Acts 5:27-32
John 20:19-31
Do you - do I - really believe in the Resurrection? I wonder. Or are we so far gone as Anglicans that our reply to the question is not 'yes' or 'no' but 'well, it depends on what you mean by resurrection!' But an answer like that is not just a piece of liberal Anglican fudge. Because what we mean by resurrection is very important indeed.
Just before Easter, The Times published an article by one of its journalists who concluded 'that whether Christ's body physically rose from the dead or not, the event is profoundly significant.' She spent some time dwelling on the likelihood, or not, of Christ having risen physically from the dead and then wound up by writing about her own spiritual journey in this way:
'I realised that by going through the Crucifixion and Resurrection Jesus demonstrated the universal spiritual truth that when we give up our ego, symbolised by the death of his physical body, we are reborn into our soul. And I found that to be tremendously inspiring….'
Well, tremendously inspiring it might have been but it's certainly not in line with a Christian understanding of resurrection - however conservative or liberal that might be.
The Christian faith does not teach the immortality of the soul. That's the idea that when we die, we leave behind our physical bodies with all their infirmities and we become free spirits. So often, though, this is the popular understanding. And so we get a lot of talk about the departed going to be 'angels in heaven', 'spirits in paradise', 'floating on a cloud' or whatever. Christianity has always taught the resurrection of the body - as we proclaim whenever we say the Apostles' Creed. But what is the resurrection of the body?
The doctrine has developed from St Paul's teaching in his letters. He writes to the Philippians about… 'our frail bodies becoming transformed into the likeness of Christ's glorious body' [Phil 3]. And Paul gives a full account of his understanding of resurrection bodies in 1 Corinthians 15. There he starts out by affirming that Jesus really did rise from the dead and that it is this fact which gives us the hope of our own resurrection. That, just as Jesus was raised from the dead with a new type of body - a 'resurrection body' - the same will be true for us. Resurrection is all about things being 'made new' - and Jesus' resurrection is the event that ushers in a new era: it marks a new beginning - for Jesus and for us.
The problem has always been that people have got hung up on whether resurrection is 'physical' or not. The conservatives have traditionally stuck out for Jesus' rising from the dead being a physical resurrection - while the liberals have preferred to dwell on the spiritual reality of the presence of the risen Jesus. But the Bible speaks not of a physical resurrection, nor a spiritual one, but 'bodily' resurrection - which is rather more than both a physical or spiritual one. Bishop David Jenkins is still being (mis)quoted for his famous statement about a 'conjuring trick with bones'. His point was this: who can get excited if the resurrection is nothing but 'a conjuring trick with bones' (in other words, if it's just a physical resurrection)? Whereas if it is a 'bodily' resurrection, there's plenty to get excited about.
But what's the difference between a bodily and a physical resurrection? Am I just splitting hairs? The problem is that the English translation of St Paul's Greek gives us 'body'. But the Greek word itself - 'soma' - means so much more than body as something just physical. 'Soma' is a much more widely-ranging inclusive word, meaning 'totality of being', or, you might say, absolutely everything that we really are as human beings. A resurrection of the 'soma' is therefore a resurrection of body, mind, personality and spirit. It's a new beginning for absolutely every facet of our humanity. Standing as we do at the beginning of the 21st century, we have a clear understanding that we cannot talk about being fully human only in terms of the body, or of the mind, or of the spirit. All three are important. We are fond of talking about things being 'holistic'.
The Christian faith - which is founded on the resurrection of Our Lord - is a holistic faith - because it has to do with absolutely everything about us. As people who are here this morning worshipping God in church, we would all be keen to stress the importance of the spiritual dimension in our lives. But equally, if we were to fall over and break our leg, we would be rather sharply reminded that our spirits lives within our bodies - and rather frail bodies at that! As each day unfolds, we have to use our minds to think: to make decisions, to try and understand our actions and the world around us. Yet our minds are not separate from our bodies - far from it. We are holistic beings and the Christian faith takes that seriously. The first commandment to God's people is 'to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength'. You can't get much more holistic than that. And the promise of resurrection is to our whole selves. And so when we say, in the Apostles' Creed, that we believe in the resurrection of the body, we should add 'and mind and spirit and anything else that happens to be part of us.'
And it's with this background in place that we come to today's Gospel. The story of the appearance of the risen Jesus in the upper room is a familiar one. On the first occasion, Thomas isn't there and it is on Jesus' second visit that he takes the step from unbelief to faith. The account includes St John's version of the giving of the Holy Spirit to the apostles - very quiet and certainly very different from the noisy Pentecost St Luke gives us in Acts. But central to this Gospel passage is the form of words Jesus uses to greet the apostles on both occasions: 'Peace be with you' [20:20,21; 20:26]
For us, these words have become a formula that we're very used to, week by week in church. In a few moments, I will greet you all in a similar way: 'The peace of the Lord be always with you' - and you know the response. Bishops traditionally greet a congregation with these words at the start of a service. But what lies behind them, and what did Jesus mean by them when he spoke them to the apostles on those occasions?
The word 'peace' (like 'body') is one that has a wealth of meaning. It's perhaps best expressed through the Hebrew word 'shalom' - a word which carries with it the great weight of total wellbeing - of harmony and of wholeness. Like the meaning of 'soma', it's a concept which is very much at home in the world we now inhabit, where our concern for wellbeing spills over into almost every area of life. I don’t know whether you've noticed but Boots has as its website address not www.boots.com (or even co.uk) but www.wellbeing.com. (It's very much the spirit of our present age.) In greeting the apostles with the words 'Peace be with you' Jesus is bringing them the wellbeing, the wholeness, the shalom which comes from God and is a consequence of the new life which God offers through the resurrection of Jesus.
Resurrection and wholeness are linked. Not just through this Gospel passage but because they both stand for things being made new - things becoming as they are supposed to be. The resurrection ushers in a new way of being - an offer of everlasting life, which begins now and continues beyond the grave. As the words of one of our Easter Eucharistic Prayers puts it so well: '… we give you thanks because in his victory over the grave a new age has dawned, the long reign of sin is ended, a broken world is being renewed, and humanity is once again made whole.'
In the New Testament there is a lot of talk about 'salvation' or being 'saved'. There are also, especially in the Gospels, a lot of instances of people being 'healed'. The fascinating thing is that the same Greek word (sozo) is almost always used for both. Healing / wholeness / salvation - it's all one - and all are part of the new life which Jesus' resurrection makes possible for us all.
Healing and wholeness are issues which stand at the very heart of the Christian Gospel, because they are central to God's purpose for us and for his world. That purpose is, in the words of today's Gospel, 'that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through believing we may have life in his name.' [John 20:31]
So if healing and wholeness are so important, why is it that they feature so little in the life of many of our churches? I suspect that a lot of it has to do with a right and proper suspicion of a rather sensational style of 'healing ministry' in which the emphasis is upon signs and wonders and cures. The wholeness of resurrection, the wholeness of new life is not about this. It might be that, in encountering Christ's wholeness, we also come to experience a physical cure - but the Christian perspective is much broader than this.
I am personally also sceptical about the value of special 'healing events'. That was certainly not Jesus' way of doing things, nor is it the pattern that emerged in the early Church that we see in the New Testament. There, the call to healing and to wholeness is part of the total message of the Gospel - of salvation, of life, of resurrection for all; and any healing ministry that takes place is rooted in the regular life and ordered worship of the church. It strikes me that this is as it should be; anything else is likely to distort the balance - and that can be where problems begin.
A number of us felt that it is time that, as a parish, we start to think and pray about the place of healing and wholeness within the regular life of our church. And to that end, this is the first in a series of sermons we shall be preaching throughout Eastertide on the subject of resurrection and healing. In each case we will be making links between the new life of the resurrection and the offer of wholeness /salvation / wellbeing, whatever we want to call it. Next week, Ally will be looking at the conversion of Saul (who went on to become St Paul) and at the link between healing and conversion. The following Sunday (which is Good Shepherd Sunday), Pat will look at healing in our own relationships with God. A week later sees the start of Christian Aid week, when Ally will take us beyond our own lives and that of the Church to consider issues of healing and justice in the world. And finally, I will be asking the question, 'do we want to be healed?'
Then, on 5 June, we have invited Andrew Schofield, the Vicar of St John's March and the Diocesan Adviser on health and healing to lead a day away for us to consider what place healing ministry might have within our life as a parish church. Booking forms for this will be available in the next few weeks. I hope you will come along.
Meanwhile, may our Lord Jesus Christ, present with us now in his risen power, enter into our bodies and spirits, take from us all that harms and hinders us, and fill us with his healing and his peace.