I start with an observation: Jesus had a body.
This seems obvious, but it’s important to point out.
Jesus had a body. It was a human body. A real, flesh-and-blood, human body.
We have no photographs of Jesus, since photography didn’t exist in the first century. We have paintings, but his skin was almost certainly darker than we usually see in paintings. His nose was probably a bit broader.
And I don’t think he waxed his chest hair, like one might assume, after looking at paintings of him on the cross…
But… Jesus had a body.
And this body was born of a woman. Jesus came into this world surrounded by amniotic fluid and crying his first breath. Then he needed the warmth and nourishment of his mother’s breast.
Jesus had a body that needed physical nourishment.
He did the five things that infants do: he ate, slept, peed, pooped, and cried.
And his body started growing.
He learned to walk. To speak.
He experienced puberty. Remember all those changes your body went through when you were an adolescent? Maybe you welcomed those changes; maybe you didn’t.
Jesus experienced that.
(Gosh, I wish there were stories in scripture about Jesus going through puberty!)
He had body odor. Jesus, take a bath!
He grew facial hair. He got calluses on his feet.
He got tired. He needed to rest.
He got hungry. He needed to eat.
He bled. He experienced real, physical wounds on his body. Whip marks (lacerations) on his back. Gashes on his side where a soldier's sword pierced him. Holes in his wrists where they drove the nails through.
When the disciples told Thomas that they had seen Jesus, Thomas said he wouldn’t believe unless he could physically touch Jesus’ living body: put his hand on Jesus’ side and feel the wound where the sword had pierced him, and touch his hand to the holes left by the nails in Jesus’s wrists.
Thomas knew that Jesus had a body. Thomas knew that Jesus’s body had been pierced and broken. Thomas needed to see and touch that body in order to believe that Jesus was alive.
It seems obvious to say, but we need to say it: Jesus had a body.
In the history of Christian theology, this is an important point, because there have been some who have said that the body is not important.
There have been some who have said that our human bodies are not important.
There have been some who have said that nothing in this physical world, this world that we can see and touch, is important.
The only thing that’s important - they said - is what’s spiritual.
The only thing that’s real, they said, is what’s spiritual.
But if the only thing that’s important, and if the only thing that’s real, is spiritual and non-physical… then why did God choose to have a body? A real, flesh-and-blood, human body?
In the early days of Christianity, there was a movement called gnosticism. (Gnosticism is spelled with a ‘g’, like the word gnat.)
Gnosticism was a form of Christianity that believed that this physical world - all the things we can see and touch - is an illusion. A dream. And that the only thing real is the hidden spiritual world.
But the early church leaders determined that gnosticism was a heresy. It was a heresy, because God chose to come into this world as a real, living, flesh-and-blood human. God had a body! God came to us in human form! And God did this, because this world matters. This real, physical world that we can see and touch, matters to God.
This world, and everything in it, matters to God. God created this world, and God pronounced it good. God created the ocean, the land, the sky, and all the animals, and all the people.
The first created human, the Bible calls adam, a Hebrew word that literally means “creature of the earth… of the soil.” Earth-creature. And God saw that it was all very good.
Creation is good. All forms of life are good. God cares very much about this real, physical world, and all that it contains.
Unfortunately, there are some Christian leaders who say that, because “Jesus is coming back soon” - because the “rapture” is about to happen - that this world doesn’t really matter. This physical world, this creation of God’s, doesn’t really matter. Because it’s all going to pass away, and God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth.
That’s what they say.
So, for them, caring for creation isn’t important. Protecting the climate from catastrophe isn’t really important. Some even look forward to it. Maybe this is how the old world ends, in preparation for the new world God is about to create.
But oh! How they have misunderstood the scriptures. And what a tragedy it is that they tell others that this world isn’t worth saving, that it doesn’t matter.
Because this world, and all that is in it, clearly does matter to God.
And their idea of the rapture itself is a misunderstanding based on a misinterpretation of scripture. The word rapture doesn’t even appear in scripture.
What does appear in scripture is God’s creation and re-creation of the world that already exists. Creation is God’s masterpiece. And God cares so much about creation and the creatures who live on the earth - and especially the humans God created - that God came to earth, as a human. In a created body. A body of flesh and blood and bone. A body filled with the breath of life.
So it must sadden God terribly that we humans have put creation on a path towards destruction.
It must horrify God that the top climate scientists in the world put out a statement this month that said we are “firmly on track toward an unlivable world.”
One would think that a report put out by the top climate scientists in the world - scientists with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - declaring that we are firmly on track toward an unlivable world … would be front page news; but, in most newspapers, it was not. I think the L.A. Times hid it on page three. And it wasn’t even close to being the lead story for most TV news channels.
I don’t know about you, but this makes me want to weep. I want to weep, because we are destroying the world’s capacity to support life. When I look at the pine trees at Loch Leven and throughout the many places where I hike, and see that they are all dying, I want to weep.
Our climate here in southern California, like so many other places around the world, is already hotter, and for us it has also become drier.
Wildfires, like the one that came close to wiping out Loch Leven two years ago, are becoming more frequent and more intense. They burn now with a ferocity that never occurred before the time of our own generation.
I weep, because the world we are leaving to our children and grandchildren will be one in which life will be harder, due to climate change.
Two weeks ago, on Palm Sunday, we heard Jesus say that, if the people were silenced, the stones would shout out.
But today, the stones are weeping. The mountains are weeping. The scripture that comes to mind today is Jeremiah 9:10: “take up weeping and wailing for the mountains, and a lamentation for the pastures of the wilderness…”
The snowpack is dwindling. The glaciers are melting. Animal species, from polar bears to pollinating bees, are dying.
And this is all happening at a rate never before seen. Ever. Natural climate change takes place over hundreds or thousands of years, but the changes we humans are causing can be seen within a single generation. We can see the climate changing, and we can see that a great mass extinction is taking place, all during our generation.
Surely, God weeps for this.
Because this world is important to God.
Because all that lives in this world matters to God.
So, let us weep for the earth. Let us lament over the destruction we have wrought.
It is a holy thing to lament. Do not be afraid of it. Jesus wept. The prophets wrote poems of lament.
It is good for us to weep for the earth, and what we’re doing to it.
But keep this in mind: as Cole Arthur Riley writes in an amazing book I just finished reading called This Here Flesh (what a great title, don’t you think? This Here Flesh…):
“Lament is not anti-hope. It’s not even a stepping stone to hope. Lament itself is a form of hope. It’s an innate awareness that what is should not be. …Our hope can only be as deep as our lament is. And our lament [can only be] as deep as our hope.”
Our lament for the earth bears a recognition that this is not the way things should be, and that this is not the way things have to be. It is not yet inevitable, this unlivable world that the scientists describe. Their own report shows that it is still possible to follow a different path, and create a different future.
I am inspired by Dr. Jane Goodall. Her latest book is called The Book of Hope. She has a podcast which she calls the Hopecast.
Jane Goodall is painfully aware of the destruction humans have caused. The great forest of Gombe, where her study of chimpanzees made her famous, was once a vast forest, but today it’s an island surrounded by deforestation.
And she weeps for the destruction humans have caused.
But she still has hope.
And that hope is based on her awareness of the human capacity for kindness, and the technological advances that have made it possible for us to meet our energy needs in ways that are sustainable, ways that do not negatively affect the earth’s climate.
And I know that when God looks upon Jane Gooddall, and looks upon what humans are doing to try and protect this earth, and protect all the living creatures of this earth, God smiles.
We don’t have to keep digging up fossil fuels to meet our energy needs. It’s not necessary. Scientific advances have made solar power and other forms of sustainable power cheap and efficient. We already have the solutions we need! So why shouldn’t we have hope?
All we need to do is implement those solutions. All we need to do is vote for leaders who will implement those solutions.
And yes, that is a challenge. Because the big fossil fuel companies have tremendous political power.
But if the people are united, we can overcome the power of the fossil fuel companies, and others who stand in the way of climate progress and climate healing.
And we will be able to turn our lament into a song of joy. We will be able to turn our mourning into laughter.
And God, who created this world and called it good, will smile upon us.
No comments:
Post a Comment