First Sunday after Epiphany

The Apostles’ Creed is the creed of our Baptism and is often recited at Mass during the Easter season. In the second to last line, we profess the belief in the “resurrection of the body”. For many, this is a puzzling concept and puts images of Christian zombies roaming the earth; nothing could be further from the truth.

The “resurrection of the body” is based on our belief that the body, as St. Paul puts it, “is a temple of the Holy Spirit”. This signifies that God dwells within us as a Holy Presence. The Jewish people in ancient days experienced God’s presence in the Arc of the Covenant, around which the Temple was built. St. Paul refers to each of the faithful being a temple; the Church, then, as the Body of Christ is the Temple, a living, dynamic presence of God at work in the world as the ancient Temple in Jerusalem was, for the Jews, the dwelling place of God on earth.

Our bodies, then, share the immortality of Christ. We believe upon death we dwell in God’s presence in the time and purpose of God’s choosing, to be reunited with our risen bodies as Christ was raised bodily after his crucifixion.

It is easy to get fixed on this future time and lose sight that our bodies are already resurrected from the death of an existence separated from the grace of Christ. Each day is the gift of a resurrected body, a chance to let the God dwelling in you, be a sign to the world of God’s presence.  

We glorify God in our body when our actions conform to the actions of Christ. Paul’s emphasis on sexual sin is historically tied to the sin of the Corinthians, which included incest, temple prostitution, adultery, and fornication. Rather than begin with a laundry list of sins to avoid, Paul was hoping to lay a foundation for a sexual ethic, a set of principles by which the community at Corinth could understand the need to pay attention to the body as something sacred. St. Paul was trying to counter the Gnostics of Corinth who held the body to be worthless and unimportant, and that it was only the spirit that was of any significance, a concept foreign to Christ and the early Church.

We worship God in our bodies, but we must remember that we also worship God through our bodies. It is easy to focus on sexual sins and forget that all sins are actions of the body because it is the body that puts all our intentions into action. Feelings are never sinful, but the sins of our lives only live through the actions we take in our bodies. Likewise, virtues intended but not put into action lie ineffectually within our bodies. It is only when we act on those virtues that the resurrection of Christ’s body, our body, the Church, becomes again God’s presence in the world.

Epiphany

God in Humanity Made Manifest

     Epiphany means "manifestation", that is, a revealing, an illumination, which is precisely how we experience the jubilation of Israel experiencing the fulfillment of Isaiah 40.  This passage is the joyful song of those who have returned from exile and whose reinvigorated relationship with God will serve as a beacon for "the nations" which signifies the non-Jewish peoples.  The God who has delivered Israel in an act of great salvation becomes, for Christians, the sign of God's supreme act of salvation that saves not only the people of Israel but the world.  Paul's epistle picks up this theme in "the mystery made manifest" and the notion of the Gentiles being "coheirs, members of the same body".  In the Gospel, we have the ultimate revelation of God's salvation in the form of Jesus' birth, being announced to Gentiles, who then come to worship the Christ child; again mirroring the idea expressed in Isaiah that "Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance."  This king has qualities of the Davidic kingship of justice and concern for the poor contrasted with the megalomaniac paranoia of King Herod.  There are a few important ideas developed in today's readings, I think.
     It strikes me that God's revelation over time with the Jewish people, and then to the Gentiles, has been expansive.  Rather than simply lavishing all His attention on his "chosen", we come to see that the choice plays an essential role in salvation history.  It is the God who is incredibly lavish with his love and attention, that is a key element in understanding God's manifestation to the world.  It is a God of great inclusion rather than exclusion, yet so much of what we see in Christianity today seeks to privatize God, limits access to communion, sets up laws of access, decides who's "in communion" and who isn't, goes against God's essential movement to embrace humanity, all of humanity, in all the messiness and chaos that this momentum encounters.  We promulgate doctrines that attempt to put a legal tabernacle around God and deny anyone access except through priests who have the stamp of approval from the corporate office; perhaps chaos isn't so much a sign of evil in the world as the facade of unity that is really uniformity.  When we put "Christian" in front of nouns to transform them, like "Christian writer," we mistake God's act of salvation.  The transformation of Christ in the world came from the center of lowliness, vulnerability, and exile as a child in a manger, and expanded through acts of healing and resurrection rather than from the outside in.  A "Christian writer" becomes in this new world a "writer of Christ," one whose work brings Christ to the world, helps manifest Christ.  Now we can ask if the writing brings Christ's healing and resurrection rather than concentrate as to whether or not the writer is a Christian.  "The writer who is Christian" is the focus on Christ's presence through the boundless and expansive energy of the Holy Spirit, "the Christian writer" is an investigation as to the legitimacy of affiliation with the Christian community.
     When we make decisions as a faith community that defines ourselves over and against those who are not-like-us, we make feeble attempts to limit the Spirit.  When we reach across denominational and even religious boundaries to recognize the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, and of Christ, in those not-like-us, we act most in concert with God whose saving act in Christ is for "the nations", not "the nation." It is shameful that those who most need God's love and salvation are often handed literature rather than a hug, a dismissive tone rather than a place at the table.  In a modification of St. Francis's admonition, we need to go out and preach the Good News, and if we have to, use words.