God’s Body Language – and Ours…
Pr. D. Hewitt, KOG, Apr. 25, 2010

     A famous organist was giving a recital with an organ that was supplied by air by way of one of those old-fashioned hand pumps. A young boy was hired to pump the organ on this occasion. All was going along fine until the lad put his head around the side of the organ and whispered: “We’re doing pretty good, aren’t we?”

     “What do you mean by ‘we’?” objected the famous organist. A few minutes later, in the midst of a beautiful section of the music, the organ suddenly stopped playing. Desperately, the organist tried all the stops. Nothing. Again he saw the head of the boy bob around the corner; a broad smile lit up his face as he said, “Now do you know who I mean by ‘we’?”

     “We” of course meant “more than one.” In this case, not just one body, but two. And the organist-body needed the boy-body to get along, to do the work he could NOT do alone. He needed someBODY.  Bodies still are important. For make no mistake; we are not disembodied minds – much as we live in a world that more and more treats us as minds without bodies, what with wide-screen TVs, the internet and email, cell phones and social networks; still we are bodies – real live bodies, and we are faces – faces not 1st and foremost on Facebook but 1st & foremost looking at us in the mirror.

     When we get sick, or injured, have you ever noticed the sense of betrayal our minds feel at the moment we realize we are sick or injured? How dare my body do this to me? Why, I had plans, you know! My life was supposed to move like clockwork through my schedule, but instead I have to just LIE THERE and take this ‘til I “get better”?!! Ya’ got to be kidding me! I’ve got to walk around in crutches for a month? I’ve got to miss work for a week?

     But it is no shame to be a body. Even if we don’t like the looks of our bodies, it is no shame to be a body, for if you are NOT a body, what ARE you, literally, hmmm? You are a NOBODY. A No-body.

     You know, the Prodigal Son thought he was a “nobody.” He went back home, expecting to apologize to his father, step aside, work for him a bit, and get to eat from his father’s ample table of food. But from the moment he set foot on his father’s ranch, what happened? His father, the one he had practically robbed from, ran and hugged him! Hugged his son’s BODY. Then his father put a robe on his son’s BODY, and threw a party. So this young man unexpectedly became a SOMEBODY again. Somebody else made him a “Somebody.” Only somebody else CAN.

     I know someone who never realized that. I know someone who, in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 15 years ago last Monday was walking AWAY from the Alfred P. Murrah Building as it fell apart, while everyone else was walking and running toward it. He walked alone. Timothy McVeigh made sure, as he drove away in his getaway car, that he didn’t see the bleeding bodies of men, women and children – especially the children. He wasn’t going to be there to watch an old man climb very gingerly down a ladder to safety; he wasn’t going be there to witness a bleeding woman put gently on a stretcher; he wasn’t going to be there to observe the fireman run with a baby body in his arms to the nearest medivac unit. Even when McVeigh was plotting his attack, he was a remote, lonely body; he would not get very close to his two co-conspirators. All that was real to him was the plan. And the final score, even as he was about to be executed; in his mind he won, 168 deaths to 1. In his complete detachment from bodily love, he only wished he had run up the score higher. His warring body, not used to human touch, tied to a cold gurney, separated from others by a plate glass window, died alone.

     Tabitha didn’t die alone. The book of Acts tells us that when the Christians in Joppa summoned Peter to her upper room, there were her friends, her fellow widows, sitting with her, having washed her body and prepared Tabitha, their dear, dear friend and sister in Christ, for burial. No, they would not leave her alone, because they knew she never left them alone. They held up her handiwork for Peter to see, tunic upon tunic, shirt upon shirt, cloak upon cloak, all made by her loving hands. And you know, you get the distinct impression that these women wished Peter to know that there were plenty of other ways that Tabitha helped people in her life; that her body was there to help their bodies, at any time and place, and this is why they missed her; this is why they were crying. As Luke wrote in Acts, Tabitha was “devoted to good works and acts of charity.” (see Acts 9:36-42)

     And what does Luke describe next? He says Peter, after getting the women to leave, turned…to what? Luke says, quote, “Peter turned to THE BODY and said, “Tabitha, get up.” And she opened her eyes, and, with her body, she…sat up. She needed more help from another body. So then Peter “gave her his hand and helped her up.” He touched her. She felt better. And, by this act of love, “many believed in the Lord.”

     It is the movements of our bodies to help other people’s bodies that most impress others, that most reveal to others not only the love, but the very presence, of God. As James once wrote,

            What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have

            faith, but do not have works?...If a brother or sisters is naked

            and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace,

            keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not [feed them],

            you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

            No, faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:14-17)

    It was not the people who, walking the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, who walked away from the wounded body – who walked on the other side from him – who impressed Jesus; it was the Samaritan who walked up to the injured body, cared for it, put it on his donkey, and took it to the hospital – THAT is the kind of body that impressed Jesus.

     But the Good Samaritan was only doing what Jesus Himself did. Jesus healed people – even at supposedly “wrong” times, like on the Sabbath; He fed people when they were hungry; He touched those He wasn’t supposed to touch – people who were leprous or bleeding or female or too young; He hung around with, and rubbed shoulders all too often, with those whose reputations were considered…below par, shall we say! Yet, Jesus says today, this is what God tells Him to do…in fact, this is what God the Father Himself does! This is God’s Body Language! His Body Language of Love!

     In our Gospel for today the enemies of Jesus are about to stone Him to death for uttering blasphemies, for claiming to be the Son of God. They saw this claim as something one claimed to BE. Jesus, on the other hand, saw being a Son of God as something one claimed to DO. That is why He said, “If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father.” (John 10:37-38)

     “Believe the works.” Believe the works. You know, it’s not so much WHAT Jesus did, but HOW He did it. That’s why I believe the works. There are others who have healed. There are others who have fed. There are others who have touched. But Jesus makes sure to heal, and feed, and touch not primarily the rich and powerful, but the poor and rejected. He puts Himself out there, looking for those who need Him the most, and, you know, no matter how divine He is, He still has to be “out there,” among the people, among other bodies, in order to discern God’s will, in order to know how to use HIS Body for OTHER bodies best.

     And that’s what WE are called to do. We are called to get up off that couch, and away from that computer, and off our high horse, and get down and help other people, body to body – and, with our own “body language,” show that there is a God, and that that God loves them.

     It’s using our bodies on mission trips, like the ones the adults do down in Appalachia, or the high schoolers are going to do in Wisconsin, or on May 1^st in Indy; it’s helping to build a camp for those angels with disabilities this coming weekend near Anderson. But it’s not just “special” times like that that we can use the bodies God put us in to do His will; it’s everyday moments, like giving a person a hand, like giving another person a break, like doing something else for someone, or doing someone else a favor – a favor that may never get paid back – if we can only be so lucky! But it’s everyday moments like that, too, we’re our bodies make the difference.

     You know, it’s when Peter got off his high Judaistic horse that he was able to fulfill more and more of his godly purpose through his body. For we read that after he healed Tabitha, he stated in the house of Simon, a tanner. Now you see, that was a Judaistic no-no; tanners were ritualistically “unclean,” dealing as they did with those messy animal hides. Peter was discovering, more and more the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus. He no longer saw categories of people, he just saw…bodies. Bodies of people who needed guidance, who needed help. He valued bodies for they were created by his God.

     One of those people was one of those hated Romans, Cornelius, a vaunted centurion. God would call Peter to come and baptize Cornelius and his family, but why Cornelius? Because, it says in Acts, Cornelius “was a devout man who feared God with all his household. He gave alms (charity) generously to the people, and prayed constantly to God.” Cornelius, you see, lived as though the love of God was in him; he helped all bodies around him, no matter whether they were fellow Gentiles or those Jews that his kind hated– but Jews that HE couldn’t hate. And what did the angel tell him? “Your prayers and your alms (your charity) have ascended as a memorial before God.” (see Acts 9:43-10:8)

     The angel was saying that God was well-pleased with Cornelius – not because Cornelius was trying to impress God – he was not; but, rather, because Cornelius helped everyone around him, because he knew that everyone around him was a child of his God. Every moment, he lived to serve – just as Tabitha did – just as the Peter did – and, especially, just as Jesus did. And does – through you and me.

     Can we live in the moment? That’s what good stewards do, you know. Each moment is an opportunity for our bodies to serve other bodies, to speak God’s Body Language as our own. Can we live in the moment? Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes, selfishly, we are concerned instead about our bodies being served, about our agendas moving forward. But, as we receive Communion this day, let us open ourselves up to His Living Spirit. Let His Body be our Body, as eat of Him – for remember, He said, “Eat it; This is My…BODY, given for you.” Let us put our muscle and heart and soul at the service of others, and say to others, through our works, “This is my body, given for you,” and, in so doing, let the works of Jesus, flowing through you and me, help other people to, at long last, believe in Him. Amen!