Ascension Day, 13 May 2010

Where did they put the body?

Perhaps it’s Father Mustard in the organ loft with the candlestick. Perhaps it’s Douglas the Verger in the Crypt with the collection plate. Every game of Cluedo - and every murder mystery - poses the same question.

Where did they put the body?

It’s a question for Hercule Poirot and for Miss Marple, for Morse and for Gene Hunt. And it’s a question for us too as we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus Christ.

Where did they put the body?

It is not a straightforward matter. For after the crucifixion the body, the wounded body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Death had taken it from their sight, and sealed it in the tomb. Yet three days later they saw it again. The wounded body was raised; the wounded body was transformed. It was the same body: it bore the marks of the nails, its hands broke bread, and its mouth spoke peace. Yet it was not the same body: it was mistaken for that of a gardener, it passed through locked doors, it came and went at will. The wounded body had become the resurrected body.

Where did they put the body?

After the Ascension the body, the resurrected body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Cloud had taken it from their sight, and carried it up into heaven. The resurrected body was exalted. So where did they put it? Where was the body of Jesus?

Where is the wounded, resurrected, exalted body?

Our forebears in faith had no doubt. The body of Jesus was in heaven. It was up there. It was in a realm which we cannot see. It was in a realm which is spread beyond the sky. There Jesus sat in glory, ready to return on the Last Day. The body of Jesus lived on, it lived on somewhere that is within the created universe; it lived on somewhere that is invisible to us. It lived on where we could not travel.

This belief we cannot share. Air-travel and interstellar exploration inform us that, in John Lennon’s words, above us there’s only sky. Journey (boldly go, if you will) to the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond and you will find yourself not in a place called heaven but in the wilderness of space, the boundless expanse of the universe. There is nowhere up there for the body to go.

Where did they put the body?

In the years since Copernicus and Galileo began to explain the universe to us we have mythologized the question. We duck the embarrassing Ascension story and read it as an allegory for the final vindication of Jesus. We ignore the resurrected body that led the disciples out to Bethany, and point instead to the sacrament of the Eucharist and to the reality of the Church and say that the body is there.

But we do this at our peril. The risks are twofold. If we cannot say where they put the body then we cannot answer those who scoff at our faith as flaccid and unhistorical spirituality. And if we cannot say where they put the body then we are careless of our own reality. Jesus is an embodied presence in the world; we too are an embodied presence in the world. If Jesus’s embodied presence becomes unimportant forty days after his resurrection; if Jesus’s embodied presence simply disappears; if Jesus’s embodied presence is a passing necessity for God that serves its limited purpose and is discarded then what are we to make of our embodied presence? Is that too unimportant; will that too disappear; must that too be discarded?

We must reclaim the Ascension of Jesus Christ. It vital for our redemption, and prophetic of our sanctification. In short, we must work out where they put the body. The clues are all there. The clues are there in the transformation of the body that is foreshadowed at the Transfiguration; the clues are there in the transformation that the body undergoes at the resurrection. The body evolves; the body is changed. The body evolves and the body is changed because it is the body of Jesus of Nazareth and it is also the body of God.

And at the Ascension the body undergoes its final transformation. It is exalted, yes, it is glorified, yes, but it is still real. It is seen by Stephen in the hour of his martyrdom; it speaks to Saul of Tarsus as he travels to Damascus; it is experienced by countless Christians across the generations who know that Jesus has not left the earth and that Jesus’s body has not left the earth. The body has ascended; the body has been glorified; and now there is no place from which the body is absent. It fills ‘all in all’. Yes, we are the body of Jesus; yes, we receive the body of Jesus; but in the Church and in the sacraments the Holy Spirit distils and focuses the body which is everywhere.

Stand inches from an advertising hoarding and you cannot read what it says. The text is distended. Put your ear up against a stereo speaker and you cannot hear the music that it plays. The sound is distorted. Fill your mouth with good claret and you cannot savour its complexity. The taste is obscured. Juxtaposition does not guarantee understanding; proximity does not guarantee recognition; closeness does not guarantee comprehension.

Open your eyes. Open your eyes to the suffering of the innocent; open your eyes to the self-giving of the poor; open your eyes to the forgiveness of the abused; open your eyes to Jesus’s embodied presence in the world; open your eyes to the body of Jesus.

Where did they put the body? Here; there; everywhere. Amen.