+ 3rd Sunday of Easter – April 14th, 2024 +
Series B: Acts 3:11-21; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36-49
Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Every week we confess these words together: I believe one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
Every week we confess these words together: I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…who was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary…and was made man.
Every week we confess these words together: I look for the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come.
Today and every week we confess that the body matters. God the Father has fearfully and wonderfully created you in the body. God the Son has graciously redeemed you in the body with his own body. God the Holy Spirit – in water and word and promise – has made your body his temple.
And one of the many blessings of Jesus’ resurrection that we celebrate in these 7 weeks of Easter is that to our Lord Jesus the body matters.
The body of Jesus crucified and risen…matters. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, your rescued and redeemed body matters to Jesus. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, your neighbor’s body matters to him too.
Don’t think – like some have and still do – that flesh and blood and skin and bones are not beneath God. That he’s only concerned with the “spiritual”. No. Just the opposite. For God spirituality is physical and physical things are spiritual: (A few examples…). God loves matter. God loves the human body. God the Father created you. God the Son saved you. And God the Holy Spirit holies you. All in your body.
And Jesus does all of this through his in-the-flesh, crucified, and risen body. The Christian faith is physical, material, tangible, fleshly because we have a physical, material, tangible, fleshly God who became man to save you in his body. Scripture teaches us, and we confess this great and gracious mystery made flesh and made fact: Jesus is God and man.
The same body he stood in as he appeared to his disciples in Luke 24. See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
The body of Jesus that he shows his disciples is the same body that was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary for you. Was zygote and a blastocyst for you. Was growing in her womb for nine months for you. Was born for you.
The body of Jesus that he shows his disciples is the same body that was baptized for you in the Jordan River. In the flesh he was tempted for you. fasted for you. Hungered for you. In the body Jesus walked the dusty roads of Judea. Slept under the stars. Touched the dead bodies and raised them. Put his hands on sick bodies and healed them.
The body of Jesus that he shows his disciples is the same body that ate and drank with tax collectors and prostitutes and disciples. The body that said take and eat, this bread is my body; take and drink this cup of wine is my blood. For you. The body that then sweat drops of blood. Was ripped open by whips. Bruised by fists and clubs. Soaked in sweat and spit and blood. The body that was pierced by nails. By thorns. By a spear. In his body he bore our sins – yes, all the sins that we commit with our body, and our mind, and our thoughts too – he bore it all in his body on the cross. The body that – like our body one day will – died and was buried.
The body of Jesus that he shows his disciples is risen, glorified, alive again from the dead…and yes, still a human body. Jesus is and now always will be God and man. Though he keeps his scars. He is known by the scars.
Luke 24 is yet another round of Jesus’ show and tell for his disciples and for you. He spoke peace. He created and still creates faith. Into the disciples’ fears and ours. Into the midst of their doubts and ours. He speaks, “Peace is with you.” And there he was. God’s peace. In the body. Standing there. Showing them his hands and his feet. And to top it all off, a little fish fry. “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.
Jesus’ resurrection was in the body. And His body was raised. Death no longer holds him can touch can lord it over him.
And In Jesus’ death and resurrection, your rescued and redeemed body matters to Jesus as well. Jimmy Buffet once famously sang, “You treat your body like a temple; I treat mine like a tent.” “My body, my choice we hear.” Both are wrong. It is wrong to idolize our bodies. And it’s wrong to denigrate and destroy what God created. Your body is not an amusement park. And we are not autonomous.
Our bodies matter to Jesus. And in our bodies we do both good, and evil. With our eyes we see someone in need…and with our eyes we look with lust upon a woman or a man. With our feet we walk to help our child or grandchild up from a fall on the playground…and with our feet we march to the beat of our own selfish drums. With our hands we write birthday cards or fix a leaky faucet…and with our hands we text or type words that cannot be unsent, unseen, or unsaid.
Scripture teaches us: your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God…You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.
Your body matters to our crucified and risen Lord Jesus who died in the body for you, and paid for all your sins of the body, eyes, ears, mind, feet, hands, tongue. Jesus rose in the body for you. That in him, you too will rise from the dead in the body. Your body is not a shell. You are more than a sack of meat in motion. You are not an accident. Your body matters to Jesus so much that he took on a human body to live, to suffer, to die, to rise – all in the body – to redeem, rescue, and restore…and one day resurrect your body.
In our Lutheran graveside service the pastor prays these words over the casket. “May God the Father, who created this body; may God the Son who by His blood redeemed this body; may God the Holy Spirit who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be His temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh. When you will walk in the body, resurrected, before the Lord Jesus in the land of the living. And he’ll show you the same hands and feet and scars he showed his disciples as he welcomes you to the feast.
The body of Jesus crucified and risen…matters. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, your rescued and redeemed body matters to Jesus. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, your neighbor’s body matters to him too.
Jesus sent his disciples in the body to preach with their mouths. To care for the widows and orphans and poor with their hands. And our Lord sends you in the body to care for the body of your neighbor as well. John’s epistle goes on in 3:18, Little children, let us not love only in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Our Lord has given you eyes to see the needs of others around you. Heads to think critically and imagine creatively. Arms to embrace in joy and sadness. Hands to hold another at the bedside or in a moment of panic. Fingers to pick up the phone to call or prepare a meal for a brother or sister in Christ. Legs and feet to go and carry you as you buy groceries, and walk with grandkids, or share the gospel with someone you know who does not know Jesus.
Our Lord Jesus has given you a body. A body which is redeemed, rescued, and one day will be resurrected from the dead…because of all that Jesus did and still does in his body for you. With his body he was born for you. Lived for you. Suffered. Died. Was buried for you. In the body he rose from the grave for you. and today, and every day until he returns, Jesus is with you just as he promised. Here in the bread and the wine. Here in his blood, and in his body. Given for you.
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment