First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scriptures: Luke 24:50-53, Acts 1:1-11
April 10, 2015
I have no aptitude for criminology, but this much I know. If you are going to put someone on trial for murder, it helps to have a corpse. I am sure people have been convicted without one, just as I am sure that life insurance claims have been settled without one. But in both criminal cases and insurance cases, it’s helpful to have one. Corpses bring closure.
Unfortunately, in the case of Jesus, the discovery of a “corpus delicti” would bring the very worst kind of closure….nullifying, as it were, our wonderful Easter claim and promise. At one time or another, every preacher who has ever written a sermon has pointed to the lack of a buried body as proof of the resurrection. You know how the argument goes. If people were running around reporting Jesus sightings (in dawn’s early garden….behind closed doors….on an Emmaus-bound road), all it would take for a cynic or a skeptic to refute those claims and lay resurrection rumors to rest would be to produce Jesus’ body. Unseal the tomb. Unwrap the shroud. Point to his bones. Smell his decaying flesh. Check a fingerprint or two. Why, it would take the wind out of even the best preacher’s sails. And the Jesus Movement would crumble like a house of cards.
Matthew says the tomb was guarded, lest anybody try anything funny. Apparently, some people smelled something fishy. So, after the burial of Jesus, they said to Pontius Pilate:
You know, back when he was alive, Jesus said that he would rise again in three days. Now wouldn’t it be just like his crazy friends to steal his body and say, “See, he was right all along (about rising, we mean).” So you’d better guard the grave or they could actually pull it off. Steal the body and tell everyone he was alive, we mean. No telling how many people would fall for something like that. People are gullible, you know. (Matthew 27:62-65, adapted)
So Pilate said: “Take some soldiers. Guard the grave. Watch the grave. Make the grave as secure as you can.” And they did.
Which is exactly why Matthew inserts the grave-guarding story into his narrative when he compiles it fifty years later. Because, even then, people may well have been saying:
You know, his followers keep saying he rose from the dead….that they’ve seen him….talked to him….touched him….ate a little broiled fish with him. But I bet they just stole his body and made the rest up….creating an imaginary friend for themselves and a mythical master for their movement.
But as young, just-starting-out, hell-bent-to-prove-the-gospel preachers like to say, how could anybody steal the body if they were guarding the body? Therefore, since nobody stole it and nobody found it, if he was dead, he isn’t anymore. Case made. Case proved. Case closed. Resurrection certified.
Well, every few years someone will suggest that Jesus wasn’t really dead in the first place….that crucifixion was customarily a three-day death process, not a three-hour death process. The theory goes that when Jesus said (from the cross), “I thirst,” they put something on a sponge….put the sponge on a stick…and put the stick to his lips. Meaning that he might have been anesthetized (in a manner of speaking) so that he only appeared to be dead. Meaning that they buried, not a dead man, but a drugged man. Whereupon he eventually woke up….spoke up….packed up….left the country….went to India (or France, or wherever)….and lived the remainder of his days as “Sage in Residence” of some remote and spiritually-inverted community. I’ve seen those theories. And I’ve read those books.
And in the in-between years, some novelist or another (most likely cousins of Dan Brown) writes a paperback novel about a cover-up concerning the crucifixion. The plot is familiar. Start with an aging priest (much the worse for wear because of whisky or women) who stumbles upon something near Jerusalem….a grave…..an urn….maybe even a few bones from a skeleton. And after sobering up so as to do some serious sleuthing, the priest concludes he has happened upon the remains of Jesus. But the news leaks out and church authorities (with a paper trail leading all the way to the Pope) try to shut him up, bribe him off, even snuff him out….usually with the help of a temptress who is as sensuous as she is shapely, and who eventually abandons the cardinals and their cover-up because she falls in love with the priest. But, as to whether the priest has discovered the bones of Jesus definitively, the novel never resolves the question conclusively. Although hundreds of readers….upon reaching the end of this ecclesiastical potboiler…..turn to the person beside them on the bus and say: “It could be true, you know. I mean, it would be just like the church to hush something like that up.”
But the biblical witness would appear to be clear. Grave watchers or no grave watchers, there was no grave robbery. The grave was empty….with resurrection rather than robbery being the reason. After which Jesus made appearances….varieties of appearances….involving some sort of body. People saw him and recognized him. Not always immediately, but eventually. Lending credibility to their testimony. Clearly, there was something to it, because there was something to him. Some form. Some substance. Some body.
So what happened to it? His resurrection body, I mean. William Barclay, a much-beloved biblical commentator, says it would be unthinkable for the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to go on indefinitely until they just sort of petered out. Concerning Jesus’ post-Easter phase, there had to be some closure. But assuming so, where did he go?
To which the church has offered a pair of answers. One, a vertical solution. The other, a horizontal solution. Let’s take them in order.
The vertical solution is the Doctrine of the Ascension. “He ascended into heaven.” I can take you to Jerusalem and direct the driver of the bus to the top of the Mount of Olives. Once we disembark, we will have a magnificent overview of the old city, including the remnants of the Temple Mount, the Kidron Valley and the Garden of Gethsemane. Then I will invite you to crowd into an octagonal cupola (about eight yards in diameter) which is said to stand over the very place where our Lord ascended into heaven. Whereupon I will direct your eyes to a hard stone upon which (the guidebooks suggest) you can see the print of one of Jesus’ feet. A more ancient version of the same book will suggest that there was once another stone in which could be seen the print of his other foot. But that was before this second stone was removed by the Turks (sometime before 1700 A.D.) and placed in a mosque….where it may, or may not, remain today.
Concerning the print that allegedly remains, I doubt you will be able to make it out. And you will have to use even more imagination to see beyond the eight-foot octagonal cupola (today’s Church of the Ascension) to envision a large, round church with three vaulted porticos and an east altar, over which would appear to be an opening in the roof. This earlier church was there in 700 A.D., but clearly isn’t there now. Upon crowding into the cupola, we will pause, sing a hymn, and share the brief stories of the ascension from Luke and Acts. Then, after looking up…. quietly….meditatively….we’ll go.
Is it the real site? Maybe. Maybe not. There is, you see, a small geographic problem suggested by scripture itself. In the book of Acts, the ascension is said to take place at (or atop) the Mount of Olives (where the large, round church once was, and the eight-foot octagonal cupola now is). In the Gospel of Luke, the ascension takes place, not on the Mount of Olives, but in Bethany (a small town which, while in the general vicinity, is not on the Mount of Olives).
Equally interesting is the fact that in Luke, the ascension appears to take place on the night of Easter. Luke’s schedule for Easter day would seem to read as follows. Up in the morning. To Emmaus that afternoon. Back to Jerusalem. Out to Bethany. Then up and away from Bethany. While in Acts, Jesus ascends….not on Easter night….but after forty days have passed. While Luke and Acts both give us narratives of the ascension, they are forty days and ten miles apart. Which would be less surprising were we talking about two different authors. But we’re not. Luke is the author of Luke. And Luke is the author of Acts. Same author. Same ascension. But on different days from different places.
Unfortunately, we have no secondary authority to which to turn. Matthew makes no mention of the ascension. Neither does John. Although in John, when Jesus meets Mary Magdalene in the garden outside the tomb, he says to her: “Do not hold onto me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father” (John 20:17). And while Mark does make a one-line reference to the ascension, it is in Mark 16:19, where it is part of a twelve-verse section which appears in your Bible in italics (because almost every contemporary scholar regards Mark 16:9-20 as lines added to a later manuscript by someone other the gospel writer himself).
So while I can take you to a place, I’m not sure I can take you to the place. And while I can report the testimony, I cannot explain it with certainty. Which is why we are left to rely on creedal tradition. Jesus died. Jesus rose. Jesus appeared. Jesus ascended. Classic medieval art depicts the disciples gazing upward, mouths open, looking at a pair of feet that appear to be disappearing into a cloud. That’s because ascension, by definition, assumes elevation. And the word “up” clearly occurs in both Luke and Acts. Of course, at the time this was written, the earth was said to be flat, meaning that the only way to get to heaven was “up.” But even today, were you to ask my stepfather if there is any place special he’d like to go, he will point his forefinger skyward. And by that, he doesn’t mean the second floor, since Evergreen Health and Living Center has no second floor.
So what if they find Jesus’ body? “They won’t,” says Luke. “They won’t,” says the Apostles’ Creed. “They won’t,” says the tour guide at the Church of the Ascension. “He ascended into heaven.” The vertical solution. Up, up and away.
But I implied there is also a horizontal solution. It, too, is suggested in the text.
As they gazed up into the sky while he departed, behold, two men in white garments stood by them and said: “Galileans, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? Jesus, who has been taken from you, will come in the same way as you saw him depart.”
Which could mean the return of Jesus futuristically. But which could also suggest the ministry of Jesus presently. It’s the difference between worshiping his footprint (in a rock) or walking in his footsteps (through the town). And it’s also the difference between “there he goes” and “here he is.” Where is his body? Wherever the church is. For the church is the body of Christ. Meaning that, in one sense, he left. But in another sense, he never left.
When the two men in white garments chide the disciples for standing around gazing upward, it almost reads like a “back to work” speech. “Okay, guys, it’s time to get on with it.” Which they do. I mean, the very next thing they do is reconvene as a committee-of-the-whole in order to fill the vacancy in their ranks created by the death of Judas. Think of that. The first thing they do after seeing Jesus lift off for glory is gather in committee and fill a vacancy. Why? Because you need a full roster of workers if you are going to do important work. With the implication being that to shirk the work is to miss the point….or, more to the point, to miss the Lord (the Lord being in the work).
Tomorrow, Jack Harnish….your new senior minister….returns to spend the better part of the day with us. There will be several such days devoted to transitioning between now and late June. Trust me when I say that each of them will be well scripted and carefully planned. As was the first such day, three weeks ago. Together, Jack and I decided that his first meeting with the staff (approximately 35 of them) should not take place jointly and stiffly in one of the church parlors, with everybody sitting in a circle holding a punch cup, waiting for the opportunity to make a formal introduction.
Instead, I asked everybody to hang out wherever it was they worked, and I would bring Jack to them so that he could meet them one or two at a time. That way, in addition to having a tour of the building, he could (in every place) put a function with a face and a position with a person. In my memo to the staff outlining my expectation, I simply asked them to “hang out meaningfully and make some effort to look busy.” Which was not hard for any of them to do. Because they are busy. They do good work. They do hard work. They do the Lord’s work. And the plan worked. Jack was impressed. But Jack was also comfortable….seeing them at work, I mean.
Yesterday morning I did a private baptism for a family in the chapel. I don’t like to do private baptisms. I think there ought always be a congregation attached to the ceremony. But this was a couple from our congregation. And there were compelling reasons to make an exception.
Come Saturday morning, there were at least sixty people there. Better yet, the baby’s great-grandmother was there. I was told that she wanted to meet me. And I was certainly glad to meet her. She’s a Methodist from the Upper Peninsula….a lifelong member of our church in Newberry (where the bears wander in and out during the prelude). She’s 83 years old. And she has been on 63 separate mission work trips in her lifetime. Sixty three. And she’s not done yet. “It’s the only kind of vacation I desire any more,” she said. Which led me to ask: “When you make these trips, do you have a special passion (or a special function related to construction)?”
“Roofing,” she answered. “I hate drywalling. But I love roofing.” I have never met a happier 83 year old in my life. “The happy roofer,” that’s who she is.
Having heard her story, it changed the way I wanted to end this sermon. So I went home, had a bite of lunch, and then found this reminiscence from a cherished colleague who writes:
I was the visiting preacher in a church, and on Sunday afternoon a van pulled up in the church parking lot and a number of young people got out. They looked like they were 13, 14, 15 years old….maybe a couple as old as 18. There were ten or twelve of these young people, all members of that church. And when they got out of the van with their sleeping bags and bedraggled clothes, they were the most awful bunch of kids you’d ever seen.
“What is this?” I asked. Whereupon I was told they had just returned from a work mission. In one week, these young people had joined with others and had built a little church for a community. They were exhausted, worn out, looked terrible and smelled worse. They were sitting on their duffels waiting for their parents to come, when I said to one of the boys: “Are you tired?”
He said, “Whew! Am I tired!” Then he added: “But this is the best tired I have ever been.” Do you hear that? Can you feel that? “This is the best tired I have ever been.” I hope you all get that tired….the “best tired you have ever been.” In your Bible, it is called joy. You can look it up.
So what happened to Jesus’ body? I don’t know. You tell me. All I know is that some of us are too busy being his body to go looking for his body. It’s our version of the horizontal solution. Praise God!
Note: It was most surprising to discover how few sermons on the ascension are floating around in cyberspace (or any place). Even scholarly commentaries on the ascension in Luke and Acts are sparse, both as to quantity and quality. The Anchor Bible commentaries ultimately proved to be most helpful. As concerns William Barclay’s observation about bringing closure to the post-resurrection appearances, he says the same thing in his commentaries on both Luke and Acts (without amplifying his statement in either).
Information about churches constructed to memorialize the ascension (from 700 A.D. to the present) can be found in a wonderful coffee table volume entitled 2000 Years of Pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
As concerns Jack Harnish, he presently serves as the senior minister of First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but has graciously accepted the appointment as senior minister of this congregation, effective July 1.
The story about “the best tired I’ve ever been” comes from Fred Craddock and can be found in a collection of his personal narratives simply entitled Craddock Stories.
