Sermon at Parish Mass, Easter 3 2021

Luca Signorelli (1450-1523): The Resurrected Christ Appearing to His Disciples
Detroit Institute of Arts

 

 

Acts 3.12-19

1 John 3.1-7

Luke 24.36b-48

 

It’s a lovely bright sunny spring day but I’d like you to imagine, just for a moment, that it’s the depths of winter, and you’re seated in a dark living room around a crackling fire in some old cottage remote in the countryside. It’s Christmas Eve, and the time has come to tell ghost stories.

What’s your favourite ghost story? Well, I haven’t got time to tell a proper one this morning, but here is perhaps the shortest ghost story ever written:

“The last human being in the world sat alone in her house. Suddenly there was a knock at the door.”

Just a little bit, perhaps, we can feel the shiver down the spine that a good ghost story brings.

Throughout human history human beings have felt a kind of dread when thinking not just about death, but about those who have died. Ghost stories and ancient myths talk about shady goings-on in the underworld. They talk about inhabitants of that world coming to us from across the boundary that we don’t want to cross. Quite often they talk of the dead with unfinished business, and those seeking revenge from beyond the grave. They tap into a deep suspicion that beyond our control and knowledge creation is more or less hostile, and that death, fear and vengeance have the last word.

So how would you react if you saw a dead man, standing in front of you and talking to you? Many of us I think would be rather scared, frightened either that we were going out of our minds or that there really was a dead man standing in front of us. And perhaps that last possibility is the scariest.

Today’s gospel reading starts out as though it might be a story like that. The disciples know for sure that Jesus is dead, but suddenly he is standing in the midst of them. They are terrified, because they think that they are seeing a ghost.

In Eastertide, we reflect on how the story of Jesus becomes our story, too. Jesus died and rose again and we are joined with him through our baptism in his death and resurrection. The Eucharist feeds us with his risen life.

But at this point these disciples haven’t got that yet. When they see Jesus, they think that he is a ghost. And if his story is a ghost story, then they are part of it. A world of shade and terror looms up. Ghosts come back for unfinished business, don’t they? And when the dead man standing before them had been killed, they all deserted him and run away and left him to die. Is this how the story ends? Has his ghost come back for revenge? No wonder they are terrified.

But they’re wrong. Jesus is not a ghost; he is risen. The end of the story is the opposite of what they had thought. This is not a ghost story but a story of life, life more intensely and fully alive than human beings have ever experienced before. Even the death of Jesus has become part of his risen life, as he shows the disciples his hands and his feet.

As Luke tells the story of the resurrection, this is the second meeting with the risen Jesus. The first was with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Then, Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Now, he shows that it is really him by eating a piece of fish.

The risen body of Jesus does not need to eat, he has become a spiritual body as St Paul says. But he eats to show who he is. So Luke gives us two resurrection appearances linked by eating, linked by bread and fish. Like the feeding of the five thousand with bread and fish, which was a sign of the Eucharistic banquet of God’s kingdom. This is the banquet without limit, the life which gives and is never diminished by giving.

As Luke tells the story of the resurrection, it is as though we step out of time into eternity. From the moment that Jesus breaks the bread at Emmaus time stands still; the sun was about to go down, marking the end of the day in ancient times, but everything that then follows happens still on the same day: the disciples run back to Jerusalem; the appearance of Jesus that we read today; all the way through to his ascension. This is not time as we experience it normally, but a glimpse into the eternal day that never ends, that has been thrown open by the resurrection.

The breaking of bread and the sharing of fish is a glimpse into eternity. And the Eucharist of which this food is a sign is also eternity breaking through into the world of time. We gather at the altar not by ourselves alone but with all the faithful in every time and place, and “with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven”.

The Eucharist is not a meal with a ghost. It is not haunted bread. It was important for Luke to make this point in a culture where people held refreshment meals for the dead. They imagined the dead in a sad shady underworld, and would hold a feast at their tomb to give the departed a little refreshment, a brief glimpse of the life and joy under the sun they had left behind forever. The Eucharist is the opposite of that. It is the one who has died and is risen, who stands now in the endless day of eternity, breaking through into our life of shadows, feeding us, with a greater life than anything we could have imagined.

This is why Christian funerals, too, have nothing to do with ghosts. As we may have seen if we followed the funeral of Prince Philip yesterday, and with so many personal funerals we have attended, there is grief and mourning, of course there is. But the readings and the prayers speak of hope, reassurance, encouragement, resurrection. Beyond grief there is the hope of eternal life. After this day that ends there is the endless day of eternity, into which Christ summons us, fully alive, to share in his life.

Jesus says you are witnesses of these things. Repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. This witness and proclamation, this hope that is within us, come from our meeting the risen Lord in the Eucharist. So we should make the Eucharist the heart of our lives as Christians, coming often to this banquet, opening our hearts to the treasure that the Lord has for us, which is his very self.

Here the ghosts and fears and regrets of the world bounded by death are banished by the light of the resurrection. It is here that we encounter real life, eternal life, life more fully alive than anything human beings have known before. Like the disciples at Emmaus, at Jerusalem, meeting Jesus in the breaking of the bread changes us, sends us, to live without regret and fear, and to go and share this new life with all.