A sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. Steven L. Thomason at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas on April 22, 2012.
The readings appointed for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year B, are:
Luke 24:36b-48 [While the disciples were telling how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."]
Have you
ever tried to see something that really just cannot be seen?
For instance, I bet at some point in your childhood,
you discovered the mystery
of the refrigerator light—
when you were coming for a
glass of milk or cold snack—
you open the door and, bam, the light was on.
Did it stay on all the time,
or did it just know when you
were coming?
Eventually, I bet, you discovered the little lever
at the door’s inside frame
that was the light’s on-off
switch,
which (if you were anything
like me)
you promptly spent countless
kilowatts pushing and letting go—
your own circuit of glee and
power,
until your mom shooed you
out of the kitchen.
And can you remember the first time
you were staring at your
image in a mirror,
and in a moment of uneasy
self-consciousness,
you discover the eyes always
seemed to be staring right at you.
You’d turn away, and steal a quick sideways glance,
trying to catch a glimpse of
the eyes not yet watching you,
but there they were—
those beady eyes glaring
straight on.
The empirical trial failed every time for me.
Or in a defiant show of disinterest,
you’d turn away and then
slowly gaze back,
using peripheral vision,
trying not to see the eyes,
and there is
nothing, nothing, nothing,
until you reach the point at
which the retina’s mirror
meets the eyes
which give an impertinent glare,
like they’ve
been waiting all day to be seen again.[i]
It stops us short, doesn’t it,
to almost see something, but
not quite?
And catching a glimpse of God
in some tangible way seems,
for most of us,
that elusive,
close-but-not-quite, enterprise of life.
Even though God is there,
always ready, longing to be
seen,
extending an invitation into
the creative forces of goodness.
But even when we do see the divine presence,
we still aren’t sure.
The disciples were no different.
Even with the Risen Christ standing in front of them
they still can’t see.
This reading from Luke is Part Two of
“Close Encounters with the
Risen Christ.”
For brevity’s sake, the Lectionary this year has set
aside
the first part of the story,
and the supper that
followed,
immortalized by
Caravaggio’s famous painting
of the moment
Cleopas and the other disciple
recognize Jesus
in the breaking
of the bread.
It was, in many ways, the first communion.
So startled were the two
that they run all the way
back to Jerusalem that same night
to alert the other disciples
who are gathered,
trying to make
sense of Jesus’ death just three days before, when Jesus appears to them all
again,
and offers them
peace.
They can’t believe it is Jesus,
and we’re told they thought
he was a ghost—
which is an unfortunate
translation, I think,
given our two
modern reference points
of Halloween
with children draped in white sheets
with two slits for their eyes
to peer through,
or cinematic
depictions of poltergeists flitting about.
Make no mistake, both play on our fears,
but
in a way that makes them feel less real…
The Greek word here translated as “ghost”
more aptly intends “spirit”
which,
in the disciples day and
time,
would have been understood
as a rarely
seen,
but ever-present
real force of
nature,
some of whom worked for good,
but many were working out some
assignment
as the
inexplicable cause
for real flesh-and-blood
afflictions
like epilepsy,
schizophrenia and infections.
Such a spirit appearing in their midst,
which they could see,
but didn’t want to,
would have been
terrifying.
But Jesus says, do
not be afraid…
I am no ghost.
It is I, you know me.
You see me.
Here, touch
me.
Watch me eat something.
I am real,
and I am really here, with you.
Peace be with you.
Remember what
I told you.
There is work still to be done.
Work for you to do.
Part of God’s plan.
And remember, I am with you always.
Some scholars contend that this emphasis
on the real “fleshness” of
the Risen Christ
found its way into Luke’s
and John’s gospels
written near the
end of the 1st Century,
several decades
after Jesus’ death and resurrection,
because by that
time
Gnosticism was finding
considerable expression
in the Church.
Gnosticism was eventually declared to be heresy
because it maintained, among
other things,
that the world of the flesh
is bad…evil,
while the world of the
spirit is good,
and therefore
Jesus could never really have been human
but was just an
apparition,
a spirit of
divine goodness appearing as human.
These “Close Encounters with the Risen Christ”
recorded in the gospels
pay considerable attention
to the embodied
nature of Jesus
who has been
raised from the dead.
This is a Jesus of the senses,
he is Christ of this
world,
and finds this world
worthy of his presence and peace.
Resurrection is about experiencing life in its
fullness,
here and now.
Resurrection is about the divine invitation
to
participate
in the goodness of creation
which is being
renewed by the grace and love of God.
It seems fitting that we get this gospel passage on
Earth Day,
a secular observance which
the Church
has seen fit to claim as
well,
as an
opportunity to consider how resurrection
and new life
might be
invitations
into the full
participation
of the goodness
of Creation
and God’s
blessing of
the whole of
Creation.
God looked over all that was made, and said,
Behold, it is good…
And it is good for us to be here.
The truth is, try as we might,
we can’t see greenhouse
gases rising;
we can’t comprehend polar
ice caps
shrinking by the square
miles;
we can’t fathom millions of
barrels of oil
spilled into the ocean;
we can’t get our heads
around the fact
that the natural extinction
rate for species
has increased 10,000 percent
in the last century
as a result of humanity’s
adverse effects on ecosystems.
Try as we might,
we can’t quite see these
things…
as long as we are looking at
ourselves
in the
proverbial mirror.
All we will ever see
is our own eyes staring back
at us,
convincing us of the merit
of selfish
consumption and neglect.
And we will miss the beauty of Resurrection
come
into our midst everytime.
The beauty of God’s decision
to participate in the
goodness of creation,
-to bless it and be here with us--
and to invite us to
participate
in the fullness
of resurrected life,
is that we don’t have to
cast our eyes
down-line tg another world,
after death,
or to another life,
as if this one
is not the one
that really
matters.
It does matter,
and the Risen Christ
comes into our midst and
says it does.
Resurrection is a wonderful portal
into the work of caring for
creation, here and now.
Resurrection is about reconciling relationships that
have been broken—
with
God, with one another,
and
with every last thing
that lives, and
moves and has being
on
this fragile earth, our island home.
Ultimately, resurrection is about experiencing
Communion fully
Here
and now, in flesh and blood…
I am real, the Risen Christ says,
and I am really here, with you.
Peace be with you.
Remember what
I told you.
There is work still to be done.
Work for you to do.
Part of God’s plan.
And remember,
I am with you always
even if you can’t see me.
Amen.
[i]
This illustration was shared by good friend and fellow preacher, Scott Walters,
last year, as an exegetical foray into a different passage of Scripture, but
the thematic examples are delightful, experienced by most of us, and serve as
theological fodder for us all. His sermon can be found at http://christchurchlr.org/?p=2615
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