Sunlight [Easter 3B - Luke 24:36b-48]

 The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Luke 24:36b-48

 

Sunlight

 

I wonder if there was a window in the room, that room in which the remaining eleven disciples were hidden.  When I hear this story, that’s just what I always wonder.  One might think I would puzzle over the immense theological implications of this post-resurrection passage, but honestly, I’m usually just trying to figure out the lighting.

 

In the imaginations of my mind there is always this rogue beam of light, pouring in through the stubborn space between two ragged, sun-bleached curtains.  And it spotlights the lazy, suspended dusts, hanging in mid-air like unfortunate abductees caught in a tractor beam.  And then, without a sound, without warning, Jesus enters from stage left, but no one knows how he got in because that spotlight is fixed, illuminating an unremarkable floor tile, rather than the living miracle greeting the stunned occupants.

 

There is nothing exceptional about the sunbeam, or the way it backlights the dust, or falls on the floor.  But, if you think about, it has to be there.  How else could the disciples examine Jesus’ wounds?  And I guess that is why it feels so out of place, so intrusive.  Because it is so ordinary.  And it almost seems impossible that ordinary things could exist in the same world in which God died, and Easter happened, and the resurrected dead transgressed a solid wall and then ate a fish.

 

The fish, the fish is a strange detail.  Last week we heard a very similar version of this story, but from another Gospel, John’s Gospel.  And there was no fish.  In both stories Jesus appears to the disciples; in both stories Jesus breaks the silence with peace; in both stories Jesus shows off his scars and offers a hands-on experience.  But in this story he eats a fish – while the eleven, I imagine, hover over him, hanging on his every bite, making sure the flaky morsels don’t fall through to the floor. 

 

It was dizzying day for the disciples.  The Gospel says they were startled by Jesus’ greeting; terrified at his appearance.  That seems fair.  The door never opened.  Jesus was dead and buried; that was a fact of which they were painfully aware.  And yet, here he was, right there, standing and talking and casting a shadow.  A quick glance at the other agape mouths would quickly rule out the possibility of an isolated hallucination.  “Ghost” is rarely the most reasonable conclusion, but in this case it actually was.  And so it is not at all surprising that the disciples thought they were seeing a ghost.  Any other verdict would have seemed far-fetched.

 

It is a little surprising that Jesus chooses this emotionally-complex moment to have a bite to eat.  The sanctified theological reason, the one advanced by scholars and experts, is that Jesus wanted to provide concrete proof of his bodily resurrection.  But I don’t know, he was a single guy in his early 30’s, maybe he just couldn’t pass up a free meal. 

 

It’s not surprising, however, that Jesus orders the fish.  He knows these guys.  He has known them since he pulled them off the beach; they left their fishing nets to follow him.  Jesus’ disciples weren’t scholars; they weren’t religious professionals; they weren’t well-connected or ascending social climbers.  They were fishermen.  They spent their days on the lake, scraping out a modest living. 

 

Until Jesus showed up, out of the blue, like he does.  And he shattered their plans; he interrupted their lives.  He infected them with hope – dangerous hope.  He inspired them to dream dreams they would have never dared to dream.  And they did: they dreamed dreams of the reign of God on this earth; he made them believe in the impossible, that because of him the impossible could actually happen.  

 

And, well, those big dreams felt pretty foolish as they watched the Roman soldiers drive nails into hands and feet.  They saw the crown of his kingdom and it was made of thorns.  I have no doubt the disciples grieved the loss of their friend while in that locked room; but he wasn’t the only loss they experienced.  Their hopes and dreams died with him.  The colors drained from the world on Good Friday.  Once again their plans were shattered and their lives interrupted.

 

And what then?  What choice did they have?  They go back to the water.  It’s not easy to drag all of those broken dreams back to the old shore, but the fish on the broiler suggests that they did.  And Jesus knew it. 

 

And so he orders fish.  Their fish, the symbol of their B.C. life.  And then Jesus eats that fish.  Devouring all the evidence that life could go back to normal.  It couldn’t.  They knew that now.  Ready or not, they now lived in an Easter world.  And this Jesus would never stop haunting them. 

 

One morning, in a world in which God had been crucified, the disciples of a condemned criminal went down to a lake and caught a fish.  As the cold morning waves lapped at their feet, they couldn’t know that later that same day they would feed that very fish to their dead friend.  I don’t know what to say about the Easter world except that the miraculous and the mundane always seem to share the scene.  Like how later today I will fold and stack laundry in the same world in which the stone was rolled away.  And I will straighten a bathroom rug while the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead animates my heart.  And tonight, under wrinkled white sheets, I will whisper prayers to the unseen God of the Universe. 

 

I don’t know why that sunbeam is so important to me, why it always makes an appearance in this holy scene.  But I want to believe that as the Risen Jesus walked over to the table to eat his broiled fish, he paused, for just a moment, to enjoy the mundane miracle of that sunny warmth on this heavenly skin.