Christ Honors Our Bodies

Christ Honors Our Bodies
A Sermon by Chris Hensley
Based on Psalm 30 & John 21:1-19
Presented to Sardis Baptist Church
May 4, 2025

 

The Easter season continues and we continue with our theme of resurrection. We take a look at some of John’s accounts for the resurrection, specifically we see the final encounter which John records between Jesus and his disciples. For John, Jesus’ resurrection was a physical event and it was something which the author wanted to emphasize to the readers. Similarly to Luke’s account, even those closest to Jesus have trouble believing in the event as it was recounted to them unless they are able to physically interact with the resurrected body of their teacher and friend. Throughout our Christian Testament reading, there is a shift from mourning and grief to confusion and uncertainty to finally thanksgiving on the part of the disciples in light of what had happened in their lives. All of these things are held in tension and there is not a clear and definitive transition from one emotional response to the other. As we in the real world experience life and emotions on a spectrum which is often messy and blurred, so is the experience of the first followers of the Christ in our reading for this morning.

This is how we experience the world around us, though. Through our bodies which perceive and process our world and we often try to make sense of what is happening from a holistic sense – physically, mentally, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually. This is something which Jesus clearly understood this and, in the various healing miracles recorded in the Gospels, Jesus provides the physical healing of several individuals from ailments and conditions which limited their functioning and robbed them of their ability to participate fully in their surrounding community and they each required a resurrection of their own sort.

There is a poignant connection to be made between both of our readings for this morning. Psalm 30 is an individual song of thanksgiving and the psalmist announces thanks to God for turning their mourning into thanksgiving and praises. Each of the healing accounts, regardless of how you interpret them, tells of a situation wherein a person suffers and requires a resurrection or restoration, Jesus provides this, and the people rejoice and offer thanksgiving and praises. This is, of course, an appropriate response to a resurrection of the intended order within the lives of the individuals and their surrounding communities as they are healed. And that is what Jesus appears to be about doing, bringing humanity back to their intended place in the grand cosmic scheme of the universe – recognizing that they are loved children of a Divine being and have dignity and worth.

Narrowing onto our passage, though, we see a group of disheartened and grieving disciples returning to the thing which makes sense to them, fishing. This is their intended order in that it is what is known and familiar to them. We all seem to go back to those familiar comforts in moments of grief and stress. In the passage, the disciples encounter Jesus, resurrected according to the text, and do not recognize him. It is interesting that in John’s account of the resurrection, Jesus is always in control, always the one initiating, and always appearing unexpectedly. Following the miraculous catch of fish, no one has the gall to ask who this is, the doubt from the two earlier appearances in this account seemingly having been washed away. Interestingly, Jesus is on the beach, preparing breakfast and offers it to the disciples. We can talk about how Jesus reinstates Peter later. This morning, I wanted to highlight that Jesus offers the grieving and confused disciples a meal. There is something sacred and uplifting about sharing a meal with others. Throughout his ministry, Jesus has been intentional about caring for the persons he encountered from a holistic stand point. Never was his ministry solely focused on “soul winning.” Instead, Jesus would restore persons to a resurrected life in the here and now by giving them back their health, their means to provide for themselves or their families, and even their very lives – an odd inclusion if he were only focused on soul winning.

None of this is to say that these miracles actually happened or continue to happen today. That is something with which you must wrestle for yourself. You needn’t wrestle alone, I am with you in that wrestling. Rather, the point is to say that the intended order of things, a part of the purpose of resurrection within the Christian tradition, is to say that Jesus provided a reminder that the intended order of things must be restored. Again, the intended order of things, at least according to the Hebrew Bible which is the foundation of the Christian Testament, is to be in deep relationship with God, with one another, and with the created world around us. All of it rich and symbiotic. Further, we experience these relationships in and through our bodies which must be nourished and taken care of. Sharing a meal with others is a great way to do both, take care of ourselves and experience deep relationship with others, intentionally and according to the teachings of Jesus.

References

Anderson, Bernhard W. Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today 3^rd Ed,

Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2000, p.102-05

Burridge, Richard A. Four Gospels, One Jesus? A Symbolic Reading 3^rd Ed, William B.

Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI, 2014, p.161-63

Jesus Honors our Bodies