Witness to the Resurrection

April 19, 2015

Luke 24:36b-48

Are you a witness to the resurrection?

I have an admission to make this third Sunday of Easter.  The truth is, there’s a lot I don’t understand about that first Easter.  I don’t understand why God couldn’t find a less violent and wrenching way of getting to Easter than Good Friday.  I don’t understand where Jesus was and what he was up to between Good Friday and Easter.   I don’t understand how it worked that Jesus died, but then suddenly was alive in a new way.  I don’t understand how he ate fish and could be physically touched by the disciples after he died.  I don’t know exactly what Easter means for us.  I’m still working on the theology of it all.

And yet, I am a witness to the resurrection.

About a year ago, my non-religious stepfather-in-law with no fanfare, and against the wishes of his children, gave a kidney to an acquaintance who was the minister at the church across the street from his house.

“I am a witness to the resurrection!”

I can imagine the earliest disciples running around saying that after Easter, sharing their stories.  And I’m betting that they didn’t have much more idea than I do what Easter was all about.  They thought Jesus’ story was over, but he kept showing up.  Meeting Mary in the garden by the tomb and gently calling her by name.  Walking beside Cleopas and another anonymous disciple on the road to Emmaus.  Cooking breakfast for the fisherman disciples on the beach beside the Sea of Tiberias.  Appearing in the locked room in Jerusalem with the disciples.  Last week we heard the Gospel of John’s version that story with poor doubting Thomas.  Today, we get Luke’s slightly different version of that same event.  The disciples are all hanging out, trying to figure out what the heck is going on, when suddenly Jesus is standing among them. 

They were clueless and utterly unreliable, but they were witnesses to the resurrection.

We hear carefully included in this story passed down over and over throughout dozens of generations that they witnessed the risen Jesus eating a piece of broiled fish.  I love those little details.  Jesus didn’t just eat; he didn’t even just eat fish.  He ate “broiled fish.”  Or, in another translation, he eats the leftover fish they had on hand.  

So often it’s in those details that we witness resurrection. That’s where I’ve seen it, mostly.  Because I too am a witness to the resurrection, despite my own cluelessness and unreliability.  And I’m betting all of you are too, though you might not put it in those words exactly.  The risen Jesus shows up out of nowhere and meets us exactly where we are in the details of our lives.  And, just like the earliest disciples, most often we don’t recognize him, at least not at first.

This week I went to visit Marian from our parish and got to spend time again with Maria, her home health aide who is so full of love and light and gentleness as she goes about her tasks.  

It was only after I left her presence that I realized that I’d been a witness to the resurrection.  

I don’t see the physical resurrected body of Jesus per se.  My resurrection sightings aren’t quite like the early disciples.  And yet I do see the resurrected Jesus transforming the world.  Showing up in places I don’t always expect or think to look for it.  

What the early disciples witnessed had a physical component — it is clearly important to their story that they saw Jesus’ physical body (including the crucifixion wounds) and that he could eat fish — but it was so much more than that.  Luke tells us that at first the disciples were “startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”  (That’s how these stories always seem to start - with surprise and fear.)  But after the risen Jesus showed up, suddenly these people who had been cowering in fear and confusion, frozen in inaction, felt themselves instilled with the peace of God and energized into their new vocation. 

They were witnesses to the resurrection.

Several years back my dad apologized out of the blue for the ways he had misunderstood me as a teenager.  And suddenly I could feel a weight lifted of all these strange little resentments I didn’t even know I had.

I was a witness to the resurrection.

One of my favorite witnesses is Frederick Buechner, who says this:

“The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only … the gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal.  But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all of our being and our imagination — if we live our lives … from the miracle of one instant of our precious lives to the miracle of the next — what we may see is Jesus himself, what we may hear is the first faint sound of a voice somewhere deep within us saying that there is a purpose in this life, in our lives, whether we can understand it completely or not; and that this purpose follows behind us through all our doubting and being afraid, through all our indifference and boredom, to a moment when suddenly we know for sure that everything does make sense because everything is in the hands of God.” (87-88 The Magnificent Defeat)

I’m not there yet, but I’m still a witness to the resurrection.  I’ve seen people so awash with grief and sadness that they thought they’d never find life meaningful again come out the other side and rediscover joy.

But there is another way in which we are witnesses to the resurrection.  And that is not in how we see resurrection around us, but in how we share the life of the risen Jesus ourselves.

I’ve discovered recently Greg Boyle, a witness for sure.  He is a Jesuit who works with kids embroiled in gangs in L.A.  He tells a story about a youth with who was in the pit of despair and hopelessness.  One day Greg walked into the place where this youth was and the kid looked up at him in surprise and wonder and said, “I was just praying to God to send me a sign that God is really here.  And then you showed up.”  

I think that is more often than not how God works.  It is up to us to show up as the risen Jesus in people’s lives.  It is up to us to be God’s hands and feet in the world.  It is up to us to embody Jesus.  It is up to us to be witnesses to the resurrection.

That’s what Jesus spent a lot of his time and energy urging the disciples to do.  In his ministry during his lifetime and in the short time he is physically with the disciples after Easter, he showed up in the midst of people — in the midst of real people living real lives with their questions and heartbreaks and fears.  He met them where they were and brought them peace, but then he encouraged them to move beyond where they were.  He encouraged them to get out from behind the locked doors where they were hiding and be witnesses to the resurrection that isn’t a past historical event but a present way of life.  And then they went out into the broken world, sharing their experiences with Jesus, sharing the peace they learned from him, sharing his love and compassion for all people.

We are witnesses to the resurrection whenever we get from behind the locked doors we hide behind and bring our stories, our peace, our love and compassion into the world.  Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way: “When the world looks around for the risen Christ, when they want to know what that means, it is us they look at.” (123 Home by another way)

We in this community are witnesses to the resurrection when we rally around people that are injured or struggling with a loss, offering food and love and support. We are witnesses when we take food to the hungry, and stay overnight with the homeless, and fight to make peoples’ lives better here and around the globe.  We are witnesses when we welcome others into this place with open arms.  We are witnesses when we share our stories and our journeys and even our questions and our doubts.  

I wonder where you will love more completely, give more freely, live more fully - today and the next day and the next?  

May we all be witnesses to the resurrection.  Amen.