Text used – Luke 24:36-48

• Food … for some it is an art form. For some, an obsession. For some, a tool. For many, it’s something with which they have a complicated relationship. Yet no matter how we view food or explore food, use food or grapple with food, for all of us – for every living thing on this plant, be they human or plant, creature or organism – food is a necessity. Life cannot happen without food.
  • Human body can survive anywhere from 8 days to 3 weeks without food, depending on conditions and how healthy your body was to begin with
  • Access to food has driven societal and industrial development and mass migration
    • Potato famine in Ireland – often called “The Great Hunger”
      • Lasted 7 yrs. from 1845-1852
      • Killed 1 million people
      • Displaced another 1.3 million people
    • Makes food highly political → All you have to do is look at the headlines from day to day to see just how big a role food plays in the landscape of global politics.
  • No matter where you are in the world, food is central. It’s central to economies. It’s central to communities. It’s central to cultures. It’s central to families. It’s even central to religions.
    • “Friends, as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim Christ’s death and resurrection until he comes again in glory. The table is set. The feast is ready. And Christ bids us, ‘Come.’” … Right?
    • Food is our gathering point. It is our common language. It is the way we share with and care for one another. It is a way we express ourselves – our lives and our dislikes, our personalities and our personal histories.
      • Hanging up on the wall in my kitchen = 3 framed recipe cards
        • Mom’s handwriting
        • Grandma Viv’s handwriting
        • Grandma Joanne’s handwriting
        • Not only is it their handwriting, but all three are recipes that they make or made frequently. You can tell by the food stains on the cards themselves.
  • With the inescapable, complex role that food plays in our lives and our everyday, it’s no wonder that Jesus reintroduces himself to the disciples post-resurrection using … food.
• BEFORE WE GO ANY FUTHER THIS MORNING – CONFESSION: As I was reading through Scriptures and planning sermons a few months ago, I read the context of this Scripture incorrectly. I made a mistake that lots of people make on a regular basis – I confused two very similar accounts from two different gospels.
  • Today’s reading = from Luke (context we’ll explore more fully in a minute because it’s important)
  • Other reading = from John’s gospel[1]
    • Resurrected Jesus reappears on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where the disciples have returned to the pastime they knew before: fishing
    • Jesus again helps them with their catch, reenacting his first appearance in their lives by telling them to fish from the other side of the boat → “and there were so many fish that they couldn’t haul in the nets”[2]
    • Disciples recognize Jesus and join him on the beach
    • A dawn fish breakfast ensues in which Jesus himself eats some of the fresh catch
  • When I was planning my sermons and I read this morning’s passage from Luke and mistook it for the passage from John … hence this morning’s title “A Beachside Breakfast of Fish … and Faith.” However, in Luke’s account, there is no beach. My mistake, all … just cross that word out on your bulletins for me this morning. Thanks.
• So if they aren’t on a beach … where are Luke’s disciples? → context within Lk’s gospel = crucial
  • Today’s text = very near the end of ch. 24 and the whole of Lk’s gospel
    • Only thing after today’s text = 4 short verses describing Jesus’ final ascension into heaven in which he blesses the disciples, the disciples worship and give thanks, then return to Jerusalem “overwhelmed with joy”[3]
    • The rest of ch. 24 = divided into 3 key pericopes (short stories)
      • 1-12 = Jesus’ initial resurrection (“The Empty Tomb”)
      • 13-35 = what has lovingly been referred to throughout the centuries as the “Walk to Emmaus” passage in which Jesus appears to 2 disciples as they’re walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus → Jesus spends time speaking with these disciples about recent events (i.e. – his death and resurrection) without the disciples recognizing Jesus for who he truly is → Jesus’ identity is finally revealed to them when they stop and break bread together (yup … food again, y’all!) → end of that account: They got up right then and returned to Jerusalem. They found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying to each other, “The Lord really has risen! He appeared to Simon!” Then the two disciples described what had happened to them along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread.[4]
    • Leads into today’s encounter where Jesus appears to all the disciples together in Jerusalem – 1^st verse of today’s reading: While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”[5] → So while the disciples were standing there swapping stories about who had seen the Risen Christ where, POP! Jesus appeared there in their midst!
      • Jesus immediately tries to calm them: “Peace be with you!”
      • Clearly not a greeting that sticks the first time around – text: They were terrified and afraid. They thought they were seeing a ghost.[6] → Now, I find this interesting considering what we just read at the end of the Walk to Emmaus passage. The end of that passage said that the two unnamed disciples who encountered Jesus along the road to Emmaus “returned to Jerusalem” where “they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.”
        • Means that all of Jesus’ remaining former “inner circle” disciples were there (12 minus Judas = “the eleven”)
        • “the companions” of the eleven could be referring to the women who initially found Jesus’ tomb empty (yes … conjecture, but we’re told earlier in chapter 24 that, after they found the tomb empty, “they reported all these things to the eleven and all the others.” So the women certainly could have still been there.)
        • So that means that in the room were certainly Simon Peter who had his own empty tomb experience as well as the two disciples who knew they encountered Jesus on the road to Emmaus and possibly the women who had had their empty tomb experience as well. And yet, when the Risen Christ appeared among them, they were still startled … afraid … even terrified. I just find it really interesting that despite the stories and eyewitness encounters that they had just been discussing, I don’t think they actually expected to encounter Jesus again. And yet all of a sudden, there he is among them.
• Three distinctive parts to this encounter
  • FIRST, Jesus calms and comforts
    • “Peace be with you!”
    • Further (in reaction to their fear): “Why are you startled? Why are doubts arising in your hearts?”[7] → I don’t hear Jesus saying this in an accusatory way or even in a disappointed way. I hear Jesus saying this in a pacifying way with a tone of voice meant to further placate and ease the disciples’ distress. With all that he’s been through with them and for them, at this point, I think Jesus is beyond admonishments.
  • SECOND, Jesus proves → not in ways that are ethereal or overly theological or esoteric but in ways that are grounded in the body … in the flesh … in Jesus’ own humanity
    • Text: “Look at my hands and my feet. It’s really me! Touch me and see, for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bones like you see I have.” As he said this, he showed them his hands and feet. Because they were wondering and questioning in the midst of their happiness, he said to them, “Do you have anything to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish. Taking it, he ate it in front of them.[8] → Jesus is trying to show the disciples without a shadow of a doubt that he is still fully himself.
      • Interview with the publication for The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology on the topic of “A Theology of Food and Body,” Rev. Kate Sweet (ordained Disciples of Christ minister): One of the most shocking aspects of the Gospel story is the claim that God had the audacity to take on human form, with all of its messiness and uncertainty. The Incarnation speaks to me of God’s total embrace of our embodied life. … I believe that God made us with bodies on purpose; it wasn’t a mistake. We are made in God’s image, and in some mysterious way these bodies of ours help us to glimpse something of what God is like. Because of this fact, I don’t think that it is possible to separate our faith from how we eat or treat our bodies. We enact what we believe about the world, about life, about God, through our physical life; there is no other way![9]
      • To reassure them … to prove himself to them … to bring them all back into the same space, back onto the same page … Jesus uses that universal language: food. He tries to show them his hands and feet (clearly it wasn’t just Thomas who doubted after all, right?), and when even that didn’t do the trick, Jesus asked them to share their food. He took the fish. He ate it. And that was that.
        • Interesting point – text (given as the reason Jesus asks for the fish): Because they were wondering and questioning in the midst of their happiness[10] → I find this fascinating and refreshing and critical because in this little in-between verse, we are both reminded and reassured that doubt doesn’t always have to be mired in struggle and shame and fear and reprimand. Yes, the word for “disbelief” and “unfaithfulness” is here, but that striving to belief is couched in joy and wonderment.
  • THIRD and final phase of this encounter = Jesus returning to his beloved, well-known role: teaching
    • Scholar: Just when we thought the story is over, God had something to say. It has always been about God and continues to be so. Jesus did not launch into explanations about the mechanics of resurrection, nor did he provide an itinerary of his whereabouts since Friday. Instead, Jesus taught and commissioned: his whole life, death, and rising were about what God is doing in the world – reconciling the world to God’s self.[11] → So Jesus takes those last moments (at least some of the last moments that we know about) to teach the disciples more about God … more about Scripture … more about Jesus’ own role as the Christ … and finally, more about the disciples’ role as witnesses. Bodies renewed. Spirits renewed. Food and faith … hand in hand.
      • I want to leave you with the words of a lovely little memoir by journalist Sara Miles (from Take This Bread: The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-First-Century Christian[12]) Amen.

[1] Jn 21:1-14.

[2] Jn 21:6b.

[3] Lk 24:52.

[4] Lk 24:33-35.

[5] Lk 24:36 (emphasis added).

[6] Lk 24:37.

[7] Lk 24:38.

[8] Lk 24:39-43.

[9] https://theseattleschool.edu/blog/theology-of-food-and-body/.

[10] Lk 24:41a.

[11] Barbara J. Essex. “Third Sunday of Easter – Luke 24:36b-48 – Homiletical Perspective” in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary – Year B., vol. 2. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 427.

[12] Sara Miles. Take This Bread: The Spiritual Memoir of a Twenty-First-Century Christian. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2007), xi-xii, xiii.