The Scripture Reading for this sermon is Luke 24:36b-48
Meister Eckhart once said, “If I
spend enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar – I would
never have to prepare a sermon. So
full of God is every creature.”
This sounds like a great idea to me. How perfect is it that I won’t ever have to write a sermon
again. And since, as many of you
know, I love watching nature documentaries. I watch them avidly, I figure I’m a step ahead.
The last time I saw a
caterpillar, however, was in December.
And there was something quite tragic about that. A caterpillar in December in Manitoba. The little guy was in his full
furriness, inching its way across the road. There was melting snow all around it, but the possibility of
spring was still very distant. I’m
not sure how this happened. I
don’t know whether the caterpillar was late in arriving, or whether it was
early, hatching from an egg, its body somehow fooled by the warm weather. Nevertheless, it would not survive
until spring. I pondered the idea
of squishing it, I imagined that would be a quicker way to go than
freezing. But I didn’t. I moved it off the road, and hoped that
a hungry bird would see it.
That I remember a simple
encounter with a caterpillar 4 months later, I think speaks to Meister
Eckhart’s words. “If I spend
enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar – I would never have
to prepare a sermon. So full of
God is every creature.” I say this
with all seriousness, and all gratitude, but I built a little relationship with
that caterpillar. It was able to
evoke feelings within me, feelings of joy and sadness. That was its gift to me. And I do still at times wonder what
happened to my little friend, knowing full well that whatever it was, it
probably was not good.
This seems so far away from our
scripture story for today, where we once again find ourselves in the company of
Jesus’ disciples. Rumors are starting
to fly among them. They talk about
the empty tomb, they hear about an encounter on the Road to Emmaus. Excitement is building, but they don’t
know what it could mean to them.
Finally, the Risen Christ appears before them, and their response is the
most normal response I can think of.
They are terrified. They
think he is a ghost.
As in the Thomas story, Jesus
then invites the disciples to reach out and to touch him, to feel his
wounds. He is no ghost, he walks
among them, he breathes among them in the fullness of his body. And sure enough, he eats among them, he
physically needs nourishment. Whoever
wrote Luke is really emphasizing that the Risen Christ has a body. This is incredibly important to the
author. This is not a story about
some transcendent being. This is
not a story about an ethereal Jesus, a ghostly Christ who dwells in our hearts
and minds, a heavenly presence that whispers from far away. This is a story about flesh and bones,
which we all have. It is a story
about physical bodies, about creation and the world around us where we all live. It is right here.
So often we want to put God far
away. We want to put God in the
heavenly realm. When we do that,
the purpose of Christianity becomes about getting somewhere else, about leaving
creation. This world becomes a
sort of proving ground. It becomes
a world that doesn’t really matter in the long run.
But the emphasis on the body in
this story, says something entirely different. Christianity is not a faith about heavenly places and superbeings. Christianity is about this world. Christianity says, if we want to
encounter God, we can do so right here, right now, in creation, not outside of
it. When I use a word like incarnation,
that’s what I mean. That God is
incarnate, to me, means that God dwells here. That God has a body, that God is physical, that God can be
touched, and seen, heard, smelt and tasted. This is the wonder of the Incarnation.
Today we are celebrating Earth
Day. I think this is an important
day to celebrate in the Christian calendar. It is a day where we are reminded that holiness exists all
around us, that to spend time with a caterpillar is to spend time with
God. And so I’m going to invite
you to do that. Spend time with a
caterpillar, or a fly, or a shrub, or even a blade of grass. Take a seed before it is sown and
marvel at it. Just marvel at
it. Today is an invitation to the
fullness of our faith as Christians, a faith that does not look for God far
away in the future, but a faith that knows God right here, right now. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Not my best. I was tired this week. We also had a bunch of baptisms in two of the points so I was not wanting to go too long. But I still wanted to offer something to the third point. Discussing creation and environmentalism is often difficult when there is some hostility towards it. I've been reflecting on that and might post a non-sermon blog entry on that soon. No sermon for April 29, I tried writing one, it was awful so I went extemporaneously. No sermon for May 6 as I will be away.
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