I almost changed the text from which I would preach on this week. After I read the Gospel lesson from Luke and a few of the commentaries on this passage, I still felt uncomfortable. Usually I like preaching from the Gospel of Luke and I even went back over my notes from past 3rd Sunday’s after Easter in the ‘Year B Lectionary Cycle’ to see what I had done with this text before. And, I always used another assigned text for this day. So, it became the challenge for me to preach on it and to find good news in what is a difficult text for me.
Presbyterians approach the Bible from a historical criticism meaning that we know the authors of the texts came from specific backgrounds, had specific agendas, and wrote from within the science and knowledge of their day. They were explaining the Jesus event through their lenses and with their purposes. I usually like preaching from Luke as the agenda is always the movement of the Good News out to the world. The Gospel started as a story about and a lesson on love for a small group of folk in a small area of ancient Israel, but the mission seen in both Luke and Acts is to take that message to the world. The job of the preacher is to take the text and glean from it the message found inside the context it was written. So, I went back to the text, the commentaries, and started again.
But I have to confess……And I had to get over my initial response to the lesson that is sounds like that old ventriloquist trick when they prove it is a talking doll on their lap and not them doing the talking by drinking a glass of water while the doll talks.
Listen now for God’s message gleaned from the Gospel of Luke 24:36b-48.
36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”[a] 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 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.” 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.[b] 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.
44 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.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah[c] is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses[d] of these things. (The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.)
Holy Week was just two weeks ago, but in many ways it seems like a forever. Our Riviera Players led the dramatic reading of Christ’s Passion on Palm Sunday, we had a wonderful Passover Seder and Maundy Thursday Communion, a meaningful and beautiful joint Good Friday Service with Coral Gables Congregational UCC Church, a Prayer Vigil on Saturday, and welcomed with Joy the Good News of Hope and Love on Easter Morning. I hope that each of you found meaning in whichever parts of the week you were able to participate.
In the Prayer Vigil, participants were invited to sign up for one hour shifts and to commit to praying for that hour. The person who prayed before you would call you and say a small prayer for your hour and after your hour was over you would do the same for the next person who signed up to be in the vigil. Participants prayed from where ever they were when their assigned hour came. Each person was to light a candle, have a Bible ready, and was given a study/prayer guide to direct their hour of prayer and meditation. The study material came from Brian McLaren’s book, ‘We make the Road by Walking: a year long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation’. I don’t know about the rest of you who participated in this, but I spent most of my time meditating on what the followers of Jesus must have been feeling. For some reason, what resonated with me was the very human responses they had to this wild week they had. I kept on thinking about their need to be together, to talk to each other about their personal loss and grief. And those of us who have lost loved ones know how important those raw first days are. You need each other.
The group of followers came into Jerusalem on a high….. with great adoration for Jesus…. But their humanness brought about Jesus’ downfall. They must have felt such guilt, such intense remorse for their participation, however small, in what happened on Good Friday. And their grief….. this was a group of people who believed they were following the Messiah. This was a group of people who gave up their lives, their homes, their employment, their families, to follow as he traveled and preached his message of love. After his death they all retreated to an upper room behind closed (or even locked) doors to think, to lick their wounds, to grieve, and to think about what was next for them.
I thought about my family coming together after the sudden death of my mother two years ago. My brother and sisters, my children and nieces and nephews all stayed together for 48 hours. We hugged, we talked, we ate, we grieved, we remembered, we laughed, and we found comfort in being together. I assume it was much like what happened in that upper room. They had an emotional need to be there and to be together.
And then things went funny. The women arrived and told them that the tomb was empty and that Jesus had risen from the dead. Then two men arrived and told how they walked with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and that he revealed himself to them by breaking bread. And then Jesus arrives and stands among them. Luke wants us to know that this is not a spiritual vision or a ghost, but that Jesus actually was there. This is a walking and talking Jesus, not something from the dead come back to haunt or scare them. And then Jesus does this ‘weird food thing’ to prove that he is alive. You see, ghosts were feared in ancient cultures and it seems like Luke’s story of Jesus asking for food and then eating might be to show that he is not a spirit but a body. The only thing I can surmise is that Luke wants us to know that something VERY new occurred in the risen Christ. If this gives you comfort, thank God. However, is you are like me and Jesus resurrected in full living body becomes a stumbling block in your faith, I have come to believe that it is O.K. too. Luke writes that the disciples were wondering and disbelieving too. And that is really important for us to know. Even those who were present had trouble believing …. so we should not be ashamed if we doubt as well. I think what is important to us to understand is that Luke is trying to find a way to explain the unique experience of Jesus. Given the same circumstance, we might have trouble describing the events too.
I believe that one of the things Luke is telling us here is that God has the upper hand. We might be fearful like the disciples of so many things that seem out of control in our lives. But God is in charge. Lately, I have had a stream of things about which I worry. This week I became frightened about a war with Syria. For the past year I’ve been frightened that hate crimes are on an increase. And if I am truthful with you, my anxieties about some of my family and friends keep me up at night. I am just like the disciples filled with fear and dread.
And then we remember that we are an Easter people. God is in control. God’s power as witnessed in the Easter experience is to release us from that which holds us captive. Easter is about hope and God’s power. Easter is a crying out that God is in charge. In the end, God and love always win. To me the importance about this passage is not that we have to believe in the resurrection of Christ’s body over Christ’s spirit as some theologians believe but that we know that Easter is a message for the world of HOPE and LOVE.
And Luke ends this passage with his message of the mission of the disciple is to go outward and tell the world. Jesus says this Good News is for the whole world to hear. Jesus says we are to witness this to ALL the nations.
Last Sunday, I was not here with you at worship as I was representing our church at the interfaith service on Miami Beach for Pride Miami. Riviera was one of 10 religious communities that put on a worship service Sunday morning before the Miami Pride Parade. The clergy wear stoles, collars, kippahs and yarmulkes, or whatever is worn in their traditions and lead a worship service of music and a message of acceptance and God’s love. Then we all decorated a float and road in the parade, with music blaring, and members of each of our churches and synagogues sitting on the float of walking along side it.
The reason for being in the parade became immediately apparent. Even on the first block, people were overwhelmed with thanksgiving that God was there. We were celebrated not for being there but for how it made the people watching the parade feel that the church and the temples were a part of the PRIDE Parade and weekend. There were tears and shouts of joy and thanksgiving as we went by on our float holding signs that said ‘God loves you as you are’ and ‘you will know we are Christians by our love’. We might not have had the exotic dancers on our float that others had or the camels that followed another float, but the importance of our float became extremely clear. Ours was a float of acceptance to a group who have not found the same love that we share here at Riviera. Ours was the float directed to individuals who had been told by their churches that they were not wanted. That they were not God’s. Our float was there to be witnesses to God’s love to a world of hurt, just as Jesus called those early disciples to do in their ministries.
Our message was and is that God and love win. Our Easter message is that God’s love is not just for us here, or for those followers of Jesus who locked themselves in an upper room….. Our message is for all people, all the nations…. That hope, that love, and that God will conquer all. Amen.