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“Resurrection In Our Bones”
Introduction to Scripture Easter is both a day – that specific Sunday each year when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his crucifixion – and a season of the church, the days which follow Easter Sunday and precede Pentecost. And so don’t be alarmed that our reading for today takes up the events of that first Easter Sunday long ago. It is late in the day – in the morning, the women had gone to the tomb and found that Jesus was no longer there, and are told by angels that he is no longer there, but had been raised from the dead. Later, two of the disciples had left town, headed home to Emmaus, when they are met by a stranger on the road – and when they sit down with him for a meal, suddenly, in the breaking of the bread, they realize it is Jesus. This is where we take up the story….
Have you ever known something so positively, so assuredly, that you felt like you knew it, as the saying goes, in your bones? It was a knowing that was more than skin deep, a knowing that went beyond the elusiveness of human thought, a knowing that seemed to have drilled down right to the core of your being. Here we are, four weeks after Easter Sunday, and we find ourselves in the same position as were those disciples on that first Easter long ago, wondering about things we have heard, questioning what they might mean, pondering what they might have to do with us, asking, perhaps, “What does this mean for me, in my life? Could this be something more than just a story from long ago, could it contain a truth that might even transform my life, change me, help me, heal me, even empower me?” What we have, they had – questions and doubts. What we want is what they wanted – proof. What they were trying to do – wrap their minds around this mind-bending concept of resurrection, of life beyond the grave, of hope where all hope had died, of peace in a time of fear – is what we are trying to do. What they so desperately wanted to do – open their hearts to love again, after it had seemed love had been snuffed out forever – is what we want to do. And it happens. Their doubts, their questions, their fears, their lives, all are transformed. Could it have been true for them? Could it, we wonder, be true for us? Most of you have seen the video clip. There she is, in her ‘50s, looking every inch of her age, alone on a huge stage in front of a crowd of hundreds, and four smarmy celebrity judges. It is England’s hugely popular televised talent show, and its appeal is two-fold – folk watch in the hope of seeing the next major pop star to be discovered, and to enjoy those who just don’t have what our culture considers to be talent make fools of themselves. It is quite clear, from the audience shots, and the skeptical look on the faces of the judges, that they expect this humble, unemployed woman from a small village in Scotland, Susan Boyle is her name, to fall into the category of embarrassing flops. When she says that her ambition is to be an opera star, the skepticism meter ratchets up noticeably. And then she sings, and three notes into her song, the crowd is completely won over. She is magnificent, and the crowd and the judges pivot from cynicism and disbelief to standing ovation in a heartbeat. They suddenly know once again something they had learned as children, but had forgotten as they aged and succumbed to popular notions of beauty and success – that the ugly duckling in fact is nothing other than a beautiful swan, and shame on them for ever doubting or forgetting it. But this time, judging by their reaction and by the reactions of the millions across the globe who have been mesmerized by the video clip, that knowledge is something they know in their bones, something that makes a difference in their lives, something that in a way changes them forever. This is what Luke is trying to tell us happened to those followers of Jesus on that first Easter long ago. They experienced the risen Jesus in a powerful, transforming, life-changing manner. It wasn’t a bad dream, which might disturb our slumbers, but which inevitably ebbs away as the morning dawns and we rise from our sleep. It wasn’t a ghost, a fantasy without substance or reality. Resurrection for them was real, it was material, it wasn’t idealized or prettified. “Look at my wounds”, Jesus says. Feel my muscles and bones. Give me something to eat – you remember how this was central to my ministry with you, sharing at table together, breaking fish and loaves to feed the 5000. I am back, as I was, but now proof to you that even death has no power over me – or you. And you know what, it happens for them, for these earliest members of what we now call church. They got it, they knew it in their bones. And this made all the difference for them, for how they lived their lives, for how they met their deaths. Nothing was ever the same again. Friends, no one knows how to truly explain resurrection, not even Luke. All he can do, all we can do, is testify to the experience of it. To pass it on, and hope that others might listen, and perhaps believe, and perhaps have their lives transformed. This is what has happened ever since, and the truest testimony of the truth of the resurrection is the transformed lives of those who have come to know it in their bones. And this is what we do here today. We tell the story; we bring to the Word our whole selves, our hearts and our minds, our fears and our questions, our hungers and our pain. We come to the table, seeking the presence of the One who was the firstborn from the dead, sharing a meal which we know is only a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, an appetizer, as it were, in the hope that our hunger for a new life will be satisfied, and at the same time our appetite to share this transformed life might grow and grow. We come, knowing in our bones that what we seek is resurrection, not just in the sweet by and by, but here, now, today, amid all our wounds. What we seek is resurrection. And may God grant that we find it, and know it, in our hearts, with our minds, and in our bones. Amen.
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