“Breakfast with Jesus”
Luke 24.36-48 The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado 14 April 2024 Eastertide keeps on rolling with this story about the disciples’ encounter with the Risen One. Just so you know the time frame for today’s text, it happens on Easter Monday. Previously, Luke’s gospel offered us the wonderful story of Jesus meeting a couple on the road to Emmaus on the previous evening, a Sunday, and how they didn’t initially recognize Jesus, but “he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” And just as rapidly as the couple recognized Jesus, he vanished. That couple hurries back to Jerusalem, they find the disciples and fill them in on what had happened and shares the news that Jesus was alive. So, the disciples receive the news, and then Jesus appears before them. Now, imagine if Jesus were to appear to you. In Luke’s gospel, he tends to show up around mealtimes. So, imagine him appearing while you’re preparing lunch. Wouldn’t you think that he was a ghost or a spirit, even if he asked for a BLT? (Okay, maybe not a BLT since bacon isn’t kosher.) I would certainly assume it was a spiritual presence. What Luke describes is a mystical encounter with the risen Christ. Most of us protestants don’t like dealing with mystery because it’s difficult to quantify, observe, or measure. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real. I don’t know how many of us have sensed the presence of Christ in our midst, but I am aware that some of us have. For me, the most significant encounter I had involved my call to ordained ministry 30-some years ago. I was sitting at our dining room table in Boulder reading a book that was recommended to me by my mentor, Bruce MacKenzie, who was senior minister at First Congregational UCC in Boulder. The book was a key work by John Dominic Crossan called, Jesus a Revolutionary Biography, a book that stirred up a lot of public controversy because it described the historical Jesus in ways that many Christians never imagined him. At the time, I still had my own communications business, but I could sense that change was on the horizon. So, as I read, I had the distinct sense that there was a hand on my shoulder, and I heard the words, “You can do this.” I had the distinct sense that it was Jesus speaking to me. The experience was life-changing, which is why I am where I am this morning. For me, there was no visual encounter…just a touch and a voice. I had no sense that Jesus was PHYSICALLY present. He certainly didn’t sit down and have a meal with me, and I was not in the company of others who could have vouched for the experience I had. I am certain that there were a lot of post-resurrection experiences the disciples had individually of the risen Christ. But is it any wonder that Luke chose to describe two scenes — at Emmaus and with the disciples in Jerusalem — that involved Jesus appearing to multiple witnesses and that both involved a meal, thereby proving that they were not experiencing a ghost, but rather one who has a body, even eating with them? Among Jews in the first century, there were different ways of interpreting resurrection, but for the Pharisees, it clearly involved resurrection of the body. Classical Judaism understood resurrection of the dead as God’s ultimate vindication of the righteous. Interestingly, Paul of Tarsus was a self-described Pharisee, presumably one who believed in the resurrection of the body. Yet, Paul’s flash-of-light experience on the road to Damascus was a forceful, spiritual experience of Jesus that involved a voice but no body. The plot thickens further in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth: “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. … It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” Wait a minute…Paul the Pharisee is saying that we are born into a physical body, but that we also will have a spiritual body? This sounds like a divergence from the tenet of Pharisaic Judaism that it is our physical bodies that are to be raised. Paul was born and raised in Tarsus in today’s Turkey, speaking Greek rather than Aramaic like Jesus. The culture that surrounded him meant that he was immersed in Greek philosophical assumptions, including the dualism of Plato, meaning that one’s physical body and soul are separate entities, and that the soul lives on after the death of the body. This is an idea that is common even today in the west. (How many of us think that we are both body and soul?) But, it was utterly foreign to the Judaism of Paul’s day, which saw no division between body and soul. “In classical Judaism, resurrection of the dead was a central belief, essential to defining oneself as a Jew. ‘Today,’ writes Jon D. Levenson, professor of Jewish studies at Harvard, ‘that fact comes as a shock to most Jews and Christians alike.’”[1] I appreciate what the great preacher, Fred Craddock, has to say about the biblical record on resurrection: “The resurrection was not an unambiguous event that could have been captured with a video camera, but was a mysterious phenomenon that could have been interpreted more than one way and could evoke doubt and fear as well as faith and joy…. The New Testament pictures the reality of the resurrection in different ways that are not to be harmonized [or blended]. Each image brings out some theological meaning of resurrection…a divine mystery that cannot be captured in one representation.” That allows us plenty of latitude for interpretation. Yet the question arises with Easter, what will happen to US? I grew up in a family that was quite antiseptic about death: no visitation or viewing or open caskets. No funerals…always a memorial service. (I don’t recommend this!) So, the first time I saw a dead body outside of a college anatomy lab was when I was a Stephen Minister in Boulder. I had been paired with Roy Bramell, a lovely 95-year-old man who had been the founding dean of the School of Education at UConn (which has more than just great basketball). After Roy’s death, I went to the visitation with his family, and as I looked at his lifeless body, it was obvious to me that it was an empty shell. Yet at his memorial service, his adult children read selections from his voluminous writing about topics ranging from family to education to faith to patriotism, and as they read, tears began streaming down my cheeks. For me those tears flowed because the ideas and emotions Roy’s words expressed revivified him. His spirit was no longer attached to a body, but the essence of who he was continued on without interruption. I sense that this is true for all of us: that we continue to exist in a different plane or realm. I don’t know whether we will experience an embodied resurrection or a spiritual resurrection or something entirely different. I’m not interested in ruling anything out in this great mystery. I take this seriously: “With God, all things ARE possible.” I know what happens to our bodies when life ends: they degrade or are cremated. And I know that we are not alone but still are within God’s love. I don’t know what happens to the life force, the spirit, the soul, the divine spark when life ends, but I know we are not alone. God is with us each step of the way, within us, among us, and infinitely far beyond us. God has brought us this far on our journey, so why would we imagine that God will not be with us beyond death? Why should we be surprised by anything that happens after death when every one of us is a first-hand witness to the miracle of life? Think about it: we are self-aware, sentient beings, and we are sitting here on a Sunday morning because we know that there is something greater than we are, that there is more to life than can ever meet the eye. That’s miraculous! And miracles are everywhere if we take the time to listen and look and feel with our hearts as well as our eyes and ears. Resurrection is a powerful metaphor for us as we continue to live this life. It is a metaphor for new beginnings, for ultimate liberation, for ongoing presence of those we love, and the continuing presence of Jesus in the world. May we live fully as people whose lives are empowered and made beautiful by the presence of God. And may we be always on the lookout for mystery and everyday miracles. Even at the breakfast table. Amen. © 2024 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal at plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. [1] Peter Steinfels, “What comes as a shock…” in NY Times, September 30, 2006.
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Mark 16.1-8
The Rev. Hal Chorpenning, Plymouth Congregational UCC Fort Collins, Colorado Easter, April 1, 2018 During the season of Lent, our Seekers group here at Plymouth has been studying a wonderful book by Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan called The Last Week. The authors use only Mark’s story of the week between Palm Sunday and Easter. We usually get the mix-and-match approach with a bit of Mark, a chunk of Matthew, a smidgen of Luke, and a whole lot of John. Mark’s gospel is, of course, the earliest in the New Testament, and it’s fascinating just to read this account on its own, because it is the first known literary interpretation of the story of Jesus. This is the story you’d have had at your disposal if you were, say, a Christian in Syria in the year 75. This may be news to you, but Mark was not a Hollywood screenwriter…or even a Victorian novelist. His prose is blunt and rough, and Mark’s entire gospel abruptly ends with today’s passage…just like you heard it: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” That’s it. Full stop. Signing off. End of gospel. In subsequent centuries, two separate editors added their own endings to the gospel, wrapping things up more tidily, manufacturing a denouement on Mark’s behalf. But Mark leaves us with an empty tomb and scared, silent witnesses. That’s a bit unsettling, isn’t it? It makes us uncomfortable. Having read the other gospel accounts and Paul’s experience of the risen Christ, we want a bodily resurrection, a spiritual resurrection…something! We want a conclusive ending, but that isn’t what we get. And because there is no ending to the story, we each have to imagine our own. John’s gospel provides the wonderful images that we often relate to: being a critical thinker like Thomas, who needs the empirical evidence yielded by poking his fingers in Jesus’ wounded hands, in order to grasp that Jesus is physically present. And the two dejected followers who are walking on the road to Emmaus, who fail to recognize Jesus as he walks alongside them, but who is made known to them in the breaking of the bread. But all Mark leaves us with is an empty tomb! So, what conclusion do you imagine for Mark’s gospel? What happens to the risen one? …to the women who find the empty tomb? The earliest biblical accounts of resurrection are actually not in the gospel accounts that we read every Easter, but rather from Paul, who wrote before Mark. Paul has a different story of what resurrection is all about because not only did he miss the Sunday of Jesus’ resurrection, he never even met the man who was a walking, talking, teaching, breathing, preaching, table-turning prophet. The only encounter he had was with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, years after the crucifixion. He wrote to the church in Rome about 25 years after Jesus’ crucifixion saying, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.” (Rom. 6.4) In what ways has the risen Christ been present to you? How are you experiencing the “newness of life?” How have you died to an old way of thinking or living only to discover new life? Have you encountered transformation in the midst of your everyday life? The story of resurrection is not over! It’s an ongoing drama; your life is the stage, and you are the actors.
Going back to the story, did you notice what happened to the disciples – “the Twelve” – in this narrative? They’re long gone; they’ve fled. Joseph of Arimathea provides the tomb, secures Jesus’ body from Pilate, takes Jesus’ body down from the cross, wraps his body in a linen shroud, entombs Jesus, and he himself rolls the stone to seal the tomb.
Did you notice that Mark not only fails to give Jesus any lines, he doesn’t even include Jesus in the scene? He is absent… only his empty tomb reflects its former occupant. Aside from Joseph – who is not a disciple, but a member of the council – it is the women who are the central characters in this narrative. It is they who demonstrate their faithfulness by staying near Jesus every step of the way. While one of the Twelve betrays Jesus, another denies him, and the rest desert him, the women stay the course. It isn’t the Palm Sunday crowd or the Twelve disciples we are meant to follow, it is Jesus and the women. Imagine for a moment being one of those women, what they witnessed on Good Friday. Imagine your intense grief on the following day, Saturday…the Sabbath: when you could only make plans to return to the tomb and anoint Jesus’ body with aromatic spices. This isn’t a pleasant task. If Jesus had died 36 hours earlier, you would expect some decomposition would already have taken place, hence the aromatic herbs. So, you gather the spices and set out for the tomb early Sunday morning. You steel yourself for the final act of devotion and honor, to anoint Jesus’ body. The sun is rising as you walk with two other women toward the tomb. And then you have an awful realization: you won’t be able to get in. The tomb is sealed with a very large stone, and you ask your companions, “Who will roll the stone away for us?” Let’s assume for a moment that it wasn’t a grave robber who rolled the stone away, but rather the “young man dressed in a white robe.” Is he an angel? If he’s an angel with superhuman ability, it’s no big deal to roll away stone. But Mark says nothing about him being anything other than a human. “A young man” does not necessarily an angel make. Mark uses the Greek word, neaniskos (young man), while elsewhere in the gospel, he uses the word angelos to describe a messenger of God. Mark leaves it up to us to determine who the young man was: for many of us have entertained angels unawares. And some of us have been messengers of God without even knowing it. What if you were approaching the tomb: who would move the stone for you? Sometimes, we need someone to help roll the stone way so that we can experience the risen Christ. And at other times we ourselves can help roll the stone away for others…rarely can we do it all on our own. Like that young man in the white robe, who contrasts the mourning all around him, we can be a voice of hope, saying, “He has been raised; he is not here.”
You’ve probably read about some big-time stone-rollers if you’ve been around awhile: Gandhi, King, Mother Theresa, Desmond Tutu, and others. But where are the great stone-rollers of our day? Who is saying “no” to death and “yes” to abundant life? I have seen a few like The Rev. Dr. William Barber, the Disciples of Christ minister who leads Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign.
But some of the mightiest stone-rollers I have seen have just walked through the Good Friday experience of a school shooting. They are young people with names like Tyra and Emma and David. They not obediently staying in the dark shadows of the tomb, but rather rolling the stone away. Whether the world sees us as Nobel laureates or nobodies, by virtue of our baptism and our faith, we are called to roll away the stone for each other. Each of us has the capacity to show up for our fellow humans and help create a new beginning, a new insight, even a new life. Will you pray with me? Holy One, you have showed us once more that death is never your final word. Help us to be agents of your grace and messengers of your peace, that in rolling the stone away for others, we, too, might experience resurrection. Amen. © 2018 Hal Chorpenning, all rights reserved. Please contact hal@plymouthucc.org for permission to reprint, which will typically be granted for non-profit uses. AuthorThe Rev. Hal Chorpenning has been Plymouth's senior minister since 2002. Before that, he was associate conference minister with the Connecticut Conference of the UCC. A grant from the Lilly Endowment enabled him to study Celtic Christianity in the UK and Ireland. Prior to ordained ministry, Hal had a business in corporate communications. Read more about Hal. |
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