“Touch and See” Colchester Federated Church, April 14, 2024, Third Sunday of Easter (Luke 24:36b-48)
On this Third Sunday of Easter, we are once again contemplating a resurrection appearance. This time we get to hear how Luke tells the story. In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus stands among his followers in Jerusalem and greets them with those familiar words, “Peace be with you!”[1] Much like last week with Doubting Thomas in the Gospel according to John, Jesus offers for the disciples to take a good look at him. Though in some ways, it’s an even more expansive invitation than with Doubting Thomas.
Jesus asks, “Why are you startled? Why are doubts arising in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet. It’s really me! Touch me and see, for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones like you see I have.”[2] Then Jesus asks his friends for something to eat, eating a piece of baked fish in their presence. In so doing, Jesus appears to be emphatically proving that he is not a ghost that his friends should be afraid of somehow. Jesus is basically saying, “It’s really me!” and “Yes, I really have a body! Touch me and see. This fish is delicious! Can ghosts eat fish?”
As the CEB Study Bible helpfully explains, there were some early Christians who believed that Jesus was a spiritual being (like an angel) who looked human but did not have a flesh and blood body. Some strands of Gnosticism (later declared a heresy by many leaders of the Christian Church) maintained that Jesus was a divine spiritual being who only seemed to come to our world in the flesh. Other early Christians believed that Jesus was a human being and had a body, though the resurrection was an exclusively spiritual experience. In this view, Jesus’ spiritual presence was deeply felt by believers. Though the resurrection was never about his body rising physically from the tomb. So, Luke in Chapter 24 of the Gospel is using this resurrection appearance that happened after Jesus appeared to his disciples on the road to Emmaus to theologically challenge both beliefs. Essentially, Luke is conveying to us that “the body of the risen Jesus was a real body.”[3] Perhaps we could think of this as a both/and argument that Luke is making for the earliest Christians as the resurrection of Jesus was both physical and spiritual.
Now we may wonder why any of this matters. Obviously, we are entitled to interpret Jesus’ resurrection appearances in the Gospels for ourselves. Maybe we see the miracle as physical, maybe we see it as spiritual, or maybe we wrestle with the resurrection as both physical and spiritual. We don’t all have to believe exactly the same and understand these stories exactly the same. Anytime we encounter miraculous stories in scripture or miraculous moments in our lives, it’s good to sit with the mystery. To allow ourselves to just be in the discomfort of not having easy answers to our questions. Let’s face it, religious/mystical/spiritual experiences are not easy to explain rationally anyway. Plus, sometimes Jesus appears to just appear out of nowhere as a spiritual being would and other times Jesus is eating fish with his buddies after his crucifixion and resurrection. No wonder Christians have been contemplating what it all means ever since Easter Sunday because there are a variety of resurrection appearances.
Though this resurrection story in Luke’s Gospel that we hear on the Third Sunday of Easter, this story that emphasizes that the body of the risen Jesus was a real body matters because we human beings sometimes have love/hate relationships with our bodies. That’s why it’s important to remember that Jesus was a human being who truly had a body. Later in the Christian tradition, the Apostle Paul (who wrote the majority of the New Testament) will share complicated views of the body. Some of Paul’s views of the body can be interpreted positively, neutrally, and negatively. On the one hand, Paul will write in 1 Corinthians, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you . . . so honor God with your body.”[4] On the other hand, Paul will write in Galatians, “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.”[5]
So, your body is a temple and the Holy Spirit is in you, part of you. Honor God with your body. But do not gratify the desires of your body because what the Spirt desires is opposed to the flesh. What?
In our own time, we know that body image and mental health are often linked. One’s body image can be defined as our personal thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the aesthetics of our body. In effect, how we feel about the way that we look. Now body image is based on how we see ourselves, but also on how other people see us. That’s what makes this topic complicated and difficult to talk about. This is a topic that affects people across all ages and stages of life, across gender identities and expressions and sexual orientations. We could discuss ethnic and cultural standards of beauty and how people may struggle psychologically if they perceive that they are not desirable. Beauty is often in the eye of the beholder.
These days there are good conversations happening about body image and mental health. For instance, we can read psychological studies about body image and social media use. If a young person is looking at photoshopped and heavily filtered celebrities and social media influencers and perceives someone as beautiful and then looks in the mirror and evaluates their own perceived lack of beauty, what effect does that have on a young person psychologically? Moreover, the photos that any of us view on social media may not be real anyway. That’s part of what is so disturbing—the image that we might be comparing ourselves to is not how that person would look if they were standing right in front of us. It’s no wonder that people are increasingly anxious. It is not easy out there.
All of this to say that it matters how we talk about bodies in the Christian tradition. If we somehow internalize the belief that our bodies are inherently sinful and bad, then that can have an awful effect on our sense of self. We are all flesh and blood creatures, biological beings. Jesus had a body and Jesus eventually had a wounded and transformed body. After his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus appeared to his followers and told them to look at his hands and his feet. Jesus invited those he loved to touch him and see that he indeed had flesh and bones just like they did. Our bodies are not these horrible awful parts of ourselves to be somehow ashamed of because our bodies are a temple.
Mary Oliver is my favorite poet and one of her most famous poems is “Wild Geese.” There are a few lines from the poem that came to me as I was writing this sermon because it’s moving and somehow freeing when Mary Oliver wrote:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves . . .
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.[6]
There is something freeing in the realization that we are allowed to let the soft animal of our bodies love what it loves. We can take heart that we have a place in the family of creation. If we believe in the miracle of the incarnation and that God somehow came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, a person who had a flesh and blood body, then it certainly seems to me that our bodies are good. God didn’t make junk after all, and that includes our perfectly imperfect bodies. When we hear these resurrection stories in Eastertide, we can remember that we are not in this world alone. Just like Jesus, we are an embodied part of this world—with the sun and the rain, with mountains and forests, with rivers and oceans—this beautiful and physical world that offers itself to our imagination. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Luke 24:36, CEB.
[2] Luke 24:38-39, CEB.
[3] Footnote on Luke 24:39 in The CEB Study Bible with Apocrypha, pg. 164 NT.
[4] 1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20, CEB.
[5] Galatians 5:16-17, NRSVUE.
[6] Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese” in Mary Oliver: New and Selected Poems, Volume One, pg. 110.
Lauren Ostrout ~ on being made well 