3 Easter Yr B April 18 2021
Acts 3:12-19, 1 John 3:1-7, Luke 24:36b-48, Psalm 4
When my kids were little boys, we would love to go to the Science Museum in St. Paul, MN. It was a great museum because you could touch and feel everything. I suppose that means it is designed for kids, but I’ve always liked it too. There would be boxes that you would put your hand into and touch whatever thing was in it and try to figure out what it was. Was it soft or hard, hairy or smooth, round, square, oddly shaped, squishy, slimy, all of these were important questions to figuring it out. You can’t really learn much about anything, whether it’s an animal, or a fossil, or even a person, without really encountering it. Just standing back and looking at stuff not only is boring but doesn’t really register because you haven’t accessed all the important learning centers, like touch, smell, taste etc. Jesus seemed to know all this.
This story begins that day of resurrection, two of the disciples were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. But they were not able to recognize who he was, not until they invited Jesus to stay with them, and as they were sitting down to their meal, Jesus took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And they recognized him. Our Eucharistic Prayer C repeats this refrain, we say “Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.”
Be known to us in the breaking of the bread. Jesus’ appearance in this story at the end of Luke, his words touch and see, even having a little fish snack, should bring us right back to the meals Jesus shared with his friends, he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” Appearing to his friends like this, after they watched him die, after they watched him being taken down from the cross, after they watched him being laid in the tomb, must have been so much more than shocking. They thought what they were seeing was an apparition. And Jesus had to show them that he wasn’t a ghost, but that he really was Jesus. So he reminds them of what they did together, he reminds them of the meals they shared, he reminds them that each time they bake the bread, each time they combine the wheat, the water, the yeast, each time they smell the bread baking, each time they bless it and break it, they are to remember. This is how we remember our loved ones, isn’t it? We remember the time we spent together, the things we did, the touch and the smells. Touch and see. Smell and feel. Remember who you are.
Resurrection and resuscitation are not the same thing. This is Jesus that these followers are feeding. It is not a ghost, and it is not some sort of resuscitated Jesus, a Jesus who narrowly escaped a horrific death. This is the resurrected Jesus, the promise and fulfillment of God as revealed in the story of God’s activity in the life of God’s people. We are shocked and surprised. We wish to believe and yet are wary of belief.
Touch and see; the truth is in front of our eyes if only we put ourselves aside and see it. The truth is in living each and every day. The truth is in the seeds that must be buried in the ground and be created new before they can erupt from the ground to become the wheat that becomes the flour that becomes the bread that becomes the body of Jesus broken for us. The truth is in the transformation of a broken body into a healed body, not a perfect body. The truth is in a life lived in pain and sadness with the constant striving to acquire and have, and the transformation of that life into a life in service to others.
God has begun the new creation in Jesus. God has inaugurated all that God has promised
with the resurrection of Jesus. You and I then are participants in the new creation, or the Kingdom of God. There is a moral dimension to resurrection, and it is not about being good in order to go to heaven. If we are in fact re-membered, or put back together as the Kingdom of God, as Jesus’ body was when he appeared to his friends, we have a moral obligation in the here and now. We are called to revere and care for our physical bodies, God will make them new at the resurrection at the fulfillment of time, but what we do with them today bears on being created in God’s image. We are called to revere and care for the earth on which we live, as a living, breathing body that sustains human life as well as animal and plant life. And we are called to revere and care for all of God’s creatures. We are created in God’s image, every one of us. We have a moral obligation to treat each other as God’s image. When we look into another’s face, we see the face of God.
I must say, in light of the seemingly endless violence against people of color in our country in these days, somewhere that has been lost. You all know this, but it never hurts to remind ourselves, that all bodies have value because they are created in God’s image. No body is worth more or less than any other body. Black bodies, brown bodies, indigenous bodies, gay bodies, trans bodies, Christ's body. There is no hierarchy of worth or value.
When we speak of love, love wins, Jesus died for love, we are not speaking of a feeling. We are speaking of the activity of Jesus de-marginalizing all those who have been thrown to the curb, thrown down and beaten. This love challenges us to engage the world differently, and to figure out ways in which we contribute to a community in which all bodies are treated with respect, not because any of us deserve or don't deserve it, but because our bodies are created in God's image.
God calls us to show people this reality. God calls us to witness to these things. Bearing witness to God’s amazing and abundant love for all of creation is always about being in relationship with God and showing forth God’s love. It is nothing more than that, but it is also nothing less. We are called forth into the world to proclaim God’s love and God’s forgiveness. We are called forth to be God’s hands and feet of love.
Alleluia. The Lord has risen indeed: Come let us adore him. Alleluia.
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