In today’s gospel we are faced with the puzzling fact that the risen Jesus seems to have human body in the way that you and I do- he shows the disciples his hands and his feet and eats broiled fish in their presence, but at the same time he seems able to defy the normal parameters of an embodied existence. He appears in the midst of his disciples as if doors and walls do not exist. When Jesus first appears he encourages the disciples to see that he is a bodily being: “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.” It seems important to Jesus that his disciples understand that he is not simply an apparition but a real physical presence.
So how should we understand the disciples’ encounter with the risen Christ? Despite what is written in the gospels is he better understood as a sort of ghost figure who communicates to the grief-stricken disciples on a spiritual level? If he was fully embodied what sort of body did Jesus have? How are we to understand the contradictory ways in which Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead?
How we answer these questions partly rest on how we understand life after death. For many in the Jewish world of the first century, life after death meant being a new embodied life in God’s new world so it was believed that the bodies we have after we are raised from the dead will not be the same as the ones we had before we die. The existence of these new bodies would require an act of creation parallel to God’s original act of creation but these new bodies would be an entirely different sort of body.
When Jesus was raised from the dead it would have been in keeping with some Jewish ideas about life after death that Jesus’ new body was not identical to his old body, even though through what he says and does he is distinctly recognisable as the earthly man Jesus.
The prospect of resurrection and the end times are things that might stretch our imaginations to their furthest reaches. The book of Revelation which provides an account of the general resurrection when all will be raised might help us. Here John speaks of heaven and earth as finally joined together and our new resurrection bodies as existing in both. It is not that earth will be wiped away and we will all troop off to heaven. Earth as the creation of God is sanctified and will find its fulfilment in relation to heaven at the end time.
After his resurrection Jesus has a body which is at home in both earth and heaven. So in the initial period after his resurrection Jesus seems to be a point of connection between the earthly and the heavenly realm hence his body has characteristics that belong to both. He needs food to eat but he is not bound by the physical parameters of an earthly.
A characteristic of many of the resurrection accounts including the one we heard today is the connectedness that Jesus displays in his risen body echoes a deeper sense of connectedness Jesus brings to his disciples. If we think about the context in which Jesus appears; the disciples are fearful- both of the thereat they might face through their alliance with a man who was crucified for insurrection and also because all sorts of strange stories are being told about Jesus somehow being alive. The facts just don’t add up to a meaningful whole.
Then Jesus, the man who most of them abandoned when he was at the point of greatest need, appears among them and says, ‘Peace be with you’. His first words aren’t ones of recrimination as we might expect: he doesn’t ask any of them ‘Where were you when I needed you most?’ it seems he has forgiven them before they’ve even asked for it. And then having given them peace he offers them reassurance ‘why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself.’ He is urging the disciples to trust their senses. They are to move from a state of internal conflict where their hearts are ridden by doubt to a place where they can trust and be at one with themselves.
And then we are told that Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures- he draws the connections between everything they have read about God with everything they have experienced as they’ve shared their lives with him. The Law of Moses, the prophets, the psalms and the life and death of Jesus reveal the unity of God’s purpose- that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in Jesus’ name to all nations. This, it seems, is the point at which everything connects- that all nations and every person represented by those nations- can repent and be forgiven in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus comes to each of us and offers us his peace and reassurance and brings us to a place of connectedness.
Often, and as we get older, we find ourselves looking back over our experiences, our relationships and perhaps searching for the points of connection. Might it even be that in the things we regret most we can still discern a point where we were brought closer into relationship with God? Where we had a greater sense both of our need to be forgiven and God’s desire to forgive.
This is what Jesus was doing with the disciples when he ‘opened their mind to understand the scriptures’. On a cosmic level he was helping the disciples do what we all do when we look back over our past and search for a sign of God’s purposes for us.
The abundant life that Jesus came to bring and which we see in his resurrection might best be described as a connected life. Certainly our lives can be most difficult when we feel disconnected from others or in a state of internal fragmentation. The disciples are sent out to make connections, to transform people who are confused or unwell. They rehabilitate those who are outcast; they share in Christ’s ministry to bind up the broken-hearted, to bring good news to the poor and to heal the sick. It is this ministry of connecting that we as a church share in today. We are called to piece together the fragments of our individual and our collective lives in such a way that God’s glory is discernable. This is why the Eucharist is so central to our worship- it is the place where we ‘re-member’ Christ’s action of taking, breaking, blessing and sharing bread with all whom he loves. It is here that we can remember the events of the last week and confess our sins knowing ourselves forgiven. It it here that our minds are opened to understand the scriptures and where we share in Christ’s peace. It it here that the fragmented parts of our own lives are brought together in the Eucharist so that we can emerge forgiven and thankful ready to love and serve the Lord in the week that lies before us.
Of course there can be times when we need a more focused period of discerning how it is that we as individuals uniquely share in Christ’s ministry of connecting. This is partly what I will be doing when I take my 2 month period of leave. I hope to have my mind opened to what has led me to this point and where God is calling me from now on.
Being curate here has led me to make all sorts of connections and in ways that I could not have imagined before I began but there have also been times of personal fragmentation where I know I need to experience God’s grace and connectedness more deeply. So I ask you to pray for me, as I will pray for you, so that the unity of God’s purposes may be revealed once more. Amen