Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, 2024
Acts 3:12-19+Psalm 4+1 John 3:1-7+Luke 24:36b-48
In the 1993 film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a TV weatherman who, for the fourth year in a row, is assigned to go to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the emergence of the weather-forecasting groundhog (which he calls a rat) named Phil, and he is disgruntled about the whole thing and ends up having to repeat the same day over and over again.
In the Church year, we have reached Groundhog Day. Yes, I know the calendar says we are two weeks past Easter Day - the 3rd Sunday of Easter in Church parlance - but our reading from Luke? Still Easter. Still the day of resurrection.
Rather than being disgruntled and/or frustrated, we are being given the gift of perspective and repetition. What did those earlier followers really think happened? What did they actually see? What did this risen Jesus actually do?
For two weeks, we were in John's gospel where, in that account, we are told that it is Mary Magdalene who first sees the risen Lord, and then the disciples all see him later that day in the room where they had gathered. The following week, Thomas is with them when he appears again.
Luke has a different take on the story. In his telling, the women go to the tomb early in the morning only to encounter two men dressed in white saying that Jesus is not there. "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen" (Luke 24:5). They do not see Jesus but run and tell the eleven remaining disciples and others. Peter hurries to the tomb to see for himself because the men thought it an "idle tale," but he sees just the linen burial cloths. No Jesus.
Sometime later, two of the disciples, one named Cleopas and the other unnamed, encounter a stranger on the road to Emmaus. It is not until this stranger breaks bread with them that they realize it is their friend, back from the dead. They run back to Jerusalem to tell the others, and this is where our reading today opens.
"While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’" (Luke 24:36).
By the time Luke wrote down this account, enough time had passed for people to wonder if it really happened. Did Jesus really come back from the dead? Did he really have a body? Even earlier, the Apostle Paul had to counter such doubts in his first letter to the church in Corinth, " Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:12-14).
It's always the question, isn't it? Did it really happen?
So, Jesus asks for something to eat because surely ghosts or spirits can't chew and swallow solid food.
In this 24th chapter of Luke, we have two instances connecting Jesus with food - the meal at Emmaus and now, the fish. There are eight other food connections in Luke's gospel alone, and I want to take a moment to talk about them, because I don't believe it is simply random that here, at the end of this gospel, we have bread and fish and Jesus and people all together.
If you've been around for a bit, these are all stories familiar to you:
Dinner at Levi's house (aka Matthew) after he called him from his tax-collecting booth (Luke 5:27-32).
Dinner at Simon the Pharisee's house when a "sinful woman" anoints Jesus (Luke 7:36-50).
Feeding the 5,000 (Luke 9:10-17).
Hospitality at Mary and Martha's house (Luke 10:38-42).
Dinner at a Pharisee's house when Jesus was criticized for not washing before the meal, and he denounces the lawyers and Pharisees for hypocrisy (Luke 11:37-52).
Jesus shares a meal on the sabbath with a group of lawyers and religious leaders and uses the occasion to tell some parables that don't go over too well with this group (Luke 14:2-24).
Dinner at Zacchaeus's the tax collector's house in Jericho (Luke 19:1-10).
The Last Supper (Luke 22:14-38).
We don't know what these meals entailed or what was served or who cooked (except in the case of Mary and Martha when Martha gets upset with her sister for not helping out in the kitchen), but I don't think what was served is nearly as important as who was at the table.
Jesus was always criticized for eating with outcasts and sinners; it infuriated the religious leaders. He ate with tax collectors. That infuriated his more zealous anti-Rome followers. He ate with Pharisees. That infuriated those who viewed the Pharisees as uncaring and out of touch. He ate with - and fed - the poor, and that really worried those who knew that if the people got sick and tired enough of being sick and tired, the whole house of cards might come tumbling down.
And here, at the end, he shares a meal with the two at Emmaus who don't even know who he is. And he eats some fish among those who do know him well, but who are - in the adjectives used in the text - startled, terrified, disbelieving, and wondering.
Jesus shares meals with the least expected among us. He shares meals with those who are afraid, those who don't believe, those who don't recognize him, those who disagree with everything he represents, those who are simply hungry. And he says to these gathered here as day comes to a close on that first Easter, "You are witnesses of these things" (24:48). To be a witness is to be one who tells. Go tell all those people what you have seen and heard. You can be afraid, or doubtful, or disbelieving or on the other side of some arbitrary divide. But you are witnesses.
Oh, and there is one other adjective used to describe the disciples: joy. His followers may have been disbelieving and afraid, but they had joy.
Jesus is not asking for any of us to believe all the things all the time or to have confidence in every single thing or even to be able to recognize him in our midst. Jesus is asking for us to be joyful witnesses, to sit down at tables with all sorts of people, and to break bread and fish together.
It's so simple even a child could do it, which might be why the first letter of John says, "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are" (3:1).
Alleluia! Christ is risen.