The tomb is empty, and nobody knows where the body is. Mary Magdalene
tells the others about the mysterious disappearance, but they give up
and go home. Mary stays behind, weeping, and then fails to recognize
the risen one before her. As the days pass, each resurrected encounter
begins in surprise or anonymity - the disciples fishing all night
without catching, Jesus cooking breakfast on the beach, the two on their
way to Emmaus. Nobody recognizes him at first sight.
Clearly the risen
body is not identical to the Jesus who was crucified. People mistake
him for a stranger. He enters locked rooms. He walks along the path to
Emmaus for a long time without being recognized. Crucifixion, death,
and resurrection result in a transformed body - with evident scars, but
changed nonetheless. When he reminds others of God's banquet, meant for
the whole world - when human beings are fed and watered, delivered from
prison, gathered from exile across the earth, and healed and reconciled
into a community of peace - his companions discover that he has once
again been in their midst.
What does that
resurrection reality mean for the Body of Christ of which we are part?
How does the risen Body of Christ - what we often call the church -
differ from the crucified one? That Body seems to be most lively when
it lives closer to the reality of Good Friday and the Easter mystery.
In the West, that Body has suffered a lot of dying in recent decades.
It is diminished, some would say battered, increasingly punctured by
apathy and taunted by cultured despisers. That body bears little
resemblance to royal images of recent memory - though, like Jesus, it is
being mocked. The body remembers and grieves, like the body of Israel
crying in the desert, "why did you bring us out here to die?" or the
crucified body who cries, "My God, why have you forsaken me," or "why
have you abandoned us?" In other contexts the Body of Christ is quite
literally dying and spilling its lifeblood - in Pakistan and Sudan, in
Iraq and Egypt - and in those ancient words of Tertullian, the blood of
martyrs is becoming the seed of the church.
The Body of Christ
is rising today where it is growing less self-centered and inwardly
focused, and living with its heart turned toward the cosmic and eternal,
its attention focused intently on loving God and neighbor. This Body
is rising to stand in solidarity with criminals sentenced to death, with
widows and orphans, with the people of the land who slave over furrows
and lettuce fields to feed the world. This Body can be found passing
through walls and boundaries that have long been misused to keep the
righteous "safe" and "pure." The Body is recognized when the hungry are
fed - on the lakeshore with broiled fish, on the road to Emmaus, on
street corners and city parks, in food pantries and open kitchens, in
feeding neighbor nations and former enemies, and as the Body gathers
once again to remember its identity and origin - Christ is risen for the
sake of all creation.
Where and how will
we look for the Body of Christ, risen and rising? Will we share the
life of that body as an Easter people, transformed by resurrection and
sent to transform the world in turn?
Christ is risen, Alleluia! Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed!
Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church
