Trinity 23 – Perfecting us Body and Soul

Philippians 3:17-21       St Matthew 22:15-22

For our citizenship is in heaven;
and from it we await a Saviour,
the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Trinity season we are continually climbing a ladder step by step in our readings.  And at this time of year we are reaching the heights of our sanctification, our becoming holy, in Christ.

We’re obviously not there yet personally, but we have glimpsed a little more of the holiness of God.  And as we embrace this Way that Jesus shows us, we become more like Him, more like God, we become love in the flesh, love incarnate.

And that transformation of who we are as a Christian, becoming holy, is about a change of our whole being – body and soul.

Our Epistle reading today is about the transformation of our body, and the Gospel is about the transformation of our soul.

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St Paul speaks about the perfecting of our bodies – Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

St Paul is speaking about the Resurrection body which we are promised.  It will be like what we witness in the account of Jesus’ Resurrection – wholly other worldly, like a seed sown in corruption, raised in incorruption, in glory, sown in weakness, raised in power. [1 Cor 15]

However what St Paul says is not limited to the Resurrection body after this life.  Jesus is transforming our bodies even now to be more like His body.

God’s grace does not destroy our nature, our physical body – with its passions – its thoughts and emotions and desires – but Jesus transforms it, perfects it, so that all our human abilities are restored and transformed. [Augustine, Aquinas, Gregory Palamas]

We began in Trinity season with an investigation of the various passions that arise in our bodies – and we looked in each case, not at how to destroy them, but how to cooperate with the grace given to us to transform these very human passions into what they are meant for.

Jesus shows us in today’s Gospel a perfect body.  The Herodians start by trying to manipulate Jesus by attempting to boost his ego, his pride, so that he would make an offhand remark that they could use to have him arrested.

“Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.”

The statements are actually all true about Jesus, but the Herodians are saying them just to butter Jesus up – they don’t really believe it themselves.  The intention of their hearts is to destroy him.  So they are hypocrites - liars.

Jesus is not fooled by them – and as we become more like God, we see through the pretenses and ill will of others – it is laid out before us.  We are not naive, we see the malice behind the words.  And yet, we are always seeking to love our neighbour as ourselves – to love even our enemies, to offer kindness that they might be restored.

Jesus does not destroy them, calling down fire from heaven (he could have), nor does he dismiss them with contempt, but takes the time to respond powerfully with the truth.  He tells them straight out: You are hypocrites, he doesn’t hold back, but then also he dignifies them by teaching them wisdom.  Using the best skills as a teacher, he gets them to be involved in the teaching moment.

He asks them if they have a coin – Jesus knows that they are carrying around some money – and he know the Roman coin is an idolatrous coin because it bears the image of the emperor and the superscription on it in Latin “Tiberius, Caesar, majestic son of the divine Augustus”.  Of course the superscription is offensive, but coins have their place – governments provide things – roads, aqueducts, facilitating trade.  The Romans made the coins, they do provide something, so justice requires giving back what is owed.

But we don’t give ourselves, our conscience, our worship, our praise to worldly leaders, and we don’t look to them to save us.  We bear the image and likeness of God on our souls, and we bear his superscription – you are a son or daughter of the living God – so we give ourselves over only to God.

Here we see in Jesus the kind of body that we want to have – our passions not confused by praise, and our anger not roused to contempt for our fellow human beings, but rather seeing every moment as a teaching moment and trying always to lead people into freedom, through telling them the truth in love.

All of these passions of the body can be transformed and that should be our aim, if we would become like Jesus.

We can’t imagine Jesus as suffering from vanity – he was offered the whole world by the devil, and refused it  – but then Jesus is given the whole world by the Father.  We can’t imagine Jesus being slothful – either sitting around doing nothing or keeping himself so busy and distracted that there is no time for others – or we can’t imagine him being concerned with accumulating earthly wealth or being gluttonous or lustful.  He is the only truly free human being that has ever lived, and he wants us to know that freedom.

We can also think of the ways that our bodies have taken up the traumas we have received – (“The Body Keeps the Score” by van der Kolk) – somehow the wounds of our past are affecting negatively our present experience.  Scientists have shown how memories of past trauma, if not integrated into our normal way of processing memories, will affect us again and again.

Our memories – brought to the surface can be cleansed and purified as we have the courage to face difficult things in our past and bring God’s mercy to bear upon any shame and guilt we still hold and as we are made able, by grace, to forgive those who have hurt us, as we were reminded in last week’s Gospel.

We don’t know what this will look like in us before we die – but in time, our lowly body will be conformed to the glorious human body of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps the wounds will remain, like Jesus’ wounds were seen in his Resurrection body, but they will in no way hinder us in our spiritual ascent, or hinder us from love.

We ask for His grace so that our lowly bodies might be conformed to His glorious body as we walk in the Way.

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What about our souls?  The Gospel reminds us that our souls, created in the image and likeness of God, are to be given over to God, returned to Him.

St Augustine saw an image of the Triune God in our souls in its activities – knowing, willing and being.  Knowing love – is like the Logos, the Divine Reason, or the Son; willing love – is like the Spirit who acts in the world; and being love is the Father from whom all things come.

Here’s how we become more like the Son.  Rather than forever endlessly entwined in thoughts of what others think of me…or in trying to justify my existence before others…or living in shame with head down or in guilt awaiting punishment…or in the building up of some earthly kingdom…or being endlessly distracted by trivial things – instead, we become like the Son of God when we lift up our minds to the highest things – “our citizenship is in heaven” (KJV “our conversation is in heaven”).  Just to lift up our minds to the things of God, to fill our thoughts with God’s thoughts is to restore something of God’s image.  We do this when we pray, read the Bible, fast, when we keep Jesus, and the saints before our minds (St Paul says, “keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us”).  These ways open our eyes, clearing away our blindness.  All of this is about lifting our minds to higher things, about training our minds to think like God.  It is to be like the Son of God.

Here’s how we become more like the Spirit.  Knowing what is good is not enough!  We also need to do the will of God.  [In God the Spirit is equal to the Son.]  God does not just know, but wills the good, God creates, God is fruitful in love, is ever active in bringing to birth new life, beauty, goodness, truth.  Whenever we will what is right, when we act in true love, we are being like the Spirit.  The obstacles in our heart to action – whatever they are – we seek to be freed of them – this is a deep lifelong work, uncovering the vows we should never have made, the hurts, the shame, the guilt, all the things that hinder us.  We can’t avoid them, they are at the very centre of what prevents us from loving – we face them head on so as no longer to be held back in love.  Engage with this work, Jesus has come to heal the broken-hearted, to make the lame to walk, to heal the paralysis of our wills.  In time, by grace, it becomes more natural for us to will the good that we know, that is, to love in action.  And that is what it is to be like the Holy Spirit.

Here’s how we become like the Father.  Knowing the good, by grace, and then willing or acting to do that good, by grace, we become love – this is to be like the Father – we will begin to shine more and more.  Out of our hearts comes forth love in all that we think and do.   And when we are love, we want to know more of the good, and we can then do more good, and so become more infilled with love, it is an ever ascending spiral of love leading us to God.

Jesus says today in the Gospel, give the coins to Caesar and give ourselves over to God.  And it is in the very giving of ourselves over to God, that God brings about the clarifying of His image and likeness in our souls, and our bodies will become conformed into the glorious body of Jesus Christ.

Let us prepare ourselves to have that image and likeness further restored by Jesus today as we come to His altar in penitence and faith, and return from there as love incarnate.

Amen +