Little Easter

A Sermon by Kelly Wiant Thralls

August 17, 2008

Psalm 24

2 Corinthians 4:16-5:15

 

 

 

This week’s text is closely linked to last week’s and is in fact, its continuation.  You will remember that Paul reminded us that we carry this treasure in clay jar.  We, our bodies and our lives, are the clay jars. 

 

Both in last week’s text and in this, Paul talks a great deal about bodies.  He claims that in our bodily suffering we carry the death of Jesus so that his resurrection can also be made visible in our moral flesh.[1]  He talks of our bodies wasting away, groaning, and finally being clothed. 

 

Last week as I was leaving the sanctuary, I ran into Tom Herald.  He confessed that he had always had somewhat ambivalent feeling toward Paul.  I confessed the same thing.  I’ve never been a huge fan.  Partly it was my own misunderstanding of Paul.  I’ve always thought him a bit self-righteous but as I’ve read the letters to the Corinthians more carefully I’ve come to understand that he was actually a very faithful pastor trying to hold together several squabbling fledgling churches.  I have several friends in new church development and I have heard many of their struggles.  They are not so very different than Paul’s struggles and feelings of disappointment. 

 

The other reason I have never been a much of a Paul fan, was the fact that I felt he was too influenced by Gnosticism. 

 

Gnosticism was a kind of religious or philosophical movement popular in the ancient Mediterranean world.  It consisted of a variety of beliefs that held that the soul was divine and untainted but mired or trapped in the body and the material world.  They believed the material world, and especially the body, were sinful and undesirable.  The goal was to transcend the body, or for the soul to escape.  I remember hearing this analogy in seminary:  the soul is a beautiful precious piece of gold and it is trapped in smelly nasty mud. 

 

I have often read Paul and thought he hedged towards this understanding of the body, but as I’ve spent more time with him, it’s obvious he is arguing against a Gnostic point of view.  Instead, for Paul there is no faith without the body.  Faith is a bodily thing, something we live out in our daily lives. 

 

Pondering Paul’s understanding of the body sent me back to the book Honoring the Body by Stephanie Paulcell.  She states that the early Christians’ use of the metaphor of the Body of Christ, which Paul uses extensively in his letters, “acknowledged that it is through our bodies that we love and serve God and one another…They called themselves the body of Christ, taking up the work of Christ’s own hands and feet, head and heart, and with their bodies – healing, preaching, caring for the outcast and defenseless, suffering imprisonment and worse.”[2]

 

Paul saw the goodness of our bodies.  They are the very things that carry the message of faith and live it out day to day.  He also knew that our bodies are vulnerable.  He knew suffering and often listed those sufferings in his letters.  But as Stephanie Paulcell points out, it is that vulnerability that links us to others.[3]   We know what it is to be ache and hurt and grieve, therefore we can sympathize with other bodies that hurt or grieve or ache.  It is our bodies that ultimately equalize us.  The fourth-century Christian scholar Jerome said about our bodies, “he whom we look down upon, whom we cannot bear to see, the very sight of whom causes us to vomit, is the same as we are, formed with us from the same-self clay, compacted of the same elements.  Whatever he suffers, we also can suffer.”[4] 

 

For Paul, there is no escaping these bodies – in all their frail vulnerability.  I have a colleague who suffers from Crohns disease and several other ailments.  She told me recently that each morning when she awakes, she makes a mental scan of her body, noting where it hurts.  It’s rare for her to wake and find no pain.  Most days, there is pain; it’s simply a matter of degree.  After her mental scan, she prepares herself and prays that her energy will remain high enough to move her through the day despite the pain.

 

As I’ve listened to her talk, I can sympathize but I cannot know her pain.  I have never experienced that kind of pain.  I do not know what it feels like to awake each day knowing I will hurt.  I do not know what it feels like to undergo surgery, as many of you have experienced.  I do not know what it feels like to have a disease slowly attacking my body, and yet I know my body well and I know what it feels like when it hurts. 

 

So when I hear my friend talk or I visit someone in the hospital, I ache a little, knowing only a taste of the pain the other is going through.  I also know that my body may one day hurt as the one laying before me.  I know the vulnerability of the one before me because I know it is the same vulnerability I experience. 

 

We are fragile creatures and yet, faith is lived out in that very vulnerability.  It is in fact the shared sense of vulnerability that often leads us into ministry.  It is one of the reasons we offer meals to the hungry and shelter to the homeless.  We are protecting their bodies and their lives as we would want to protect our own.  We know cold and most of us cannot imagine sleeping outside in the Harrisburg winter, therefore, we volunteer for the downtown winter shelter.  Faith is lived out in our bodies and for other bodies. 

 

For Paul, there is no escaping these bodies – in all there strength and beauty.  While Paul knew their frailty, he also knew their strength.  The astounding strength most of us have witnessed this past week as we’ve watched the Olympics.  We’ve seen tiny bodies flipping and twirling through the air and strong bodies almost flying through water.  We’ve seen the very best of what these bodies are capable of. 

 

Now, Paul does admit that he would rather we could be away from our bodies and at home with the Lord.[5]  This is not because our bodies are not good but because bodily existence is full of distractions and divided devotion.  When one’s body aches or is wasting away, it is hard not to be distracted.  When we must care for another person who is ill, it is hard not to have one’s devotion divided.  The fact that faith is lived out in our daily lives means that God does not get our full attention.  We must attend to the needs of our bodies and those for which we are responsible. 

 

But Paul is not a Gnostic and although escape from the body might hold a nugget of appeal, Paul knows it is not possible.  He even suggests that at the end of time we will not lose our bodies but be clothed further.  He uses this beautiful language:  “we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” 

 

He’s presenting the idea that a deeper richer life is and will finally swallow up the life we know.  It’s not that we can escape this life or this body; it’s that this life and this body will be transformed into more, into a richer life. 

 

As hard as this concept may seem, I believe that we catch glimpses of this life, this transformation that will swallow up what is mortal. 

________

 

This summer, Chad and I spent time in Park City, Utah and Breckenridge, CO.  Both are ski towns but have been able to attack tourists in the summer as well.  People visit in order to mountain bike, to enjoy the cool clean mountain air, and to hike. 

 

We took several spectacular hikes.  Each started above 10,000 feet and twisted gently and then not so gently up the mountain until we reached elevations above 12,000 feet.  We panted up most of the trail.  Our sea level east coast blood is not used to working in altitudes above 10,000 feet.  The climbs were difficult, some taking us through patches of snow, but worth it.  The views became progressively more and more impressive as we rose higher and higher.  Finally, we would stand above the tree line marveling at crystal clear mountain lakes fed by snow melt.  We looked down upon tall pine trees that crawled up the mountainsides snaking along the cliffs and down into deep valleys.  The skies were perfect blue with cotton ball clouds.  From our mountain perch, we could see for miles and miles. 

 

On one occasion, we stood silently too stunned by the beauty to speak.  Eventually Chad whispered, “My heart is full.”  I knew exactly what he meant, as I’m sure you do.  There are moments in which our lives seem insignificantly small in comparison to the magnificence around us and at the same time, we feel enormous as if we are growing and stretching in order to contain the goodness around us.  Those are the moments in which I believe we get a taste of what it Paul means when he says that what is mortal is being swallowed up by life. 

 

As I stood on that rock outcropping, I knew both that what I am and what I saw was good and that there is more always at work to bring deeper life, to bring the transformation of my body, of the body of Christ, and the body of this creation. 

 

Yes, we know all too well the little deaths that happen in every day life – the anger, the violence, the selfishness, the pain our bodies experience, the depression, and the loneliness.   I believe we each know what Paul means when he says “we carry in the body the death of Jesus.”[6]

 

But I also believe that we experience, little Easters, or moments of resurrection in every day life.  Sometimes these little Easters happen within our own bodies as in when we hike to the top of the mountain, or know joy, or love another person, or reach out in compassion. 

 

Faith is a bodily thing.  It’s lived out in our day to day lives.  We know death and we know resurrection.  For Paul there is no escape.  There is only the responsibility and the willingness to live our lives faithfully and oriented towards Jesus Christ.  And in so doing, we watch for signs of what is mortal is being swallowed up by life; being swallowed up by God. 

 

So we believe, so let us live. 

 

MARKET SQUARE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Little Easters