4/15/18 “Recognizing Resurrection” by Nancy Petty
Text: Luke 24:36-48
Lillian Lee was my paternal grandfather’s first cousin. I have spoken of her before in sermons along with her parents, Aunt Vessie and Uncle Grover. Maybe you remember me talking about Aunt Vessie and Uncle Grover and their passion for watching World Wide Wrestling on their black and white TV. In the family home lived Lillian and her husband Howard, their daughter Francis and her son Todd, and Aunt Vessie and Uncle Grover. Their home was one of my favorite places to go as a child. Love was abundant. Acceptance overflowed. Never was anyone considered a stranger. Generosity in all things marked their lives and their home. Don’t get me wrong. The house was heated with a wood stove. There was no air conditioning. One small bathroom served everyone. And in Uncle Grove and Aunt Vessie’s section of the house there was no paint on the walls. But I loved going there and spent a good portion of my childhood in that home with those people.
As I grew older and visited less often things begin to change. Aunt Vessie and Uncle Grover died. Francis finally brought her own home and she and her son moved out. Uncle Edwin who came home from the Vietnam War with a broken soul moved in and out as he had need. I still remember the day my grandmother called me to tell me that Howard had died. She said, “Lillian wanted you to know.” At that moment something compelled me to get in my car and go visit Lillian. At this point in the story, I am ashamed to say that it had been a number of years since I had seen her. I had graduated high school, gone to college and was several years into my college days when Howard died. As I turned down the long dirt road driveway toward the house a flood of memories washed over me. A bit nervous, I parked and made my way to the front door, greeted by one of many dogs that called that place home, too. After knocking on the door I gently turned the doorknob, stuck my head in, and called out Lillian’s name. “Come on in” she responded. As I rounded the corner into the kitchen where she was sitting at the kitchen table, Lillian looked up at me and said, “Well, who are you?” “It’s Nancy, Lillian. Don and Cora’s daughter.” My Lord, I would have never recognized you in a million years.”
Recognition, or the lack of recognition, seems to be the theme of Jesus’ life post resurrection. Whether or not you believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, it seems clear that the gospel writers, along with Paul, wanted to make sure that there was a record of Jesus appearing to people after his death and resurrection. All in all, they tell of twelve post resurrection appearances: from his first appearance to Mary while she sits weeping at the tomb, to his final appearance 40 days later at a place near Bethany just before he ascends into heaven.
Today, our lectionary text recalls Jesus’ fifth post resurrection appearance. The setting is a small gathering of the disciples and the two disciples from the Emmaus Road, one of who is named Cleopas. As Cleopas and the other disciple were recounting to this small gathering of other disciples how they had encountered the risen Christ on the Emmaus road, and how they had not recognized him until he broke bread with them, Jesus himself appears and stands among them. As Muriel read, the text tells us, “They were startled and terrified, and thought they were seeing a ghost.” You really can’t blame them, can you—that is for being scared to death? Seems like a normal response to seeing a dead person alive.
But the story goes on. The gospel of Luke records: “He said to them, ‘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. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’” Then I love where this story goes next. We read, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.”
And with that one sentence, comes one of the central tenets and affirmations of my own faith: the risen Christ is an embodied Christ. What do I mean by that and why do I think the stories of these post resurrection appearances are important even if I don’t believe in the bodily resurrection? Because, and it is what I hope I preach every Sunday in some fashion, the human Jesus who was put to death on a cross, lives resurrected in us as the embodied Christ, if we so choose to invite him into our lives.
If I believe nothing else about my faith, I believe this: the power of the resurrected Christ is in the embodied Christ within you and me and us. Let me say that another way: Christ lives and is alive in as much as, we, his disciples today embody him and his teachings through the way we live and love and forgive and seek justice. Jesus, the Christ, is still making post resurrection appearances whenever we choose love and forgiveness and kindness and hope. Jesus, the Christ, is still making post resurrection appearances every time we risk speaking truth to power, every time we get involved when we witness our black brothers getting arrested for doing nothing more than sitting in a coffee shop waiting for their friend to arrive, every time we risk putting on our marching shoes and taking to the streets to march for justice for the poor and the marginalized and the oppressed, every time we open the doors of this church to those whom the church has shunned and shut out and given up on,. In these places the risen Christ is still appearing. Jesus, the Christ, is still making post resurrection appearances when we go into our closets and pray for peace—when we fall on our knees and pray for the violence to end, for the killings of our brown and black brothers to end, when we pray without ceasing that world leaders will not poison their own citizens with chemicals and that other world leaders will stop responding to violence with violence. Jesus, the resurrected Christ, is still making appearances whenever we choose life over death.
“The powers of death have so shaped our conception of the world that we often struggle to recognize resurrection life when it springs forth among us. This is particularly true…for those of us who have been centered in the structures of power and privilege such that we can imagine no other possible future than the one promised by the Empire.” (Robert Williamson, Jr. Resurrection at the Margins)
Reflecting on the disciples’ struggle to recognize Jesus post resurrection, Robert Williamson, associate professor of religious studies at Hendrix College writes this:
Those of us who occupy centers of power often have the most difficulty grasping the possibilities of resurrected life…We struggle to recognize an alternative reality of abundance and new life working its way in from the edges…Yet, as liberation theologians have long told us, God is most easily recognized outside official systems of power. Resurrection is at work among those at the periphery long before it is recognized by those in the center.
For those of us who find ourselves at the center of power structures…this text comes as both warning and invitation. It warns us against overconfidence in our own perception of things, for we, like the Eleven, may have the most difficulty grasping the good news of the Gospel. The more we sit comfortably in our centeredness, the less we understand about the Gospel…
(And so he concludes, yet while this story in Luke is a warning)
[It] is also an invitation. It is an invitation to listen to the tales of those who have seen Jesus at the tomb without dismissing them as idle gossip…to hear the testimony of those who have supped with him along the road, despite their being unknown to us. It is an invitation to acknowledge the bodily witness of those who have borne the brunt of the Empire’s deathly violence. It is an invitation to break bread with those who are unfamiliar to us…Only then can we see the power of the resurrection at work transforming the world.
I no longer approach these post resurrection appearance stories as Christian tradition has taught—that it is necessary to faith to believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Neither do I continue to wonder if they are true or not—although I must say I am more inclined now than ever to consider the mystery of things that can’t be explained or proven. No, I read stories of Jesus appearing to people post resurrection and hold them as integral to my faith because they teach me and remind me that the risen Christ is an embodied Christ—a flesh and bone Christ, a human and now divine Christ—who appears in you, in me, in us. I read them over and over and hold them as integral to my faith because they remind me that recognizing resurrection in our world today is a hard thing but a necessary thing for a life of faith. And I read them and integrate them into my life because I need to know and believe and hope that the dead places in our lives and in our world can be resurrected to new life—not just resuscitated—but resurrected into something new.
Vicar Serena Rice of the Abiding Peace Lutheran Church in New Jersey says it this way.
The thing is, resurrection really is hard to recognize…Because… resurrection is not the same thing as resuscitation. When we hope for resuscitation, we just want things back the way they were before. We want a reversal of the problem, a restoration of the life we were perfectly happy with before it was disrupted…whether it was disrupted by disease or mental illness or money problems or the other political party or adolescent attitudes or prescription pain pills…or any of the other million ways our stability gets threatened and we start casting around for the right CPR protocols to bring back the life we want.
But Jesus (the vicar says) is not in the business of resuscitation. Jesus does not promise to restore our old lives minus the disruptions. Jesus offer us NEW life. A NEW creation.
I know that for many of us who don’t read the Bible literally, these appearance stories can get overlooked at best and swept under the table at worst. Well I’m not about to advocate that we become literalists, but in our haste to dismiss what we can’t fathom or think to be true, we are at risk of misings the meaning and the call to recognize resurrection in our lives today. Without these narratives in our consciousness, we run the risk of missing our own meetings with the risen Christ, who is here among us and within us.
The hope of the Easter season is in the truth that Jesus is not in the business of resuscitation but rather resurrection. May we be the people who place ourselves on the edges where Jesus still most often appears. And may we have the wisdom to leave our Empire places of comforts and risk recognizing resurrection.
