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TALK ON THE RESURRECTED BODY OF CHRIST 8th May 2008 |
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You all know the story of Adam and Eve and how they fell from grace; we have mentioned it on many occasions. Man was created for Paradise, for immortal life, for knowledge of God and communion with Him. Adam’s original sin resulted in man being exiled from paradise and being deprived of that blessed life, and instead of immortality was now subject to illnesses, diseases, pain, suffering, ageing bodies, and death. Christ, with his death and Resurrection, re-opens the door of Paradise to everyone who follows him, so Easter is in fact the celebration of mankind’s return to Paradise: it is the celebration of our return to God. For mankind there can be nothing more important than the fact that Christ has made it possible for us to live eternally with him in paradise. Pascha is therefore not only the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, but also our very own resurrection from the dead. That
is the meaning of the Easter Hymn which we sing continually for 40 days
until the feast of the Ascension. “Christ is risen
from the dead, by death he hath overcome death and to them in the graves
hath he given life.” The first part of the hymn is a proclamation
and it is the main proclamation of the Christian faith
“Christ is risen from the dead”. The second
part of the hymn tells us what this means for us;
“by death he hath overcome death and to them in the graves hath he given
life” in other words, by his death on the Cross he has overcome
man’s last enemy, death itself. Up until that moment, everyone that died
had no open passage to heaven: all souls ended up in a place cut off from
paradise which the Greeks called Hades. Everyone inherited the
consequences of Adam’s original sin. Christ was the only exception. Christ
was not subject to original sin and was free from all personal sin, he was
therefore not subject to death. When he was crucified and laid dead in the
tomb, death had no legal claim over Him, and so His body was resurrected
and became an immortal body. Christ’s human nature, free from sin, had
broken the barrier that separated us from God. Christ the New Adam had
pulled down the middle wall of partition that had been erected by the fall
of the Old Adam. And in the same that we are all one and share in the
fallen human nature of the Old Adam, we now become one with the renewed
and deified human nature of Christ, the New Adam and this we do when we
partake of his precious Body and Blood in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
Now if the stone was rolled away to reveal that Jesus’ body was no longer in the tomb, where did it go? This is our first encounter with a resurrected immortal body and how it differs from our mortal bodies. Although it is still a material body in other words it is not a ghost, it can actually pass through other solid matter. If the Body was no longer in the tomb then we can only assume that it passed through the stone sepulchre and was already outside of the tomb before the women witnessed the angel roll the stone away. St. Mark, in his account of the resurrection doesn’t mention the earthquake or the rolling away of the stone, but when the women came to the tomb the stone had already been rolled away. He says that three women came to the tomb, Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of James and Salome. Mary the mother of James might be the wife of Cleopas, but it is more probable that Mark is again referring to the Mother of God. We have in St. Matthew’s Gospel the account where Jesus taught in the Synagogue of the town he grew up in and the people were so astonished at his teaching because they knew who he was and knew his family that they said: “Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?” (Matth. 13: 54-55) Of course these were Joseph’s children from his previous marriage, but legally they were Jesus’ brothers and legally Mary’s Children even though they were older than her. Another difference between Matthew and Mark is that Matthew mentions the angel sitting on the stone that he rolled away, Mark mentions that the angel is inside the sepulchre sitting on the right side of where Jesus’ body would have been laid. St. Luke mentions Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and other women that were with them and also mentions that there were two angels in the Tomb. St. John’s account of the Resurrection is of special interest. In a previous talk we mentioned that John wrote his Gospel after the other three Evangelists and one of the main reasons was to supplement the narration of the other three synoptic Gospels. As a disciple who was close enough to be with Christ at all times, he heard and saw a great many more things than the other Evangelist. In his account of the Resurrection he mentions that Mary Magdalene came by herself to the sepulchre while it was still dark and saw the stone rolled away, but didn’t enter inside. She run back and told Peter and John who accompanied her back to the tomb. John describes how Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen clothes lie and the napkin that was about his head not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then John himself enters the tomb and he saw and believed. But what did John see that made him believe that Jesus was resurrected? By seeing an empty tomb is not proof of the Resurrection for as he himself says immediately after “For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” (John 20: 9) So what did he see, what did he notice that was so extraordinary and so convincing that he mentions that when he saw he believed that Christ arose from the dead? Peter who entered first doesn’t seem to notice, because up to that moment John was speaking in the plural but now he suddenly changes from the plural and states in the singular case that he saw and believed. Only his eyes noticed something totally extraordinary and illogical which was proof enough for him to believe that Christ was Risen. What John saw made him the first to believe in the resurrection. It is believed that what he saw was that the linen clothes were still on the burial stone in exactly the same way they were when they were wrapped around Jesus’ body. In other words Jesus didn’t get up and remove his burial clothes, but passed through them leaving them behind as they were on the stone slab. The cloth which covered his head was a separate piece and that fell of his face when he stood up and which he carefully folded and placed in a separate place from the other burial clothes. Thus already from the tomb we see that the Resurrected Jesus still has the same body, but in a new and glorious form. It is still flesh and blood but can pass through other solid matter. Matthew tells us that as the two Maries run to tell the Apostles the angel’s message, they were met by Jesus and they held him by the feet and worshipped him. They did not see a spirit but a real tangible person. Christ appeared many times to the Apostles, sometimes to one or two and at other times to all the Apostles together. He appeared to Peter separately and to Luke and Cleopas whilst they were on their way to Emmaus. He spoke with them explaining the scriptures concerning himself to them for hours yet they didn’t recognise him. Only after the blessing and braking of bread were their eyes opened to see who their walking companion was and then he vanished from their sight. So another attribute of the Resurrected body is that it can appear in another form probably with different characteristics and can appear and disappear at will. The
Emmaus story is told us by Luke himself who then mentions that they
immediately returned to Jerusalem to tell the other Apostles of their
experience. While they recounted what had happened Christ again appeared
in their midst. Luke tells us that they were all terrified and frightened
because they thought they had seen a ghost. Christ then reassures them
that he is not a ghost and showing them his hands and his feet with the
wounds from the nails, invites them to touch him to verify for themselves
that he is indeed a human being made of flesh and bones for as Christ
himself tells them: “for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me
have.” But the disciples still disbelieved their eyes so Christ asked them
if they had anything he could eat. They gave him a piece of broiled fish
and a piece of honeycomb which he ate in their presence. He had of course
no bodily need to eat. He ate in order to show the Apostles that he was
not a spirit because spirits cannot eat. The Resurrected body has no need
of sustenance, but can eat if it so desires. Remember that Adam before the
fall, when his body was still immortal, could eat of all the fruits in the
garden of paradise. The immortal Resurrected Body has therefore many
attributes which we would only expect to find in fictional films like the
Highlander. To
summarize: Christ in his new and glorious form could appear at will in
different places instantaneously. He could pass through solid matter or
appear and disappear at the blink of an eye. He is difficult to recognize
or can change his appearance so as not to be recognized and could eat and
drink if he so wished. This then is the kind of body we will all have
after the resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming of Christ. When Jehovah Witnesses, who don’t believe that Jesus is God, are confronted with this statement of faith made by Thomas, they say that Thomas made a mistake, but if it was a mistake then why didn’t Jesus correct him. In fact Jesus accepted Thomas’ confession and immediately said to him: “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” Jesus here remarks on two types of faith: the kind of faith Thomas and the other Apostles had, a visual experience to believe, and a faith which is based only from hearing. With the first part of the statement, Jesus clearly speaks of a faith which is the consequence of a sight experience, but he doesn’t say anything to make us think that this kind of faith has a diminished value. The second part of Jesus’ statement is a beatitude which presents a different type of faith, namely a faith not depending on visual experiences: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” Who are the recipients of such a blessing? Definitely the great number of the larger circle of the disciples who had not seen the risen Lord with their own eyes but relied on the eyewitness of the other disciples. Also the Christians living around the end of the first century AD for whom John the Evangelist writes his Gospel. The majority of these people were born years after the resurrection and the ascension of Christ, therefore they could not have seen him. They are proclaimed blessed because they have arrived at the state of believing in the risen Lord without the assistance or proof of immediate, direct and personal ocular experience. To these we can add every Christian up to our present age who believes that Christ is God. I would even go further and say that Christians of our times are more blessed that those Christians of the first century because although they might not have seen the Risen Christ, a great many were eye-witnesses to countless miracles performed by the Apostles: miracles which were deemed necessary to convince the thousands who heard their preaching that Jesus was indeed the one and only true God. Christians of our time basically have to rely on and fully accept the apostolic eyewitness and tradition about Jesus. They have to follow a way very different from the way of Thomas and the other Apostles. If it was difficult for the Apostles to believe in the Resurrection even though they were witnesses to Christ raising from the dead Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s only son and Lazarus who had been dead four days, how much more difficult is it for someone to believe in Christ after two thousand years have past without any shred of evidence except by something that he reads in a book called the New Testament. Many people today repeat what Thomas said: “Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” The need to see to believe is a human attribute and we should not expect everyone to believe just because we believe, neither should we condemn them for their unbelief. For those who us who have not seen yet have believed, let us take comfort in the fact that Christ has called us blessed. And as Peter in his first Epistle says: “Whom having not seen (Christ), you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Thomas’
demands have to this present day characterized him as “The Doubting
Thomas” but we can also say that he said what he said because he believed
correctly; because he believed in an orthodox way. Therefore we could call
him “The Right-believing Thomas.” What do I mean by this? Paul tells us
that we must test the spirits to see if they are from God lest we be
deluded by the devil. All the fathers of the Church warn us not to
immediately trust an apparition, because demons can also appear as angels
of light or as one of the saints and even as Christ, so we should not
trust what we see. We have also the example of the Mother of God herself
who, when told by the Archangel Gabriel that she would receive in her womb
the Son of God and that her aged and barren cousin Elisabeth was also with
child, did not disbelief, but wanted verification. Thus she immediately
set forth to go Elisabeth to see and verify for herself the things told
her by the angel. And that is the Orthodox way: not to immediately accept,
neither to disbelief, but to verify. |
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