From Your Pastors
You may have noticed the lengths to which the Gospel writers go to ensure we understand that Jesus’s resurrection was in bodily form. In this past Sunday’s Gospel, for example, Jesus not only showed the startled disciples the wounds in his hands and feet he invited them to touch the marks of his crucifixion. To drive the point home even further, he then ate baked fish with them.
The insistence on the bodily form of the resurrection is consistent with the fact that we believe God became flesh and blood in human form in the incarnation. It was not good enough for God to stay up in heaven, nor good enough to send us words and prophets, as necessary and important as they are. What in fact God does is come in person. As the scriptures remind us, he is Emmanuel, GOD WITH US. (Mt. 1:3)
These are not just arbitrary doctrines. Grasping the implications of the en-fleshment of God, from incarnation to resurrection, reveals to us how we are to live. Grasping the reason WHY the scriptures insist we understand the fact that Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form is the crucial lesson here.
Christian faith is not just nice thoughts, though it certainly can help us establish good attitudes. It is not just about beautiful and profound words, though, again, it certainly can be comforting and inspiring. Christian faith in the bodily form of Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection affirms that faith too must take flesh; it must become action. It must move us to charity and the work of justice. In particular, taking our lead from St John, faith is about putting LOVE in action. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” (Jn. 3:16)
After having endured two Lents unlike any we, hopefully, will ever have to endure again, it would be easy to imagine we had done the work of faith once we arrive at Easter. We can start eating again the stuff we let go of for Lent. We can re-engage in activities we perhaps put aside for a while. All this is indeed fine and good. The point is not for us all to become ascetical monks, as good an option for some that might be. The point of Easter, with its emphasis on the bodily nature of the Risen Jesus, is to remind us that Lent is the preparation for the ongoing work of faith: living out of that faith in joyful action. Jesus gives us a myriad of examples of what that action looks like: service of our sisters and brothers, particularly those most in need. “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” (Jn. 15:12)
St James sums it up thus: “What good is it... if someone says he has faith but does not have works? ...If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also, faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Indeed, someone may say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. (Jas. 2:14-18)
Fr. Mark Lane, c.o. and Fr. Michael Callaghan, c.o.
