Sermon given the Third Sunday of Easter (Year B), April 14, 2024, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church by Mark Lloyd Taylor, Ph.D.
Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36-48
Fish & Pita, by Mark Hewitt
I need Easter. Not as decoration or distraction. I need Easter as a matter of life and death.
I need Easter, not just for one day or even a seven-week season. I need Easter for a lifetime. I need Easter as the beating heart and breathing lungs of my life.
I need Easter. It’s a life and death matter. I need to see and hear and touch the risen Jesus. I need the eyes and ears of my faith opened. Its hands and feet roused. I need to share a meal with the living Christ and know him in the breaking of bread.
I need Easter because, as the Apostle Peter says, we have rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to us. We have killed the Author of life (Acts 3:14-15). Truly a matter of life and death. Our own death, the death of someone we love, the deaths of the many children who starve daily in our world, the deaths of the countless people who are murdered by the sin and greed of others. And all the miniature deaths that haunt our lives. Age and illness and dementia. The miniature deaths of eroded friendships, of broken promises and shattered dreams. Lonely decisions, the heavy weight of failure, the shame of facing someone we have disappointed. Those profound personal faults we keep hidden from most everybody most of the time, except the people who deserve our best and don’t always get it. I need to encounter Jesus raised from the dead; from the death that enslaves us, the death we have done, and the death done on our behalf. I need hope for the future – not just dead things brought back to how they once were – but a new future of abundant life. For as the Apostle John writes, we are God’s beloved children now, but what we will be has not yet been revealed. This we do know: when the risen and living Christ Jesus is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2-3).
+++
This morning, as on every Third Sunday of Easter, we hear one last story of an appearance of the risen Christ before we turn the pages of our gospel book back to Jesus’ words to his followers around the table during their Passover meal – and then ahead to the stories of Jesus’ ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. I say one last appearance story, because there are many spread across the closing chapters of our four gospels. I count eleven or twelve. We never hear all of them read on Sundays in any given lectionary year, so here’s an executive summary.
Each of the four gospels tells a version of the story of Mary Magdalene – Apostle to the Apostles – coming to the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid, accompanied, maybe, by another woman or two, only to find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty (Matthew 28:1-8; Mark 16:1-7; Luke 24:1-12; John 20:1-10). Wow! The first appearance of the risen Christ is actually an appearance of his absence. Nothing to see here! Which means the women must hear something from someone else even to begin to grasp what has happened. You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is not here. He has been raised from the dead. The bearer of this good news differs in each version: an earthquake and an angel; a young man in a white robe; two men in dazzling clothes; two angels. In some versions, Mary Magdalene, and maybe the other woman or women, go and tell the male disciples what they’ve seen and heard. In some versions, Peter and maybe another disciple believe the women enough to go to the tomb themselves and also find it empty.
Next, according to Mark’s gospel, the women flee from the tomb in terror and amazement and say nothing to anyone (16:8). Thud!
In Matthew, the women see Jesus himself as they leave the tomb. But then the gospel writer cuts to a strangely believable story of how the religious and political authorities concoct and spread the lie that Jesus’ followers stole his body during the night. Some soldiers even get paid to broadcast the fake news (28:11-15).
John tells three powerful stories of appearances to specific individuals. Mary Magdalene lingers, despairing, outside the empty tomb, and Jesus appears to her. But she doesn’t recognize him. She mistakes him for the gardener – until he calls her by name. Hearsay is not enough. Mary must listen more deeply for intimate, personal address (20:11-18). Thomas is not present with the rest of the community when Jesus appears to them. And so he refuses to believe their report that they have seen the Lord until he can put his finger in the mark of the nails and his hand in Jesus’ wounded side. Seeing isn’t always believing. Sometimes, only touch will do (20:19-29). Peter goes back to the way things used to be before he met Jesus and takes up fishing again – with no success. Jesus appears on the seashore at daybreak, but Peter, like Mary, fails to recognize him until Jesus tells him to cast the net on the other side of the boat – and now it’s impossibly full of fish. It is the Lord! Peter shouts. Then Jesus prepares and serves Peter a breakfast of fish and bread. And asks him three times: Do you love me? – redeeming Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus and opening for him a new future (21:1-19).
And in Luke’s gospel, we hear how on that first Easter, two followers of the crucified Jesus trudge disconsolately from Jerusalem toward an outlying village when a stranger joins them. The three have a conversation about the events of the past few days and the stranger – who is Jesus, although the two don’t recognize him – has a word to speak to them: he explains to them from scripture all things about himself, especially why, as the Messiah, he had to suffer and die. The three reach Emmaus, and yet the stranger acts as if he is going to journey on. Cleopas and their companion urge him strongly to stay with them, as it is almost evening and the day now nearly over. He does. They share a meal. And when he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him (24:13-35).
Which brings us to this morning’s gospel reading from Luke and our last appearance story for this Easter season. It’s a continuation of the Emmaus story. The two companions have returned to Jerusalem, rejoined the community of Jesus’ followers, and tell them what they saw and heard and tasted on the road and at table with the risen Christ. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them. But one more time, they fail to recognize him – thinking, instead, they were seeing a ghost, a disembodied spirit, a phantom. Jesus insists: Look at my hands and feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones. While his followers whirl in joy and disbelief and wonderment, Jesus has one more thing to say, one more way of making himself known. Have you anything here to eat? he asks. Have you anything to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. Jesus again revealed through a meal. But flipping the Emmaus story and that of Peter’s breakfast, this meal is prepared by the disciples and served to Jesus not the other way around (24:36-48).
+++
Chef José Andrés, founder of the World Central Kitchen, has much to say about people eating and people being fed. For food is a life and death matter. Listen to some words from his recent New York Times op ed in response to the killing of seven of his co-workers in Gaza by the Israeli military (April 3, 2024).
“Their work was based on the simple belief that food is a universal human right. It is not conditioned on being good or bad, rich or poor, right or left. We do not ask what religion you belong to. We just ask how many meals you need.
“From Day 1, we have fed Israelis as well as Palestinians. Across Israel we have served more than 1.75 million hot meals. We have fed families displaced by Hezbollah rockets in the north. We have fed grieving families from the south. We delivered meals to the hospitals where hostages were reunited with their families.
“At the same time, we have worked closely with community leaders…[to serve] more than 43 million meals in Gaza, preparing hot food in 68 community kitchens where Palestinians are feeding Palestinians.
Andrés continues: “The peoples of the Mediterranean and Middle East, regardless of ethnicity and religion, share a culture that values food as a powerful statement of humanity and hospitality – of shared hope for a better tomorrow. There’s a reason, at this special time of year, Christians make Easter eggs, Muslims eat an egg at iftar dinners and an egg sits on the Seder plate. This symbol of life and hope reborn in spring extends across religions and cultures. I have been a stranger at Seder dinners. I have heard the ancient Passover stories about being a stranger in the land of Egypt. The commandment to remember – with a feast before you – that the children of Israel were once slaves.
And he concludes: “It is not a sign of weakness to feed strangers; it is a sign of strength.”
+++
I need Easter. Maybe you do, too. If so, then know that all of the appearance stories from all four gospels are yours. Which one do you need to live into? Or live out from? And know that the risen Christ can be revealed through any number of your senses.
Do you need to see that the stone has already been rolled away? That the tomb is empty? That the beloved is not here? That he, that she, they, it – the family, the church, the school, the nation – is not here but risen?
Do you need an earthquake and an angel in order to hear the good news? Or do you need instead a young man dressed in a simple white robe, because you’ve already suffered an earthquake in your life? Do you need to come alongside Mary Magdalene in the garden, weeping, and hear the risen Christ call you by name? Were you absent with Thomas when the good news was announced? Do you need to touch – and no longer avoid – wounded hands and side? With Peter on the seashore, do you need to be served breakfast after a long night of fruitless labor and then, but only after you have been fed, talk openly about betrayal and love, about amends to be made and new hope, hope for a new life? Or, walking with Cleopas, allow a stranger to enlarge your little circle of shared grief and explain those stories you’ve heard for years but never really understood or taken to heart? Do you need to invite the stranger to stay for a meal and suddenly, beyond all belief, recognize them as the risen Christ in the taking, blessing, breaking, and offering of food?
If you need Easter as a matter of life and death as I do, then know that even as we talk about this, Christ Jesus himself stands among us and says: Peace be with you. Look at my hands and feet, see that it is I myself. Touch me and see. And most urgently today, he asks: Have you anything here to eat?
Yes! Our answer is a resounding yes. This altar of ours is an emergency feeding station – an outpost of Jesus’ World Central Kitchen – because sharing his holy meal is a life and death matter. And our best sign of hope for the future.
For further reflection
But Mark, you may be asking, what about our fifth sense, the sense of smell? It doesn’t figure directly in any of the appearance stories. Nevertheless: surely the aroma of that broiled fish preceded its taste. And isn’t smell the most ancient, most animal of our senses – the deepest trigger of danger to be avoided and the deepest trigger of memory of the beloved. The stench of decay or poison. Also, the fragrance of abundant life – honeysuckle and lavender and roses. His cologne lingering on a jacket. Her scarves still hanging in the closet. The decades of incense permeating the walls of this church. I wonder what it would mean to smell the risen Christ?