Text: Luke 24:36b-48
Did the resurrection actually happen? I know what you are thinking… that’s an awfully strange question for a pastor to be asking. But I wasn’t there. You weren’t there. It happened a really long time ago. If someone asked me that question today, if I had proof that Jesus is alive, what could I show them?
Well, to be honest, I would show them you. We are an Easter people, aren’t we? Our lives are marked by the resurrection of Jesus, isn’t it? If the resurrection is real… if Jesus is alive… then it is our lives that bear witness to that truth.
Let’s back up a bit and explore what that means. In our gospel for today, Luke tells us about how the disciples first encountered the resurrected Jesus. In this version of the gospel, women had traveled to the tomb and the body of Jesus was gone. Instead, they encountered two messengers who told them that Jesus was alive. The women ran back and told the disciples who were mighty confused. Only Peter was willing to take their story seriously and when he went to look in the tomb for himself, he simply found a linen cloth.
Later that day, two followers of Jesus were walking along the road to Emmaus and Jesus showed up beside them! When they finally realized who it was, they ran back to Jerusalem, found the eleven remaining disciples and the rest of those gathered and told them that Jesus really, actually, truthfully, was alive. And bingo-bango… Jesus appears in the room. Without warning. Without doors opening.He just shows up.
Luke tells us that they thought they were seeing a ghost and Rev. Dr. Derek Weber (Discipleship Ministries) picks up on that idea… “They were haunted by him,” Weber writes. “by the idea of him, by the blood of him. They were terrified of their shame, of how they had abandoned him, of how they wouldn’t believe in what he had told them before or what the women said they saw.”
This idea that Jesus would simply appear. And be there. Right there. Standing before them. It was almost too much to comprehend.
And so, Jesus offers them living proof. He isn’t a spirit. He isn’t floating in the air. He’s real. Flesh and blood. Here are my hands, he says. Look at my feet. Touch them. This was about more than just seeing the marks from the resurrection still present on his body. It was also about grabbing on and feeling the blood and the life and the warmth coursing through him.
In our modern English translations, we might read “touch and see” here in verse 39, but Weber notes that in the Greek, the words are more of a command. He is telling all of them – Grab a hold of me! Ground yourselves in my reality. Hang on to it. Don’t just see, but behold! What you are going to touch and experience when you do will change your entire life. Or as Weber puts it: “Grab hold of the reality of Christ and see not just him but you, too. See your path, your future, your mission, and your reason for being.”
And then, to dispel ANY remaining doubts about whether or not he was really real, Jesus eats a piece of fish. Because, ghosts don’t eat, right? Things that are dead don’t eat. I am real. The resurrection is true. Everything I told you is actually happening. And then he goes on to remind them, once again, about what God wants not just for them, but for all people.
As we launch into the summer, we are going to follow the disciples as they travel to the ends of the earth with this message of transformation and life and abundance and hope. We will walk step by step through the ways they lived out the resurrection of Jesus in the world. So we aren’t going to dive into all of that today.
You see, first, we need to appreciate and understand and grab a hold of the truth of this moment. As Derek Weber writes, “the gospel, the life of faith has to be grounded in reality… If we don’t start here, if we don’t watch that piece of fish being eaten, if we don’t grab hold, we won’t see. And if we don’t see, then we are likely to turn our message into one of the hereafter, the sweet by and by and not the here and now.”
Think about it. If all that Jesus did was create a way for us to get to heaven… there would be no need for the resurrection. In his death, he could simply have cracked open the wall that separates heaven from earth enough for our disembodied souls to get in. He didn’t need to come back and walk and talk and eat fish to carry us into heaven when we died. He could have simply sent a messenger, or showed up as a spirit. And the message of the Christian faith would have been something like: everything will be better after we die.
To be honest, that is how I see a lot of Christians walking around and acting. That is the message that is often shared with people. This world doesn’t matter. These people don’t matter. Who cares what is going on in Myanmar or Minneapolis or on the Mexican border, because my faith is about what comes after this life.
Except, it’s not. That is not the truth of the Christian faith. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead then our preaching is useless and so is your faith. The good news is that the resurrection life transforms THIS world and not simply the next. It is born out in flesh and blood and love and community right here and right now. Our faith is an embodied faith. Our spiritual lives cannot be separated from our physical lives.
Debie Thomas reminds us in her essay this week that we have a Savior with a body like ours… a body that was nurtured in a womb and who hungers and weeps and gets angry at injustice and who was vulnerable to forces of violence and cruelty beyond his control. And we have a God who resurrects bodies, “The physical resurrection of Jesus is God’s definitive offering of both compassion and justice: all that has been taken, broken, mistreated, wronged, and forgotten, will be restored.”
This truth, this good news, this resurrection is so real that you can reach out and grab a hold of it! It begins right here and right now. It is experienced anytime we feed our neighbors who are hungry. Or advocate for justice in our neighborhood. We behold the resurrection when we cling to the hand of our elderly neighbor or sick friend. Or break bread with an enemy. It is the proclamation that lives matter. Bodies matter. Stories matter. What you are experiencing in this world matters and God wants to heal and restore and redeem anything that has broken or separated us.
As Jesus tells the disciples, huddled together in that room on the day after the resurrection: You are witnesses of these things. You are the proof. The living proof. You bear out the truth of the resurrection in everything you say and you do. Friends, we are Easter people. We are called to practice and embody the reality of the resurrection in all that we say and do.
So in these coming weeks, we, like the disciples, will go back to some of the teachings of Jesus and remember what exactly that means. We’ll practice what it means to listen… and to remain… and to love… With not just our minds… And not just for an hour on a Sunday…But with our whole lives. So that anyone who meets us will know – the resurrection is real and Jesus is alive among us. Amen.
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