Easter 7, Year A: Christ's Hands & Feet

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark

Easter 7, Year A

The Very Reverend Tyler B. Doherty, Dean & Rector

Today’s readings contain echoes of the Feast of the Ascension celebrated on Thursday. In our reading from Acts, we have that picture of Jesus ascending to the right hand of the Father and the women and the disciples gathering together in prayer waiting to receive the power of the Holy Spirit. The bodily presence of Jesus departs (“And now I am no longer in the world”) so that God might dwell in the hearts of the disciples as the boundless energy of other-centered love. Some folks have objected that the Ascension, taken literally, is simply too odd to believe. It speaks of an out-moded “three-storey universe” that is no longer believable and therefore we should just drop the whole thing and maybe spend the seventh Sunday of Easter snuggled into the Church of the Holy Comforter with a nice cup of joe and Jane Pauley on the tube. Not so fast, I say. The Ascension, understood analogically and spiritually has much to teach us. If we dig in, we discover not some hopelessly outdated fantasy but a pointer towards what it means to be a disciple of the Risen Christ and the role of the gathered people of God--the Church--in the world.

            When we look at the pattern, the theological grammar, of the Ascension--Jesus departing in order to return to us as the Heart of Being--we see that it is echoed in many different spots in the Gospels. Think about the Transfiguration. Jesus is revealed in his raiment white and shining and Peter wants to bottle up the experience saying “It is good for us to be here. Let us construct three tents.” Catapulted out of his ordinary consciousness atop Mt. Tabor, Peter glimpses the true nature of Jesus (and who he, Peter, is called to be) and wants the moment to last forever. But it doesn’t. Peter, James, and John follow Jesus up the mountain and after the Transfiguration they continue to follow Him. And where does following Jesus take them? Down the other side of the mountain, into the marketplace, into direct confrontation with a sick and suffering world embodied in the man with a possessed son. Do you see the similarity? The vision of Jesus disappears in order that the disciples might learn the difficult lesson that their job is not to ogle Jesus, or set up lawn chairs to watch the spiritual fireworks, but, through their ever-deepening relationship with Jesus, to become him. Listen to this poem from St. Teresa of Avila, the great 16th century Carmelite saint, reformer, and Doctor of the Church:

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours. 

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” That what the Transfiguration and the Ascension are both reminding us--of the grand destiny of what it means to be a truly human human. Not simply to study Jesus. Not simply to admire him. But to enter into relationship with him, to worship Him, to sanctify Christ in our hearts to such an extent that we gradually come to resemble him a little more closely. That’s the heart of the spiritual journey, why we’re here on planet earth for this brief span of days.

            So Jesus’ “departure” as a physical reality is actually the engine that drives us to encounter Him in depths of the heart where we dwells as a spring of living water rising up to eternal life, a fountain of love yearning to flood our being, to irrigate our fear, anxiety, loneliness, and lack. Jesus departs as a localized presence in order to be all in all. Just think what the disciples would have done had Jesus hung around. They would have remained content to be his followers, his admirers, members of his fan-club, his press agent or PR person. But that’s not what Jesus wants. That’s too easy. That’s the way of the world. Jesus wants his disciples to become the love they have received from God and then to be that love for others. If Jesus hadn’t ascended, it would have been too easy for the disciples to turn Jesus into a possession, something they could manipulate, predict, and control. That’s why Jesus, mistaken for a gardener on the first day of the week tells a baffled and awestruck Mary, “Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.” Don’t hold on to me. Don’t grasp me. Let me go so that I might return to you a manner so profound, so deep, that you cannot even conceive of it.

            One other place this same thing happens--the Road to Emmaus. Jesus walks alongside, opens the scriptures for them, breaks bread with them and after that moment of startled, world-pivoting recognition disappears. Jesus’ departure, his disappearance from the impromptu Eucharist at the road-side inn, keeps the disciples on the road, following faithfully after the disappearing one down the way of love. Thanks be to God that the archaeologists haven’t been able to find the place where this happened. Otherwise, we’d have Chez Emmauses dotting the roadside, and opportunities for face-in-the-hole selfies with Jesus and Cleopas. I’m being silly, but the point is deadly serious. Grasping, holding on, possessing--no matter what form it takes--ultimately distracts from the real task--to listen for his voice, to follow him, to abide with him, and let love love you into loving. 

            So the deep teaching of the Ascension is not so much that Jesus ascends to the Father (though it certainly is that!), but that we too are called to union and communion with the living God. Father Thomas Keating OCSO of blessed memory was fond of asking in his naughty schoolboy socratic way, “What’s the purpose of being human?” Without fail a rather humorous back-and-forth would ensue:

“To be a nice person.”

 “Nope.” 

“To be a good Catholic.” 

“Nope.”

“To be a good Protestant.”

“Nope.” 

To be a saint.” 

“Nope, not good enough.” 

“A Saint, not good enough? Well, what then?” 

“To become like God.” 

Stunned silence

This is what the Church Fathers referred to as deification, or theosis. It’s not an arrogant human attempt to become divine, but rather the process through which our lives in imitation of Christ who emptied himself for others, become saturated with grace, soaked in love, to such a degree that we are in St. Irenaeus’ words, “raised to the life of God.”

            That’s why, especially in the Gospel according to John, eternal life doesn’t just refer to something that happens at the end of our lives. The promise of the Gospel is that even in this life, even amidst all the pressures of daily life and work, and yes, even amidst the dark and stark realities of the COVID-19 pandemic we can taste eternal life, drink from the fountain of love that burbles up at the center of our soul. And that’s why, one of the “men in white robes,” in our passage from Acts calls the disciples out for staring slack-jawed at the sky--”Why do you stand looking up at heaven?” Christianity is not a spectator sport, it’s a grand, participatory adventure into love where we learn to surrender, to let go, to open our hands and let the Holy Spirit make us into Christ’s hands, and feet, and eyes, and ears in the world. All the journey requires is our consent to God’s presence and action in our lives, but we do have utter our, “Yes.” God does the rest but never against our will, and not without our co-operation for there is no coercion in love. 

            Remember those lines from W.H. Auden’s poem “The Age of Anxiety: “We would rather be ruined than changed/We would rather die in our dread/Than climb the cross of the moment/And let our illusions die.” That’s what the Ascension is calling us to--to let our illusions die--illusions of not being enough, of being unlovable, of somehow having to earn God’s grace, of somehow being separate from the one, true, and living God who dwells at the center of our being. Let yourselves be changed. Climb the cross of the moment and let those illusions fall away. Stop looking up to heaven and live instead from the boundless, uncontainable, unquenchable love of God that has been poured into our hearts as Christ’s hands, eyes, ears, lips, and feet.