ACTS 1:15-26

PSALM 47

1 JOHN 5:9-15

JOHN 17:11b-19

Sermon – May 28, 2006

“We are the body of Christ”

“Jesus ascended into heaven.” That’s a simple phrase from the Creeds which comes, in the chronological series of statements about Christ, right after the affirmation of his resurrection. It is also the last statement about Christ in the past tense; the very next phrase says that he “Is seated at the right hand of the father,” and in the future “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his Kingdom will have no end.”

O.K., fine. Jesus is no longer appearing in the flesh on earth as he was, Luke says, for 40 days after “he rose again” from the dead. Jesus convinced his closest followers that he was indeed alive, more alive than anyone had ever been, that he had defeated death itself – and that, through him, they could too. And then he stopped being tangibly present with them, though he did say, “I will be with you always, even until the end of the age.”

So what?

What this means is that now we, and all his other followers all over the earth, are his body at work in the world. If the truth of his sacrificial death and glorious resurrection is to be told, we must tell it. If his transformative teaching is to be taught to those, young or old, who do not know it, we must teach it. If the hungry are to be fed, the naked clothed, the thirsty given water, the homeless sheltered, the stranger welcomed, those in prison visited, we must do these things. If hands are to touch human beings who need healing of any kind, they must be our hands. If marches for justice must be marched, they must be with our feet; Christ has no other ones in this world but ours.

This may sound intimidating. There are so many people who do not know Jesus or know only a caricature of him or his teaching or his church. There are so many people who are suffering in so many ways. There is so much injustice. Wouldn’t it be easier – no, more realistic – for us to just sit quietly, read the Bible and wait for our individual lives to be over and then go and be with Christ in heaven?

“Realistic”? Maybe. But that’s not what Jesus told us and is telling us to do. In today’s Gospel he prays to the Father Almighty in the presence of his closest followers at the Last Supper and declares, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

Spiritual contemplation and retreats are good. I’ve just been on one, in celebration of the anniversaries of my ordination to the diaconate and to the priesthood. But our lives are not to be exclusively retreats. We are in the world which “God so loved that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

Oh, yeah.

Now, Jesus also warned us that being his disciples in the world was not going to be easy all the time because we are his disciples and follow different and higher values than worldly people do. Following Jesus does not always get people elected “most popular in class.” Jesus also says of us in today’s Gospel, “The world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.” And we all know what happened to Jesus because of the world’s hatred.

So it’s important to remember when we face difficult choices in our lives and challenging opportunities to serve Christ that he did promise to be with us, wherever we are. It’s important to remember that the Holy Spirit has come to guide us into all truth and to empower us to do the right thing.

As we hear in today’s Epistle, if we’re on Jesus’ team, Jesus has got our backs. More literally, it says, “If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.”

We also don’t have to be superstars. We just have to show up, follow Jesus and do something with our lives to serve him and to express our love for our follow human beings and God’s whole world. Today’s first reading tells about the selection of Matthias as an apostle, to fill the spot on the team left by Judas’ betrayal.

What were Matthias’ qualifications? He showed up, consistently, since the start of Jesus’ public ministry, and he was willing to “become a witness to Christ’s resurrection.” That’s about all we know about him. That’s enough. Show up, be consistent, follow Jesus, be willing to witness to Christ’s resurrection.

In the year 410 A.D., the imperial capital, Rome, was sacked by Attila and the Huns. It was an inconceivable disaster to those millions who had known Rome only as an invulnerable superpower – for centuries, not just generations. And it was the sign of the collapse of Roman civilization in the whole of Western Europe and western North Africa.

From his vantage point just across the Mediterranean Sea in Hippo, North Africa, the greatest Christian thinker of the age coached the people of his diocese, and of the whole Christian church in the West, with these words:

“You are the body of Christ; that is to say, in you and through you the method and work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken; you are to be consecrated, broken and distributed that you may become the means of grace and the vehicles of eternal charity.”

We are like the Eucharist bread, St. Augustine said: taken, blessed, broken and given so that the world may have life. It was these words which the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Frank Griswold, quoted after 9/11.

We are not called to lives of ease or indifference. We are called to be taken, blessed, broken and given. With that often comes pain, but also supreme joy that can be ours no other way.

We don’t have to wait for a historic disaster to be Christ’s body in the world. We all have opportunities every day to serve. The value of our service is in the eyes of the recipients or recipient of our service.

Like the little girl who woke up in the middle of the night with a terrifying nightmare: her parent came in, made sure she was fully awake, and lovingly reassured her that it was just a dream. And then her parent said, “You know God is with you and will stay with you all through the night, and that God is more powerful than anything which can scare you.” “I know that,” the little girl replied, “and that’s good. But I want someone in here with skin on.”

That’s what we’re called to be for others: “Someone in here with skin on. We are the body of Christ in the world.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, NJ