I struggled more than usual with today’s sermon, in part because I had preached Maundy Thursday on that portion of John 13, and I didn’t want to repeat myself more than usual. In addition, I had a lot going on this week, so I wasn’t able to focus on the texts to the extent I usually do. That led to two thoughts that could have been included in the sermon. In the first place, when I heard the lesson from Acts read at the early service, I knew immediately that I could have made the connection between the diversity of the city about which I was speaking and the diversity in that text, the Gospel being extended to Gentiles (I could also have made another joke about shrimp, because they are among the unclean foods).

But secondly, I realized as I preached that in the back of my mind as I was preparing was the PBS program on Mormonism that aired this week. One of the themes of that program was the idea of celestial marriage and that families exist in eternity. In fact, that idea competes within Mormonism with a strong impulse to create the New Jerusalem. Mormonism began in apocalyptic fervor, eagerly awaiting Jesus’ second coming. That theme was downplayed, even ignored in the program. But what is interesting to me is that in its current form, Mormonism seeks to inscribe the family as an eternal institution. That is a radical departure from the New Testament. Jesus said in reply to the Sadducees “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mt. 22:30), and Paul in I Corinthians expresses a clear preference against marriage.

My point is not that marriage and the family are wrong or un-Christian. Rather, early Christianity saw itself as creating a new kind of community, one based not primarily on kinship, but on connection to Christ and to one another. Given the realities of family life in the world today, we do well to remember that most people do not live in traditional families any more, given the rates of divorce, and changing marriage patterns. That’s partly why I see the image of the city, or indeed an image like the body of Christ to be much more powerful for creating the bonds of community in the church.

As I mentioned in my sermon yesterday, the story of Thomas is one of my favorite gospel stories. There is enough in it for several sermons. One theme on which I have been reflecting for several years is the importance of the body of the Risen Christ bearing the marks of his wounds.

The resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of the dead are both tenets of our faith; we proclaim them every time we recite the creed. But I doubt whether very many people seriously consider the theological significance of the resurrection. It is something to be believed or doubted, but not reflected on systematically. I was surprised during our discussion of the Divine Comedy of Dante this Lent when a parishioner mentioned that she had never thought about the resurrection of the body. Common beliefs tend to emphasize that when we die, our souls live on, but our bodies decompose.

Yet the resurrection of the body has been central to the Christian faith from the very beginning, and it is not just because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The resurrection matters because it attempts to say something crucial about what we are as human beings–not just disembodied souls, but souls and bodies united. The doctrine of the Incarnation insists that Jesus became human, he didn’t only seem to be human. Likewise, our bodies are integral parts of who we are. That’s why the resurrection matters. It proclaims that our whole selves, body and soul, make us who we are and are redeemed by Christ.

But the bodies that are (or will be) resurrected are very much our bodies. That’s why the marks of the wounds are so important. Jesus was not raised to some ideal state but showed on his resurrected body the suffering he had gone through in life. The Christian tradition has insisted that the same is true of us. Whatever makes us unique as individuals will continue to show forth in our resurrected bodies. There are significant implications to this idea. For many of us, it may be a disappointment, given the dissatisfaction we have with our bodies–our weight, our aging, our baldness. But it might also be of great comfort or great spiritual significance for some people. To see on themselves the marks of their suffering, the marks of their pain, now transfigured and glorified, might include a recognition that such suffering and pain made them who they are.