the Third Sunday of Easter --- 15 April 2018

(Southwestern Ontario was pounded by what was called "an historic" ice storm on Saturday and Sunday. Because of that, the leadership of both Trinity Anglican Church and St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church cancelled services for today. I think it was a wise move. Still... this is the sermon I WOULD have delivered this morning.)

Luke 24:36b-48

While they were talking about this, 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 anything here to eat?"

·       This seems to be a very simple request. Maybe Jesus was hungry after all he’d been through. As true as that may be, the real reason was to prove to his stunned disciples that he was real. Some thought he was a ghost or some other being of pure spirit with only the appearance of a body. To eat something – a chunk of broiled fish in this instance – proves that Jesus is there in his physical body, with the shape and form and function of a physical body. People with bodies eat and spirits or ghosts do not… despite what you might have seen in certain movies. The Resurrection Luke is showing here is a real bodily one and not a wishful memory or a fevered delusion or an apparition of some type or other.

·       After all, what did we hear Jesus saying to Thomas last Sunday? “Put your finger in the marks of the nails and your hand into my side. Doubt no more, but believe!”

·       There is a ‘double helping’ of the Good News here. The joyful Easter cry of “Christ is risen!” lets us know that our Saviour is risen from the tomb and is victorious over death. That would be a wondrous thing and we’d still have to ask what that wondrous thing for Jesus would mean to us.

·       The second point – the ‘second helping’ – is the Good News that where Jesus leads, we all will follow. The Resurrection is not simply for Jesus alone, but it is a pledge and promise to us. The second letter to Timothy says this: The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him (2 Timothy 2:11-12)

·       Following the same line, the book of Revelation calls Jesus “the first-born of the dead” (Rev. 1:5), a title that could mean that he is the first to go the route of resurrection and the first among so many who will follow on that way.

·       If then the Resurrection is something that has a real physical-ness about it, it tells us something about our faith. The Christian Church has been clear that our faith is not simply about ideas and concepts and tenets to be believed. We are not saved through some idea or word of secret knowledge. We as Christians do not hold to a spirituality that seeks transcendence from a sinful and evil physical world to be free to travel in realms of pure thought and consciousness freed from any sort of physical body. Our faith is tied up the visible, touchable, taste-able, smell-able, hearable creation in all its beauty and all its terror. The whole of creation is referred to here, including what we cannot see or perceive.

·       Doesn’t the book of Genesis say God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.?

·       John’s Gospel says For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. The word “World” mean all of creation, not some spiritualized part of it. The promise of the Resurrection, the promise of Easter is the renewal of all that exists, of all that is created. It is the promise of new life and sign of new hope.

·       The preaching of this hope of resurrection to all nations and the call to repentance and forgiveness has been the Church’s mission since that Easter night that Luke tells of. It is our mission today. That hasn’t changed through the years.

·       Isn’t it odd that the act of eating a morsel of broiled fish could show so much of the plan and the love of God? It really is a good thing.

While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?"