After the Emmaus road

 14/4/24                                St Peter’s                             Easter 3

Acts 3:12-19                                                         Luke 24:36-48

    

When I looked at the gospel passage what struck me most was how determined Jesus was to make it crystal clear that the resurrection is a physical, bodily event,  Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” 

But why- there he is with them - they can see him - what’s the problem? 

But put yourself in their place

About a week ago they had followed Jesus  as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. They hadn’t been sure what to expect  but they had been met by a cheering crowd - it had been a triumph. 

But just few days later everything fell apart in the worst possible way-Jesus - the focus of their life for the last two or three years was betrayed by a friend then brutally executed after  a mockery of a trial. 

The disciples were left with grief, shame, and despair for the loss of what might have been.

Our reading takes place three days after the crucifixion. When they woke that morning they hadn’t begun to come to terms with what the death of Jesus might mean for them. How could they remake their world? What was left for them.

But our reading isn’t about the morning but the evening, and it’s  the evening of the day of resurrection and into that terror and confusion an impossible hope is beginning to insinuate itself. 

Stories are beginning to accumulate - Mary and the other women who went to the tomb at dawn say Jesus met them there, Simon and John hurried after them and they met him too- the disciples are still digesting this when the Cleopasses arrive back from Emmaus.

and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Jesus is making himself known to people and then disappearing

Still frightening, still confusing but somehow, hope has begun to intrude. 

While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost

But Jesus is not a ghost. A ghost is a dead person and Jesus is not a dead person, and that is what he spends this time demonstrating to them. Death has not tamed, has not captured the God of life. God does not give death the last word. Jesus is not an apparition, he is flesh and blood, recognisably the person with whom they shared the last three years; whatever has happened to Jesus he is still the same Jesus they knew.

Jesus shows them the nature of resurrection life and then opens their minds to understand the scriptures - to show that what they see is not an aberration - it isn’t God making the best of  an awful mistake - instead this is how God’s forgiveness is opened to us. The resurrected Jesus is both the guarantee and demonstration of God’s reconciling plan.

But first he has to deal with infinite human capacity to try and domesticate God, we feel more secure with  laws than grace, with guarantees than trust, and so try to fit him into a framework we can understand ‘they thought that they were seeing a ghost’ - they had heard stories about ghosts -perhaps they were true after all -

Jesus won’t have any of it -‘look at the scars, touch me, give me some fish’  

Whatever they’d heard about ghosts didn’t include being invited to prod them or seeing them deal with that bit of fish that Andrew had caught and Matthew had cooked but that nobody in the end had felt like eating. 

None of this was what they expected ghosts to do, on the other hand they had seen Jesus eat fish lots of times. The Jesus who has joined them is solid enough to have tweaked James’s nose if he’d wanted to.

Jesus standing among them in the fulness of resurrection does not  conform to our understanding of death - somehow he is much more playful than we expect.

In a few minutes we’ll say  ‘On the third day Jesus rose again in accordance with the Scriptures;’ and at the very end of the creed when we talk about our future ‘We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’ 

This resurrection, which is our our hope because this is our resurrection too,  is not tame - it’s inconvenient because it doesn’t sit well with the Spirit of the age - which often tries to deny death’s realities - it’s monstrous, because it goes beyond our understanding, taking us into areas where we proceed by faith and not by sight -  it’s unnerving because we know the strength of our faith wobbles, we continually fall short of our aspirations let alone Jesus’s but our resurrection hope has been demonstrated by the most trustworthy pioneer that we could have, who knows us and our frailties better than we know ourselves.

People have produced flimsy alternatives to resurrection hope but they don’t ring true.. 

A few years ago Disney made a film - Coco - based around the Mexican Day of the Dead. The film’s central conceit is that the dead have a kind of limbo life so long as they are remembered by those who love them. 

Some try ignoring death Woody Allen said ‘“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” 

Both these ideas fall well short of what Jesus did for us by his life, death, resurrection and ascension.

The resurrection hope - it isn’t comfortable, and it doesn’t feel safe because just as for Jesus there was no way to his resurrection  except through dying,  so too that is true for us. 

What we are offered in Christ isn’t an escape from death - bad luck Woody Allen - rather it is the denial that death has the last word. And after all that is how Jesus came to his resurrection - through the death he genuinely died.

In “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ Mr Beaver talks about Aslan  - Safe?” said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.’We are being asked to put our trust not on a safe bet but in the son of God, who is good and true. 

Resurrection is fulfilled on the other side of the grave but it begins now. It is the good news at the heart of the kingdom of God - though things may be bleak now they will be set right. How do we live in that hope? It sounds very simple, but takes every part of us - Love God, with all your heart mind and strength, love your neighbour as yourself, do unto others as you would have them do to you - but we are accompanied by the risen Jesus.

Listen to St Augustine

‘Let us sing alleluia here on earth, while we still live in anxiety , so that we may sing it one day in heaven in full security... We shall have no enemies in heaven, we shall never lose a friend. 

God’s praises are sung both here and there, but here they are sung in anxiety there in security; here they are sung by those destined to die; there by those destined to live forever; here they are sung in hope , there in hope’s fulfilment; 

here, they are sung by wayfarers; there, by those living in their own country. 

So then let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten our labours. You should sing as wayfarers do - sing, but continue your journey ...sing then, but keep going.’