We have a joyful Easter duty for this Second Sunday of Paschaltide. In just a few minutes we are going to unite in support of our newest member, child Felicia Susanne Davilmar being Baptized. And as we initiate her into the Church as a full member with full status, we are going to renew our own Baptismal Covenant. It is very good to do this very often, because it keeps reminding us of what we are supposed to be. It is our definition: it sets us apart from the others of our kind.
The Covenant begins with our pledge of Faith. Most of us know it as the Apostles’ Creed but that’s really its nickname. Its proper name is The Baptismal Creed, because it was written for Baptisms as the very series of q and a we will recite. Some see it in the Baptism in the BCP and assume the Creed has been rewritten in q and a form but that’s backwards. This is in fact its original form. As usual, in the current Book of Common Prayer, if something looks brand new look again: it’s probably something very ancient we have recovered, something like this from the Deep Past.
Anyway, I love the Apostles’ Creed. So short and so strong and also striking for what it does not say: it never mentions angels, Satan, sacrifice, clergy, or any of hundreds of things most people think we just have to have. But we’re not most people.
Martin Luther says we should say the Creed out loud when we rise every day. Peter Abailard says it is the duty of the Priests to make sure every member of the parish knows the Baptismal Creed by heart–and we have decided to implement this so don’t be surprised when Bp Andrew, Fr David or Warren or Paul or I approach you and say All right, let’s hear it.
If only. But anyway, I would guess you do know it.
Now tis the season for Baptisms, and also tis the season for thinking seriously about the last two lines in its Creed: I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. I have known many Christians who believe in the last line but not that next-to-last one. They believe instead that when you die you are freed from your body and your soul goes to heaven.
That is not what we believe, or the Creed would say that. And also the stories we are going to hear for the next six weeks: all stories that show the resurrection life in the body, as Jesus walks, eats, drinks, sleeps, in short does everything he possibly can to show that he is not a ghost, that he still is Incarnate, in the flesh.
This is one of the great counterintuitive outside the box out of the blue truths that give our faith strength.
1. The Fourth Gospel has its very own distinct flavor, and today’s great reading is part of that flavor. They were written to be read separately to let the flavors come through, which is why more recent innovations such as the Seven Words on Good Friday do not work for me: I like the ancient way of doing this. Which is to read only John’s Gospel on Good Friday, and let Jesus’ last words be “It is finished.” And then today to see him step into a room where the doors are locked for fear of the authorities.
We are supposed to ask a question here: how did he do that? Well, a Ghost could do that of course, slip through the cracks like smoke does. But he’s emphatically not a Ghost. So how? Perhaps in the Resurrection he is so solid that a door made of wood seems as flimsy as smoke to him. That’s right: he has become much more solid, not much less as most people imagine the afterlife.
The idea may be strange to some but it was the weight of centuries. Our lesson from the exquistie First Letter of John says Blood, Water, and Spirit are one thing. Gregory of Nyssa said life without spirit is loose and slight like blood spilled out on the floor; spirit makes the body strong and solid. That is the opposite of what most people think. They think of matter as solid stuff, spirit as slight and flimsy. But we are not most people. Sixteen centuries later C. S. Lewis remembered that when he was writing The Great Divorce, one of the few fantasies of the Next Life I could recommend. In it he makes his Pilgrim get sore feet from walking on a lawn in heaven–for there even what looks like soft grass is so solid it feels like steel blades.
2. And then he breathes on them and says Receive the Holy Spirit. The footnote in my NJB says that breath is a symbol of the Spirit but that note is wrong. That would be like saying gasoline is a symbol of fuel. The Breath is the Spirit. Most of you have heard me say that the same word means breath, spirit, and wind, because in the JudeoChristian mind these are the same. This is the same Spirit that opens Scripture: In the beginning when God made the heavens and the earth the Holy Spirit swept across the waters. This is the same Spirit that made Samson strong and Solmon wise and Mary pregnant.
And let me point to another fact: the breath is a physical thing. Breath is material. That should be hard to figure out. Almost everybody thinks of matter and spirit as separate but we are not almost everybody and we do not. Gregory who is supreme on this subject says in our faith there is no dichotomy between matter and spirit. That’s a different faith. A dichotomy is a cut, as in “appendectomy,” and if Spirit and Matter are cut they both die. Matter is where Spirit lives.
And think about this: Ghosts do not breathe. Only bodies breathe, and resurrected bodies are no exception.
There is a question I like to ask in my Faith and Reason course at Fordham, and now I’m asking you: which would you rather be, if God let you choose, a Free Spirit or a resurrected body? Usually the response is fifty-fifty and that me be the case here as well. Many say I have too much trouble with the body, I want to get rid of it and let my spirit soar. Well if that is what you are thinking think again–the resurrected body is a spiritual body, says Paul, meaning perfected for one thing. So if your eyes are weak and you need glasses, you will not need them then. Unless you happen to like wearing glasses, in which case you will be issued a fine pair, because you get what you want.
Many still say, no, I want to be a Free Spirit–when I shuffle off this mortal coil I want it to stay off. I want death to be opening the prison door and setting the soul free. I want the caged skylark released from his cage. All right, that view has strong authority–Socrates, for example. All of the great Eastern faiths, for another. In fact it is really what most people think. But we are not most people.
The Fourth Gospel, which is traditionally felt to be the Spiritual one and therefore has the Eagle as its symbol, shows us a Jesus resurrected who breathes and walks through matter as easily as we walk through air.
We do have free Spirits in our faith system though. They are the Angels. Augustine says that a free spirit is what an Angel really is: they are nicknamed Angels because of their function, not their true nature.
So would you like to be an Angel? Lots of people say yes. Even more think you are supposed to say yes. But look again at Christ. He’s no angel. He’s a man, a human being like you and me. A divine and Resurrected human being, but most definitely a human being. A human being like you and I are going to be.
I do not want to be an Angel. I love them, but then I love horses and I do not want to be one of those either. You see Platonists want humans to become angels. Oh, and the only character I can think of who would prefer to be a horse is one invented by a brilliant but awfully bitter Priest, Jonathan Swift.
3. Then of course there is the sheer physicality of the challenge to Thomas. It is the Christian’s version of I think therefore I exist: all those other things could be hallucinations but Jesus dares him: place your fingers in these wounds and your hand in my side. Try to disprove that: even if you believe half of what you see and none of what you hear, it is hard not to believe what you can touch.
A Priest friend once told us that Thomas did the right thing here: he was right to demand this bodily proof. I am glad he did doubt, but it was not the right thing. Or rather, like Martha, Thomas did not make the best choice. You and I are better off, and Christ says so:
Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.
The moment Thomas touched the wounds, he knew. His doubt vanished like a cloud vanishes. But the moment he knew, he lost his faith. For you cannot have faith when you know. Faith is a loving act of the will, says Thomas, and he is right. Knowledge is wonderful, but faith is better.
So if you find yourself from time to time asking, I wonder if this faith is really true or not, or I wonder if Jesus really rose from the dead, or even I wonder if there really is a God, do not panic. All that means is you can make that loving act of the will. For only where there is room for doubt, is there room for faith. They coexist, and will until the day we see face to face.
By the way have you heard a contradiction? Didn’t I say that the Resurrected body is perfect? How is it then that he has those wounds still? Those wounds are healed but the signs remain–because they are part of his perfection, for by those wounds, says Isaiah, we are healed.
In yesterday’s paper there appeared a cartoon about heaven. A perfect cartoon to show the version of the Next Life most people carry around. Two pathetic looking dead souls, with angels’ wings and haloes, are perched on a little cloud, and one says, Birdwatching is fun for a while. Stargazing is fun for awhile. But for all eternity?
Listen I really enjoy birdwatching and as in Lewis’ heaven mine will be replete with birdsong. But you can have the wings and the cloud. I want to spend eternity in the kind of heaven the New Testament offers, not the kid the New Yorker cartoons offer. I want bread and wine and fish, I want the resurrected body, I want music and perfumes, birds and flowers. And more than anything else I want the blessed company of those I love. So I’ll see you there. And I will start with the one who showed Thomas the wounds in his hands.
