Luke 24:37-48 "Next Step: Living the Resurrection"

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         One day a teacher was asking her young students to name the person whom they considered the greatest human being alive in the world today.  The responses were rapidly forthcoming - and quite varied too.

         A little boy spoke up and said, "Tiger Woods: He is the greatest golfer in the world ever!" Clearly he had not heard the results of the recent Masters tournament. 

         A little girl said, "I think it is the Pope because he cares for people and does not get paid for it at all."  Clearly she had never heard of the Vatican treasury.

         Another child piped up, "I think it is my mom because she takes care of me and my brother – and definitely does not get paid for it." Over and over again, the children cited one celebrity or family member after another.

         Through it all, one small boy remained strangely silent.  When the teacher turned to him and asked the question, he replied, "Well, I think it is Jesus Christ because he loves everybody and is always ready to help anyone."

         The teacher smiled benevolently and said, "I certainly like your answer, and I also admire Jesus. But I said the greatest living person, and, of course, Jesus lived and died almost two thousand years ago.”

         Without missing a beat, the small boy responded, "Oh no, that is not right at all. Jesus Christ is alive!” 

         “He lives right here,” the child continued, pointing to his heart.  Clearly the teacher had not heard of Easter.

         Perhaps that is why the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John end their narratives with so-called appearance stories, tales of Jesus materializing to his followers after his death, proof positive of the resurrection, for these writers at least, and embedded in their respective gospels just to make sure everyone had heard the story and understood its impact. 

         One time Jesus appeared in a fear-filled upper room in Jerusalem and invited Thomas to poke around in the spear wound on his side.  One time it was to Cleopas and his traveling companion on the road to the tiny village of Emmaus, seven miles from the Holy City. 

One time it was to Peter and some of the others when they set out in a small fishing boat in a vain attempt to rediscover life as it had been and recapture who they once were before they had met Jesus.

         And once, as our story for today tells us, though certainly with not the same degree of drama as some of the others:  Once Jesus popped out of thin air to a group of his followers as their mouths were watering over a particularly aromatic fish broiling on the BBQ. 

         At the time, they were listening intently as Cleopas and his friend regaled them with the story of meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus, how he had taken the loaf of bread they were saving for supper and had blessed it and broken it, and how their eyes were opened and they recognized him just before he vanished from their sight. 

         And now Jesus stood among all of them, offering them that peace which passes all our understanding, offering them that peace – and offering them himself.  However, instead of being overjoyed – or even overwhelmed – the disciples were terrified, sure that, right there in their midst, was the ghost of all their dashed dreams of freedom. 

         As Episcopal priest Kirk Kubicek relates the story, “So there is Jesus standing among his closest friends…He says, “Shalom!” Loosely translated, that comes across as, “Peace be with you.” (But)  shalom means much more than “peace.”

         Since shalom means to convey that all is well with the world, all is just, all is fair, all is the way God means it to be, (shalom) ultimately means something more like, “What are you doing to make the world look more like God’s world than Caesar’s world?” With “Caesar” standing in (as Kubichek notes) for whatever the principalities and powers look like in a given era – empires, rulers, governments, multi-national corporations, markets, organized religion and the like.

         Appropriately, the disciples are startled – the dead one is on the loose. And terrified – because, holy moly, here he is!

         Jesus then asks the disciples, “Why are you frightened?”

         Could it be because the last time we saw you, you were dead, hanging on a Roman cross, soldiers all around, angry people everywhere, and, well, as far as we knew, dead is dead?

         “Well,” Jesus seems to say, “good point.  That is true enough. Here, look at the wounds – see my hands, see my feet.”“And so they did. 

         They still may have thought that here was a ghost before them, but at least now, we are told, they are filled with joy and wonder.  And in a detail that is so human, so ordinary, so endearing, the author of the gospel tells us that Jesus – perhaps looking longingly at the BBQ’ed fish, cooked to a turn, crispy with just a bit of char around the edges, mouth watering really– or perhaps just smelling it – Jesus steps forward and innocently asks, “Got anything to eat?”

         And over fish tacos with chipotle sauce or maybe it was a fish sandwich on a sesame seed bun, Jesus opens their minds to the Scripture, and suddenly it all makes sense to them – 20/20 hindsight and all – and Jesus tells them, “It will be you, you know, you who will be witnesses, you who have known me in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup and the tasting of the fish – you will be the ones to preach my message, to live my life of compassion and forgiveness, to be my hands and feet in the world.  Go now to Jerusalem, go now in peace to that place which is special to you, and wait for the power – the power of the resurrection - to hunt you down.”

         Oh, resurrection life is not about some future afterlife.  It is not about floating around in heaven – wherever and whatever that is.  Resurrection life is embodied. It is as real as someone noshing on a piece of BBQ’ed fish. Resurrection life is here.  It is now.

         Most assuredly, it is not something we can wrap our minds around or completely understand, but, at its best, it draws a wonder out of us and an enthusiasm that wells up from somewhere way inside of us to learn more, to dig deeper, to probe those Scriptures so that maybe, maybe our minds will be opened as well.  In the end, resurrection - and the life it births - is nourishing – and oh, it tastes and smells so good. 

         Can you believe that Easter was only two weeks ago?  And yet, even continuing to sing the great Easter hymns seems somewhat out-of-place now.  After all, life goes on.  Since Jesus was raised from the dead, a friend has been diagnosed with colon cancer, a child has walked ten whole miles with his Scout troop, someone has visited the emergency room – yet again - and someone else continues to be unemployed. 

         Life goes on after Easter and returns to normal – good, bad, or indifferent as normal might be.   Without our even knowing it, Easter and resurrection become relegated to an affirmation of a past event or the promise of a future one, but Easter and resurrection hardly seem to be a present reality.

         Yet, at the very least, to those of us who are church-goers, Easter is more than a single day of colored eggs, rabbits, baskets, candy wrapped in colorful foil, and a new spring outfit.  Easter is a season, extending for 50 days on the church calendar, all the way until Pentecost. 

         However, at its best, Easter is a lifestyle.  Easter is living with the sure and steadying knowledge that just as something happened on that first Easter dawn, something is happening even now, even today, and more is coming.  Easter is a lifestyle, whose power, as Presbyterian pastor Nancy Blakely writes, is “the power to plant seeds of transformation”:  Personal transformation and transformation of the world.

         You see, it is not enough that the tomb was empty.  It is not enough to enthusiastically proclaim once or even twice a year in church: “Christ is risen!”  It is not enough to intellectually – or even emotionally – believe in the resurrection. 

         As Episcopal priest Michael Marsh reminds us, “At some point we have to move from the event of the resurrection to experiencing the resurrection.  Experiencing resurrected life begins with recognizing the risen Christ among us. That is the gift of Easter, and it is also the difficulty and challenge described in today’s gospel.”

         Resurrection and the resurrected life challenge us to embrace a new reality.  In their fullness, they are so beyond our rationality and our understanding of the way things ought to be.  Today, at best, we catch only the occasional glimmer of them, but even that is a beginning.  I have to believe that much. 

         I have to believe that experiencing the resurrection begins in an upper room; it begins on a dusty road heading out of the Holy City; it begins in a fishing boat; it begins at a campfire with a piece of perch cooked over a bed of coals.

         In short, resurrection and the resurrected life begin in the ordinary places.  This mysterious, astounding, inexplicable, amazing, profound event begins and gains traction where even we might feel comfortable. 

         It is not like Christmas, not by a long shot.  There are no angels shouting at their loudest to the glory of God.  There are no magi traveling from distant places, bearing impressive and highly symbolic gifts.  Mary does not break out in a song that will be the subject of too many musical compositions to count, and there is no innkeeper to make us feel a tad guilty when he shuts the door in the face of a near laboring woman and points to the barn.  There is no brilliant star lighting up the heavens like a beacon.

         No – resurrection begins in grittiness.  It begins with flesh and bones.  It begins with appendages.  “Look at my hands and my feet,” Jesus gently urges.  “See that it is I, myself. Touch me and see.”

         And what did Jesus want his followers to see?  I do not think he was showing off the nail holes in his hands that were just beginning to heal.  I do not think he expected them to stare rapturously at the wounds on his feet that were starting to morph into scars. 

         I think he wanted them to see everything that he had been to them, everything that they would one day be for others – if they were truly his followers.  I think he wanted them to see the hands that had broken bread and held it out to them over and over again, the hands that had fed a crowd with the meager pickings of a little boy’s lunch, the hands that had pressed pads of mud against a blind man’s eyes and reached out to a dead girl so that she rose and walked, the hands that had danced through the air when he taught, the hands that had reached out to touch the leper without hesitation.

       And the feet:  I think he wanted them to see the feet that had carried him throughout Galilee and into Samaria and up to Jerusalem, taking the Good News to those who were starving for it - into the homes of criminals and corrupt bureaucrats, whom he treated as long-lost kin; into the graveyard where the man possessed of a legion of demons lived like a wild dog among the dead, and where Jesus set him free.  I think he wanted them to see the feet that the woman of questionable repute had moistened with her tears and dried with her hair.  (Stan Gockel)

       Jesus did not appear to his disciples all cleaned up and antiseptic – though perhaps for us it would be easier if he did.  He appeared to them with dirt under his fingernails, and tan marks from his sandals on his feet. 

       And of all the things he could have left behind to recognize him, he did not leave his face etched in pain or the echo of his voice crying out his forsakenness.  He left his well-used hands and well-worn feet – ten fingers, ten toes, just like ours. And he left the same hunger he felt too – a hunger for compassion, for justice, for reconciliation and forgiveness.  And he left a mission:  “You are witnesses,” he told them – and so he tells us.  “You are witnesses to resurrection.  You are witnesses to what I am all about.  You are witnesses to God’s dream embodied in me.  Tell it.  Live it.  Become it.”

By Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C., Raymond, Maine