April 14, 2023, Was It a Ghost? Luke 24:36-49 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ April 14, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

Above is a link to the recording of the sermon. The text is below.

I think we have all felt worn out, at one time or another, from hearing nothing but bad news, whether it’s on TV or online or in the papers. Sometimes the news media try to make people feel better by including some “good news” stories about people who do kind and heroic things, and that does make us feel better. But the reality is that there is more pain and suffering and grief and darkness in the world than we will probably ever really be able to fathom. More than our hearts can bear. And we aren’t acting in love or faith or wisdom, if we just refuse to see the evil in the world around us. We’re more like the three monkeys of the old proverb that “Hear no evil, and see no evil, and speak no evil”, covering our eyes and ears against things that are too horrible or scary or sad to see or hear, covering our mouths because we don’t want to speak of them.

One of our daily realities in this time is the ongoing assault on the people of Gaza, as Israel seeks to wipe out the Hamas fighters who are hiding out among the innocent civilians of that region. More than 33,000 people have been killed during the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip since October 7, with the support of our own country. More than 13,000 of those deaths are children. Health care workers returning from Gaza say they have never seen so many dead children. Thousands more are injured or missing and presumed dead. Over 17,000 children have been orphaned or separated from their parents. The suffering is more than our minds and hearts can even fathom. Even as I am writing this I am receiving the news that Nusairat refugee camp, a place where people have fled to find safety, is under attack. How can we bear such pain and injustice?

And very close to home, we are still catching our breath from the loss of our good friend Errol. It seems like he was taken from us so suddenly, and everywhere we look we are still reminded of the extent of what we have lost.

How can we face the reality of a world in which there is that kind, that immensity, of hatred, and violence, of sadness and pain? How can we not cover our ears and our eyes to shut it all out? How can we not be terrified and overwhelmed? The only real answer to those questions is in the locked room on the night of the first Easter, where the risen Jesus suddenly appeared to his terrified and overwhelmed disciples.

Because here we are again, on the third Sunday of Easter, and we still find ourselves coming back to that locked room. We still find ourselves face to face with the man who was dead and buried. And the disciples are afraid that maybe they are seeing Jesus, but only in a spiritual sense. Obviously, it must be his ghost, they thought, though that wasn’t a particularly comfortable thought for those men.

But modern man is a lot more comfortable with the idea of spirits, and people today find it quite easy, and not at all scary, to jump to the same conclusion as the disciples. Very eloquent and reasonable theological books have been written about the “human” Jesus and the “Easter” Jesus. There is – or I should say, there was, the human Jesus, the historic Jesus, who was a charismatic leader and a gifted teacher, as well as unfortunately an unsuccessful political radical, and that Jesus’ dry, dusty bones are comfortably buried in some rocky cave in the Holy Land. But that’s OK, because there is also the “Easter” Jesus, and he, or it, is the warm feeling in our hearts and the love we have for our fellow man. And that Jesus, they are happy to say, is the Jesus that never dies – which makes sense, because he isn’t, strictly speaking, alive, except insofar as he “lives” in the hearts of his people. In other words, according to this theology, the “Easter” Jesus actually is a ghost!

But the terrified disciples were wrong, and that modern theology is useless. The Jesus in that room was no ghost. He was not a frightening vision from the grave. And he most certainly was not a warm fuzzy feeling. And he made sure that his disciples had no doubt about that. “Touch me and see,” he said to them, “Do ghosts have flesh and bones?” It wasn’t only that he was showing them the wounds of his crucifixion, like he did for Thomas; he wanted them to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was a living man that stood before them, flesh and bones and human DNA and all. And that was so hard for them to take in at the time that they were tempted to doubt even their own senses, though joy and hope were beginning to creep in to their minds and hearts despite their doubts.

“Look,” he said, “is there anything to eat in this place?” And someone found a piece of broiled fish, and held it out to Jesus in shaking hands. And he ate it. He chewed and swallowed. He tasted the goodness of it. And then, finally, they believed that this was really the Jesus they knew.

And everything we believe depends on that truth. Because if Jesus is just a spiritual energy or idea or force or feeling, then the power of our faith is no greater than our own power. Human beings can be very powerful when we unite their strengths and purposes. Human beings are sometimes very noble and very brave and very good. But the truth is, in the end evil and war and hatred and pain are more powerful than human righteousness, and in the pitched battle between death and humanity, death always gets in the last word. Or at least that is how it was, until Jesus came into that locked room.

If Christ has not been raised, Paul wrote, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile and we are still in our sins….and we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Paul continues, Christ has been raised from the dead…

And if the Jesus in the locked room is truly living flesh and blood then it has been revealed once and for all that he has power over death itself. If the Jesus in the locked room is flesh and blood – and that is our claim – then our faith is in someone who is strong enough to conquer all of our enemies, even the most powerful.

The only God worth having faith in is the one who is stronger than all of our very real enemies. The only God worth having faith in is the one who has power, not only over the cancer that took Errol’s life, but also over the cancers of fear and hatred and greed that are eating away at our poor world. Sometimes, in the midst of the struggle, it is very, very hard for us to believe that our enemies aren’t going to come out on top after all. That’s why we continually remind ourselves of the solid, historical truth of the events we celebrate in this Easter season.

Meanwhile, until he returns, we proclaim our faith in the Jesus of that locked room, the Jesus who alone is entirely worthy of our faith. And that doesn’t mean we stay in the locked room with him and shut out the horror and suffering of the world; it doesn’t mean we hide our heads in the sand and tune our TV’s to the “happy” news programs. If we follow Jesus, it means we go out into the world even at the risk of our own lives. It means we refuse to tolerate injustice and cruelty. It means we make sure that we are the first to offer comfort to the suffering and help to the helpless, and the last to give up on the sinful. If Jesus is risen and alive – and he is – then we have the joyful responsibility of living out that hope.

We have put our faith, our trust, in a God who doesn’t close his eyes or his ears to the evil in this world, who doesn’t remain silent in the face of suffering. He knows the torments of the world; he knows the deepest sorrows and fears of every heart. He knows because he lived among us and shared in our suffering so completely that he handed himself over to those who betrayed and murdered him. Only in Jesus do we find perfect love and perfect power, perfect sinlessness andfree forgiveness, divine Spirit and human flesh and blood. Only the Jesus who appeared to his friends in that locked room on the first Easter is worthy of our faith. Only the Jesus who appeared to his friends in that locked room on the first Easter offers hope to the people of this hopeless world. +