What is the point of our Gospel reading today?
For a first or second century Jewish (and Jewish adjacent) audience the point of the Gospel reading could be summarized in this one line:
“A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
I think for us, we treat this as a kind of silly, throw away line.
But for the communities to whom Luke’s gospel is written, this is a pressing and controversial subject.
You see in first/second century Jewish thought there was a debate about whether or not the new age of God’s Kingdom would involve physical, that is bodily, resurrection…or not.
Throughout the Gospels and in the book of Acts you can find this debate.
Jesus, his followers, and the Pharisees all believed that in the age of God’s Reign, all of those who were faithful to God and died will be physically raised from the dead.
Their physical bodies will be given new life.
While others, like the Sadducees, didn’t believe in any such resurrection.
But while all this may be historically interesting…it doesn’t appear to be very relevant to our lives today.
To us it may seem hypothetical…a sort of navel gazing pondering about what the future might be like and what may or may not happen to us after we die.
But that’s not true.
This ancient debate about bodily resurrection actually really matters.
It matters because it says something about how God relates to matter…to physical stuff…to our bodies.
Large segments of Western Christianity have slipped into a rather dismissive view of bodies.
Often the afterlife is imagined as some sort of disembodied collection of Spirits living with God who is also Spirit.
We think about the soul going up to heaven, while the body decomposes and returns to dust.
And certain branches of Western Christianity have gone so far as to view this world as a place we are merely “passing through” in a journey to our ultimate destination…a disembodied, spiritual heaven realm.
This Earth, our bodies, are temporary and will pass away. Therefore, we should not mind them too much.
What is more important are the matters of the soul…not the physical matter that makes up our body.
In fact, this view can go so far at times to say that our bodies and this world are actually “fallen” & “evil”…that it is precisely our flesh that leads us into sin.
And if we could be free of our flesh, and be in the Spirit, then we could truly be Children of God…we could be free of sin.
This view has been built upon a real misunderstanding of Paul’s letters and other passages of scripture.
But what this view ignores is precisely that key line in today’s Gospel:
“A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
Jesus shows us what resurrection looks like, and it doesn’t look like a disembodied ghost.
Resurrection involves real, physical bodies.
When Jesus was resurrected, his “old” body didn’t remain in the tomb to decompose…it disappeared.
Well…it didn’t disappear…it was resurrected!
That same body that was beaten, brutalized, abused, spit upon, tortured, and nailed to the cross…
That body that was rejected by the community Jesus belonged to…
God raised that body from death and gave it new life.
And from this perspective, there is another stream of Western Christian thought that sees in the physical resurrection and the physical incarnation of Jesus that to God our bodies matter.
That God is not interested in a bunch of disembodied spirits that are temporarily trapped in bodies, and temporarily trapped on this physical Earth.
God is interested in, and loves, people in their totality…
God loves and cherishes people in body, mind, and soul.
Bodies are not meant to be discarded. God does not see our bodies as sources of evil or sin.
Your body….my body…is loved and cherished by God.
To God, physical matter…matters.
And that insight, leads us the terrible events of this week.
Last Sunday Daunte Wright was shot and killed by a police officer.
Then on Wednesday, the body cam footage was released of the shooting of 13 year old Adam Toledo.
And then on Thursday night, 8 people were killed at a Fedex facility in Indianapolis.
Half of those killed were members of the Sikh faith.
All of these events were terrible tragedies that were the result of gun violence.
And in the background of these events is the trial of Derek Chauvin which is making America revisit the death of George Floyd.
America has a long history of treating black, brown, Asian, Hispanic, and indigenous bodies as disposable.
As evil, wrong, sinful, and bad.
What we saw this last week is nothing new. America for centuries has disfigured the bodies of “racial minorities” to make them appear criminal, bad, and ultimately less than White bodies.
And so we have on the one hand our cultural society that has degraded and treated non-white bodies as disposable and wrong.
And on the other hand, a God who raises the dead…even the dead who the culture views as wrong, evil, and disposable…and restores their bodies.
On the one hand, we are told that our bodies aren’t that important because they are temporary and really our soul is all that matters.
And on the other hand, we have a God who took on flesh to meet us face to face…and when Jesus was rejected and killed, God persisted in raising Jesus’ body from the dead and promises the same physical resurrection for all of us.
Do you see the tension yet?
We have been conditioned since we were just little children to judge and evaluate some bodies as more important than other bodies.
We have been taught, especially women, that our own bodies are wrong and sinful.
And yet, we worship a God who made these bodies and declared them to be “very good.” A God who raises the bodies of the dead to new life.
To this God…Black Lives and Black Bodies more than matter…they are holy, blessed, and sacred.
And it doesn’t stop with human bodies.
In the beginning, God created all of creation and declared it to be good.
God laid down laws and commandments in the Torah for the preservation and care of the planet.
And in Jesus, the church sees the reconciliation of all things, things in heaven and on Earth, to God.
And the ultimate destination pictured at the end of Revelations is a new Earth.
In a similar vein to resurrected bodies…this new Earth is physical. It has rivers, and trees, and cities.
It is a place where people live together, in embodied lives of peace. And they live in embodied peace with the planet.
It isn’t just that bodies matter to God…but all of creation matters to God.
This world is not simply something we are passing through on our ultimate “spiritual” destination.
God comes to meet us in this physical world. And God’s commandment to love is directed towards the physical world around us.
Yes, love our neighbors as ourselves, but love the physical world…the trees, and water, and air, and animals…that we share this world with. Because God loves them all.
And at St. Martin’s…we are striving to embody that love.
Last week, we celebrated becoming a zero-carbon church.
To get to that accomplishment, we needed dedicated people who were committed to not seeing this world as merely something we are passing through.
People who are convinced that God does not intend for this physical world, and the physical bodies of the poor and the marginalized, to be treated as disposable.
People who are convinced that in fact God does love this physical world…that God does love our bodies….and that God wants us to love these things too.
And love requires action.
So friends…
I hope you take action.
I hope you can take in this radical love that cherishes your body.
And that that love would move you to challenge our collective cultural training.
I hope you see black, brown, Asian, Hispanic, and Indigenous bodies as holy and sacred. That their lives are not disposable, but that in fact they truly matter.
I hope you take concrete steps to love your neighbor as yourself.
And that you also take real action towards caring for the planet.
That you embody your love for the trees, and rivers, and fresh air by making different choices…by making different priorities…and by advocating a change to our collective systems.
God loves physical bodies and the physical world…it’s time we do the same.
