and the Jewish response to them than any real danger to Jesus’ followers immediately following his death. But this just speaks to how body conflict has echoes and resonance, how it shapes the stories we tell and the way we remember things.

The other body conflict this speaks to, however, is within the body of Jesus’ disciples. Now, if you knew someone who had the power to come back to life, and you knew that person was in town, filled with all kinds of resurrected power, are you going to be afraid of anyone or anything? Probably not. The guy who beat death can probably handle your enemies. 

So it’s pretty clear the disciples did not believe Mary, that they doubted Peter and the other disciple’s story. Thomas, who gets labeled “the doubter,” is only guilty of the same unbelief as his fellow disciples. Within their little body of Jesus-followers, there was not peace. They were filled with distrust of one another and fear of their own people. 

This fear and distrust is something we are all too familiar with today. We are not at peace with our relational bodies. We are in conflict about vaccines and public health measures and pandemic fatigue, which is impeding progress against the virus that has plagued human bodies for more than a year. Hate crimes against Asian-Americans have risen significantly. We are in turmoil about immigration policy and procedure. As the trial of a Minneapolis police officer is scrutinized daily in the news in painful detail, we are reliving the horrific death of a black man that sparked protests and uprisings all over the country. 

We are not at peace with our body. We are not at peace with the body of our nation or neighborhoods, the body of our families, the body of our church. Because it is easier and feels safer to shut the doors on those things we are afraid of, those things that disrupt our peace. It is easier and feels safer to adopt a stance of unbelief and distrust. Unbelief and distrust of news sources that don’t share our political bias, of experts who don’t reinforce our personal observations, of friends and family members, even, whose experience differs from ours. 

The podcast promising peace with your body asserts that “the only way to start to… [feel good in your own skin] is for us to GET REAL about how complicated this relationship with our body really is.”

Our relationship with our body is complicated. And that complication begins with the story of the creation of the very first body in our scriptures. 

The first human, by name, is basically a dirt-clod. He is called Adam, which is a play on the Hebrew word for dirt, adamah. This mud-man is no more or less remarkable than the ground beneath our feet. 

But then, God breathes the breath of life into him. Now, this word for “breath” in Hebrew is different from the ruah, the Spirit of God that hovers over the waters of creation, that animates dry bones in Ezekiel’s prophesy, and that appears many times in the Hebrew scriptures. This word, neshamah, is found much less frequently than ruah, and most often refers generally to the physical act of breathing that indicates something is alive. 

So, in Genesis, God creates a dirt clod and gets it breathing so it can live. This is the first body, and almost as soon as it is animated with breath, the relationships with it get complicated. It eats forbidden fruit, experiences shame, and is condemned to conflict with the earth it was made from and to return to that earth in death. That first body comes into conflict with God, creation, and other humans. That body that is not at peace with communal bodies of family, tribe, and kingdom. 

And it is in one of these bodies that God was pleased to dwell in Jesus Christ. In one of these bodies, Jesus is born, and grows, and hungers, and thirsts. In one of these bodies, Jesus heals and teaches and performs signs of God’s reign emerging on earth. And in one of these bodies, Jesus dies. 

But Jesus is resurrected in a new body. In a body at peace. In a body that brings peace. 

Not once, but twice, in these few verses from John’s gospel, Jesus’s body enters an area that is enclosed in fear and filled with distrust. And both times, he offers peace. This is the peace he promised in his Farewell Discourse to his disciples before his death, when he also prays that his followers will be one even as he and the Father are one. It’s not just an individual peace. It’s peace with your body.

And Jesus delivers on another promise from his Farewell Discourse: the promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus breathes on them, which I realize right now is a terrifying idea. Even without the circulation of a contagious airborne virus, this was likely not a comfortable experience for the disciples. Jesus is breathing the Holy Spirit like a dragon breathes fire. This is not the ordinary respiration bestowed on the first dirt-clod body. This is a breath that bestows the new body of Jesus on his followers. This is the breath that gives them a new body, that makes of them a new body. 

And Jesus sends that new body out into the world with a very special power and very specific purpose. This new body has the power to forgive or retain sins, with the purpose of making peace with our bodies. 

Now, when the gospel of John talks about sin, it isn’t in the sense of immoral behaviors. For John’s community, sin was a matter of unbelief, of fear and distrust, of rejection of a life-giving truth. So long as Thomas was in a state of unbelief, he was in a state of sin. But when he was presented with the very proof he demanded, and encouraged by Jesus to believe, he not only moved to a believing state but made the most profound and accurate statement possible about Jesus’s new body. Jesus as Lord and God proclaims Jesus as God, asserts that the dirt-clod body and the divine body are one. 

The new body – of Jesus and his followers – is built in relationship, built for relationship. It is a body that will allow nothing to disrupt the connections, the peace, the love within the body. For in Jesus’s body, nothing can separate him from those he loves – not closed doors, not even death. 

That is the immense power of forgiveness. It removes all barriers, all conflict, and makes peace. 

And, until now, this was a power only God had. Jesus gets in trouble with the religious authorities because he forgives sins – something only God could do. Only God could loosen the bonds of sin or retain a person’s sin. Only God could change hearts or harden them. 

But now this power is given to a new body: the Body of Christ. 

And we are part of that body. It may not feel so new anymore. In fact, it may feel like it’s worn out and dying. The pandemic has only emphasized the growing relevance gap between the body of Christ and the body of the society we live in. I was in a 4 and a half hour Committee on Ministry meeting this week that was consumed with the concerns of churches that seem to be on life support. The Body of Christ is not looking like a strong, vibrant, Holy Spirit-breathing, peace-inducing body right now. It is filled with fear and distrust, and it is hunkering down behind closed doors. 

But here’s the Good News. The new body of Jesus, his resurrected body, carried the wounds of his old body. There was continuity between the old body and the new. There was the memory of his humiliation and pain imprinted on his new body. And he was at peace with it. Not only that, his wounds were the source of belief for an unbeliever. Thomas didn’t ask to hear Jesus’s voice or see him perform miracles. He demanded to touch his wounds. 

The new body of Christ will continue. But it will also continue to be made new. Not because we come up with more efficient leadership models or keep streaming our services online. Not because we figure out how to attract millennials or come up with innovative children’s programs. The new body will continue to be made new by being at peace with its wounds and sharing its woundedness. 

This church has wounds that can, if we’re willing to share them, lead others to life-giving belief. Losing membership and money in a schism over the ordination of women is a wound this church still carries, even though almost none of us were around to witness it. But it is part of our new body, and we can show that wound to people in our community who need to see women in religious leadership to believe the gospel. When I arrived here, you all shared with me the very fresh wound of losing a beloved young person to suicide, three years ago this month. That prompted me to get additional training in suicide prevention, be more attentive to mental health concerns, and learn about pastoral care for those affected by suicide. And if we are ready to share that wound with our wider community, it can literally save lives. Losing more than a year of personal contact, of corporate worship and singing, of coffee hours and pot lucks, is a wound this church carries. And we can show that wound to people who need to see the church is more than an hour on Sundays in a historic building downtown. Our wounds are what will bring others to belief. 

In the aftermath of the pandemic, of racism, of hatred, of division, we all have wounds, trauma that we carry not just in our spirits but in our bodies. And we are surrounded by reasonable people who would like to see some proof that Jesus is alive and doing something useful. And the thing that will convince them is not how slick and put-together we are. The thing that will convince them is our wounds. Because our wounds of insolation will lead us, as the Body of Christ, to connect people. The wounds of racism will lead us, as the Body of Christ, to dismantle structural racism. The wounds of division will lead us, as the Body of Christ, to love people. 

We are a new body. Animated not with ordinary inspiration but with the sacred breath of God. We are a Holy Spirit breathing body, and that should be as frightening as a fire-breathing dragon. Because the forgiveness empowered by the Holy Spirit is a deadly threat to the systems of fear and distrust that maintain the empire of shame we live in.

We have an incredible power and an essential purpose. We can make peace with our bodies. By loosening the sins that bind us, by forgiving those who have hurt us, by showing our wounds to those who need to believe. 

Even as our body continues to be made new – through the pandemic and all the many changes and upheavals in our society that long pre-date that – there will be continuity with our old body. But the continuity will not be all our past successes or the glory days of packed pews and overflowing coffers – if those days ever really existed. The true glory and power of our new body will be in those past sacrifices, in our failures that moved us forward, in those defeats that forced us to part with sinful ways. 

Making peace with our bodies means making peace with our wounds. And that peace will empower us to forgive, to enter the closed doors of fear and distrust, and to offer that peace to our neighbors and our nation. That peace will allow us to share our wounds so that others may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name. Amen.