Second Sunday of Easter Yr B
Homily
During Holy Week a letter to the Editor in the local paper was headed “who was Jesus?”. In it, the writer stated that even though Jesus was a great teacher and moral philosopher, he was not God. The writer stated among other claims that nowhere in Scripture do the disciples or Paul ever refer to Jesus as “God”.
Finishing the letter, I was reminded of a line of Luke Skywalker in “The Last Jedi” where on two occasions he responds to a character with the words – “Remarkable. Every statement you just made is incorrect!”
Apart from everything else, the write had obviously never read this part of John’s Gospel – which does render his premise somewhat questionable.
One thing that always strikes me about the post-Resurrection narratives is their insistence on the physicality of Jesus. This is no ghost –he converses and eats with them, he can be touched and is.
The Greco-Roman world would have no difficulty accepting a ghost, so this emphasis is quite important.
Also is the fact that we are explicitly informed that Jesus still bears his wounds. Greek and Roman myths had stories of demi-gods being brought to Olympus, but in those cases, the new figure was physically perfect. It would not be bearing any imperfections. So, again, this is important.
Jesus continues to bear his wounds. They are not imperfections, not signs of failure. The prevailing culture of the Greco-Roman made a fetish of physical beauty ( almost as bad as today!), so this is telling us something significant. While there is certainly truth in beauty, there are several forms that beauty can take – and perfection is not necessarily one of them.
Jesus is not ashamed of his wounds, he does not shed them. They are part of him.
There was a certain strand in Greek thought, which leached into some Christian heresies that denigrated the flesh. It saw humans as being “souls” trapped in faulty bodies. Some went to the extreme of opposing marriage and families as these continued the cycle of entrapment.
Mainstream Christian thought always maintained that in fact the flesh, all of Creation is good. It all comes from God and is therefore good. This has consequences for how we treat our environment as every part of it is God telling us something.
Many in our community will bear wounds, whether physical, emotional or spiritual. We can allow these wounds to destroy us. We can seek to hide them. Or we can acknowledge those wounds, not allowing them to define us, but accepting that the wounds can help to make us who we are.