“Ghosts Don’t Eat”
Luke 24:36-48
I’m always intrigued by the stories of the appearances of the post-resurrection Jesus and his encounter with his disciples like the one we just read from the Gospel of Luke. These stories point us to one of the most important confessions of the Christian faith, a confession we proclaim every time we say in the Apostles’ Creed, a confession which states that we believe in the resurrection of the body.
This confession comes not from
studies of near death experiences, psychic visions, or wishful thinking; this
confession comes from the experience and witness of the disciples themselves as
articulated in the Scriptures. It is
their experience and witness of the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ which
revealed to them the true power and sovereignty of God the Creator over the
world, God’s victory over sin and death, and the ever-present reality of God’s
kingdom on earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection proved once and
for all to the disciples that God’s promise, faithfulness, and love in and for
the world, was not just about the future; it was most importantly about their
present. If was for them the definitive
declaration of God’s very self, that their hope was not to be founded on the
idea of the immortality of the soul or any perceived human ability to cheat
death at the end of time, but rather that their hope, their very faith, was to
be founded upon the One who was, is, and will forever be the Creator of life
itself, the One who was, is, and will forever be present in and for the world,
the One, and only One, who raised Jesus from the dead.
Any
discussion about what kind of body Jesus had, or what kind of body we will
have, or what we will look like, or even when this will happen is beyond the
scope of this sermon, and I will be happy to address that at some other
time. The scope of this sermon is how
the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ impacts us as God’s Easter
people, how it impacts us as God’s Easter people in our mission in and to the
world in which we live.
Toward the
end of Holy Week, we were all taken aback for a moment about the release of the
translated copy of the Gospel of Judas, which said, among other things, that
Jesus asked Judas to betray him. Since the
release of the translation by the opportunistic, self-serving media, I have
received several comments and emails from people asking for my thoughts on the
matter. My thoughts are rather
straightforward and simple.
There is a reason why the gospel
of Judas, and other early, non-canonical writings such as the Gospel of Thomas
or the Gospel of Mary, did not make it into the canon we call the Bible,
because they were deemed by the early Christian community as inaccurate
testimonies of the true experience and witness of the disciples. In other words, the early Christian community
rejected these writings because they did not accurately testify to what the
Christian community had already come to know and believe about the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of
Judas, as well as several other early, non-canonical writings, was written from
the perspective of an ancient religious sect and philosophy called Gnosticism,
which was most active during the first few centuries A.D. around the
At the most
basic level, Gnostics believe that “salvation” is achieved through the gaining
of special knowledge or “gnosis.” This
special knowledge is only achieved through the pursuit of the higher
consciousness of a divine being in order to enter into the true reality. For Gnostics, the physical world in which we
live is not the true reality. The
physical world is the product of an inept creator who “messed up,” and
therefore it is under the control of evil forces, which are locked in a
constant struggle between competing forces of light and dark.
For Gnostics, the physical world
is a corruption and calamity, matter is evil and detestable, and the reality in
which we live is an abomination.
Therefore, the whole purpose of life is to recapture the spark of the
divine within ourselves through special knowledge, escape the corrupt, evil,
and physical world in which we live, including the shell of our physical bodies
in which our true existence is trapped, in order to return to the higher
spiritual realm of the divine being.
Simply said, for Gnostics, the
physical world and our physical bodies are bad, and the spark of the divine, or
soul, is good. Therefore, our purpose in
life is to escape from the physical world, and our physical bodies, and in
order to enter the true reality of existence and ultimately gain
“salvation.” And if that was not enough,
there is more, and it has to do with the person of Jesus Christ.
For Gnostics,
Jesus was possessed by the spirit Christ during his baptism, and therefore
Jesus was not really human, but only seemed to be human. The Spirit Christ was the true reality, the
true existence inside the man named Jesus.
In the Gnostic understanding of Christology, the spirit Christ comes
from the higher levels of the spiritual realm, and descends into the physical
world in the physical body of Jesus with a message of self-redemption. For Gnostics, Jesus the Christ,
came to be a catalyst for helping underachieving deities, or humans, discover
the special knowledge trapped inside their physical bodies, ignite their divine
spark, and set free their soul from the entrapment in their physical
bodies.
For Gnostics,
the resurrection of Jesus Christ could never be physical because Gnostics abhor
and detest all physical matter. For
Jesus Christ to be resurrected physically would only exasperate the initial
problem, therefore the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ would not only be
absurd; it would be an abomination to the divine being.
In contrast
to the heresy of Gnosticism, the Gospels as well as the whole Biblical witness,
tell a very different story. They tell a
story, not of gaining special knowledge through self-redemption, not of a
Savior who only seemed to be human or who only appeared to die, not of a life
purpose to escape the physical world and the physical body. They tell a story about the one who came as
the incarnate Word of God in flesh and blood, fully human and fully God, to
tell us human beings about what it means to be human. They tell a story about the One who truly
died on the cross, who was truly buried, and who was truly raised from the
dead, who was raised from the dead, not as a ghost, nor as a floating spirit,
but as Jesus Christ himself, in the very same, but now glorified, physical body
that had been crucified.
The story we
read from the Gospel of Luke makes it very clear just who it was that appeared
to the disciples after the resurrection.
It was Jesus Christ himself. It
was the real body of Jesus Christ himself.
“Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I myself,” Jesus tells
them. “Touch me and see; for a ghost
does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Jesus was no ghost or floating spirit or
apparition, Jesus was himself, with the very same body of the crucifixion, the
very same body that had suffered and died, the very
same body that had been laid in the tomb, the very same body that had now been
raised from the dead to the glory of the newness of life. And to prove it, Jesus demonstrates once and
for all that he is real, as real as they are, for ghosts don’t eat broiled
fish, but Jesus did and in their presence.
How scary it
must be for us, like to the disciples, to consider just what all this means for
us. Gnosticism might be an ancient
religious sect and philosophy, but the remnants of Gnosticism remain even
today. Even today, many people speak of
the divine spark which resides in our mortal bodies. Even today, many people speak of the immortal
soul which longs to be freed from the physical body in which it is temporarily
stored. Even today, many people believe
that the purpose of life is to be good enough to earn eternal life and a
punched ticket for our final trip back to our eternal home to be in the presence
of the divine being. And yet, the bodily
resurrection of Jesus Christ, tells us something different, it tells us
something much more profound, much more grandeur than any notion we might have
of life after death.
The bodily resurrection of Jesus
Christ reminds us that the new life we seek is now,
the transformation of our bodies is not something that will just happen at the
end of time when the last trumpet sounds, but that it has already occurred
through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection. Jesus allowed the disciples to feel, to touch
his new body, his crucified yet risen human body of the resurrection. Not a body that was evil or corrupt, but a
body of glory, the body as it is to be, the body that was created from the
beginning and called good.
God did not make a mistake in
creating human beings. God created us
body and soul in the image of God’s very self. We are not mistakes,
we are not trapped in a shell waiting to be released. We are not divine sparks waiting for our body
to die so that we can finally be worthy to be in God’s presence. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is
the proof that we are worthy to be in God’s presence, because we are in God’s
presence now, just as we are, as created human beings, who have already been
and will be transformed in the light of the resurrection. But there is more…
The bodily resurrection of Jesus
Christ is the proof of God’s love for the world, the physical world. Jesus Christ did not come to condemn the
world, but to save it, to save the physical world in which we live. Jesus did not die in order to release his
divine spark from its prison inside his physical body. Jesus did not come to tell people about how
to escape the physical world. Jesus
Christ did not come to condemn the world, but to save it, to save the physical
world in which we live, to save us, human beings. And it is to that same physical world that we
are sent to proclaim his saving death and resurrection.
The good world that God has
blessed us with is our field of mission.
It is our mission to be believers in the risen Christ and proclaim that
goodness. We must use our human bodies
to do Christ’s work in the world. We too
are to show others the scars and wounds of Christ through our own, show others
the death and resurrection of Christ through our own. We too are to suffer and die and to rise
again, not just at the end of time, but every day, every day in the midst of
life here and now, every day experiencing the personal touch of our risen Lord. Amen.