"We Shall Be Like Him"

The Third Sunday of Easter

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

[John tells us in today’s second reading:] Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. (3:2)

That is a mouthful! It may seem to us like more pious scriptural pabulum that does not say much that affects us. But look at it in your bulletin, the third sentence of the second reading.

"Beloved, we are God's children now.” First it tells us who we are right now. We are God’s beloved, God’s cherished children. I will not ask you to raise your hands or stand up, but answer me in your hearts. How many of us instinctively think of ourselves as God’s beloved children? And how many of us think of ourselves as God’s tolerated, as those who fall short too often? You are God’s beloved, now, not once you finally get your act together and measure up. Now. What a gift that is! What an identity to live out of.

John goes on, “It does not yet appear what we shall be.” We also have a future – a different future. An even better future. God, who created us in the divine image and loves us, has not told us what it is yet. But it is another gift.

Let’s finish the sentence. “But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." Unbelievable! First John tells us that we will see God, that God will be revealed to us, and we will see God as he is. As Paul tells us in another place, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face” (I. Cor. 13:12). That is the gift that we have to look forward to: comprehending fully the God for whom we were created. That is heaven! Although in this life, “Our hearts are restless,” as Augustine declared, they will finally rest in God, whom we shall see as he is.

But we will not only see God, John tells us, we will be like God. How can we mortal, flesh and blood human beings, even in the eternal dimensions, be like God, who is spiritual and non-tangible? What would that “look like?” One way we have to understand that is to see what Jesus was like after he died and rose again. What does God reveal to us through the scripture about how changed this man, Jesus, was, who is also God, by passing through the gate of death? However he was after death, “we shall be like him.”

The first thing we can notice about the resurrected Jesus is that he is now not merely a physical body, but a glorified body. In one way he is the same: he still looks human; his voice can still be recognized; he still has the same wounds, which Thomas can touch. He can still breathe. Remember last week’s Gospel, which Bishop Curry preached about – when Jesus breathed on his disciples? He is still very touchable; he is not a ghost. “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself,” he tells his disciples in today’s Gospel. “Handle me and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Jesus can still eat. To convince these disbelieving disciples, he asks them for something to eat. “They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.” Rising from the dead works up a big appetite!

So the resurrected Jesus is still a human body, but he is also different – a glorified body. He suddenly appears in a room with locked doors, as he does in today’s Gospel, startling the non-glorified bodies. He vanishes from their sight. He is not easily recognizable and is confused in one encounter for a gardener, just before today’s story for a traveler on the road, and in another instance for a stranger. Even when the disciples identify Jesus, it is not because he looks exactly the same: “Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’” John wrote, “because they knew it was the Lord” (21:12). He is the Jesus whom they had loved and followed and listened to and eaten with and seen die, but he is more. He is glorified; he is resurrected; he is transformed.

A second observation we can make from the resurrection appearances is of the deep joy within Jesus, exhibited in his playfulness with his followers. He seems to tease them by playing a game of mistaken identity, letting others think for a while that he is the gardener, a fellow traveler, a stranger on the lakeshore. He delights as well in feigning ignorance, pretending not to know whom Mary Magdalene is looking for, what the disciples on the road to Emmaus are talking about, whether Peter and the others’ all night vigil on the Sea of Tiberias has produced any fish. He even persists in appearing suddenly in their midst or vanishing from their sight!

It is easy to imagine Jesus at first repressing a smile in these appearances, then bursting out laughing as his followers begin to realize that he is indeed alive. His elation is born out of deep joy at having overcome death and sin and at tasting again the delight of heaven, now open to all. Pain and injustice and death still exist, and Jesus will continue to suffer with those who suffer; but his consequential victory now establishes the limits of these divine and human enemies. Jesus’ infectious joy compels us to join with him and to place our ultimate trust in God’s unconquerable love.

A final element to be noted about Jesus from these resurrection stories is his affirmation of the goodness of life and the richness of being human. The scenes of the recorded appearances are ordinary venues: at table, on the road, by the shore, in the garden. While during his earthly life, Jesus modeled and taught the value of fasting in the desert, praying in solitude, worshipping in the Temple, here people experience him who are engaged in everyday “secular” activities: eating together, traveling, fishing for their livelihood.

Key to the disciples’ recognition of Jesus is the role of the senses. They do not simply intuit Jesus alive again; they actually see him. They hear his voice. (Mary Magdalene recognizes Jesus by his simply pronouncing her name.) They touch him. They feel his breath upon them. They eat bread and fish with him, which he has cooked on a charcoal fire. You can almost smell it and taste it!

Jesus, returned from the dead, from the “other world,” affirms the importance and the goodness and the sacredness of this world and its intimate connection with the world to come. Human life is now – and will continue to be hereafter – worth living. The things of earth, while transitory, are a gift from God and, as Jesus’ joy indicates, a preview of things to come. They are both worthwhile in themselves – the creation God saw as good – and, as George Santayana characterized them, “the song or oracle by which heaven is revealed in our time.”

The resurrection stories of the joyous, glorified Jesus, then, point us to the mystery we profess each Sunday in the Nicene Creed in the words “the resurrection of the dead,” made more specific in the Apostles’ Creed: “the resurrection of the body.” First, since we shall be like Jesus, we will have bodies in the next world, which will be somewhat the same but also unimaginably (to us) different. Our bodies will be raised, like Jesus, presumably with the same tangible characteristics as he exhibited – transformed flesh and bones and the capability of eating, breathing, talking, touching –, but we shall be glorified bodies, unencumbered by time and space. Secondly we will be joyful, like Jesus, to the point of playful exuberance. And finally, like Jesus we will affirm the goodness of God’s creation and of all human and earthly life.
Let us, then, in this joyful Easter season, as God’s cherished creation, take these life-giving and mysterious words of scripture to heart: “Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

I John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48