Easter 3 B: A Flesh and Bone Resurrection

Posted by DJL on Apr 12, 2021 in Dear Partner | 9 comments

Luke 24:36b-48

Dear Partner in Preaching,

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post. A combination of my own work as a pastor and preacher at Mount Olivet, trying to navigate re-opening as conditions improve (and then worsen again), and the fact that we have opted for a more narrative approach to the lectionary have all conspired against posting as regularly as I would like. I am hoping to resume this discipline and dialogue with you but will make no promises. 🙂 For today, a few thoughts on Luke’s continuing story of Jesus post-resurrection appearances.

The plural is key, as it is “appearances.” Luke offers by far the most extended account of the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection and then his actual interactions with his disciples on that first Easter. In Luke’s story, the women at the empty tomb hear the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, Jesus himself then encounters two more disciples on the Road to Emmaus, and a bit later he meets the rest of the disciples back in Jerusalem (today’s lection). Luke, it appears, is at pains to explain how Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfill the promises of the Old Testament and its implications for the life of his community (and, by extension, all of us).

In this light, the first two panels of his resurrection triptych have always made the most sense to me. The first parallels to a large degree that of Mark and Matthew, and the second lays out a pattern for how Jesus interacts with his disciples by mirroring the worship of Luke’s community and many Christian communities ever since (encounter, word, meal, sending). But the third has always felt a bit goofy to me. My guess is that Luke, writing fifty to sixty years after the events he is narrating, is contending with questions about whether Jesus was really raised from the dead or whether the initial disciples just had visions about him. (Questions that persist to this day). Hence, Jesus’ urgency to prove to the disciples that he’s not a ghost, first by inviting the disciples to touch him – because we all know you can’t touch a ghost – and then by asking for and eating fish – because we all really, really know a ghost can’t eat! Fine, but a little goofy, if not downright weird.

Or at least that’s what I’ve normally thought. This year, though, after a year of isolation, of interacting with people primarily (and some weeks exclusively) by phone and Zoom, after preaching to a camera for 54 Sundays in a row and recording untold numbers of Bible studies to share with people I never got to see, I think about Luke’s emphasis on the physical element of Jesus’ resurrection differently. There is something ineluctably and integrally physical about our existence and, Luke wants to stress, about the promise of resurrected existence as well. And so it’s really, really important for Luke, I think, to tell the story in a way that emphasizes that Jesus isn’t, well, a ghost and that the disciples didn’t merely have ecstatic visions but actually saw, touch, and interacted physically with their Lord.

It reminds me a bit of Paul’s insistence on the resurrection in his letter to the Corinthians: “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 has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (I Cor. 15:12-14). Paul can almost sound defensive in these lines, as if he’s trying to threaten or bully the Corinthians into affirming Christ’s resurrection. But the urgency for Paul becomes clear just a bit later on: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ” (15:20-22). What’s at stake for Paul and, I believe, for Luke, is not about affirming a doctrinal, let alone metaphysical, assertion, but instead linking God’s redemptive work to our actual experience. To us. We who are physical, material, flesh-and-bone kind of people.

The primary temptation for people of faith, I think, is not so much to disbelieve – goodness, but doubting what happens when God gets involved in our lives seems like the most natural and biblical response possible! – as it is to reduce, describe, and contain God’s actions in ways we can easily understand. Perhaps that’s because if we can’t understand God, then God remains beyond us, which in turn means we can’t tame or domesticate or ultimately control God. And, well, we tend to fear those things we can’t control. And perhaps the chief way we attempt to describe, understand, and ultimately limit and control God is the all-too-natural belief that a) God is certainly way, way beyond us and therefore b) the chief task of the religious life is to improve ourselves and reach toward God. You know, “Each and every day, I become better and better in every way.” The end result is to be, finally, less human and more like God, eventually escaping the confines of mortal life to live as spirit with the Eternal Spirit (and all that jazz).

Yet across the Scriptures and particularly in the New Testament, the story told is not one of humanity’s journey of improvement and spiritual enlightenment but rather that it’s actually the eternal and holy God that embarks on a trek… to be like us and encounter us where we are. From the pains of Mary’s childbirth and Jesus’ messy birth (is there any other kind?), to his grief over losing a friend, to both his joy in and disappointment with his disciples, to his isolation in Gethsemane and despair on the cross, the picture of Christ’s life, ministry, and death is one of God embracing all that we are so we would know God understands us as we are, embraces and accepts us as we are, loves us as we are, and redeems us as we are. So also in the story of the resurrection. God comes for real people, redeems real people, and promises to resurrect real – and so also physical – people.

Perhaps it’s understandable to want to question physical resurrection – and of course the disciples and anyone else who takes it seriously questions this! – by reducing it to a spiritual or psychological experience we can understand. But the flip side of this move is to recognize that a God we can understand and describe probably can’t save us. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Auden’s For the Time Being, as the shepherds making their way to Bethlehem declare, “Nothing can save us that is possible. We who are about to die demand a miracle.” Jesus is really resurrected because God really intends to redeem, save, and bless us… as we are: physical, mortal, limited, vulnerable. Really.

Which may give comfort to us anytime, but perhaps especially now, as among other things it has done, this pandemic has reminded us just how physical, mortal, limited, and vulnerable we really are. And in the midst of all these limitations, we hear the promise in this goofy, even weird little story that God in Jesus still comes for us. And so Luke is, in fact, at pains to remind us that what’s at stake in the resurrection is not a doctrinal affirmation but rather the promise that God gets us, loves us, comes for us, and redeems us. Just as we are. Now. Really.

Thanks for sharing this word, Dear Partner, in season and out, that our folks may know of God’s love, remember that they aren’t alone, and be renewed in faith and courage so they can share God’s love with those around them. Blessings, always, on your proclamation.

Yours in Christ,
David