Easter 4

The Last Supper, was a tragic farewell meal, heavy with talk of betrayals and a broken body. Judas nicks off to do what he must, Peter will deny, a kiss betrays the Master. It was night, we are told, and the disciples were “very sorrowful”. They sing a hymn at the end, but we can hardly imagine there was much joy in their voices. For the Messiah who came eating and drinking, this is a grim repast, lightened only by the promise of a heavenly meal to come. Knowing that the band of disciples is already falling apart, Jesus prays that “they will all be one.” But, in a few hours, they will all have deserted him, run away into the darkness and he will walk alone to his death.

How would these feeble friends ever be able to sit down at the table of fellowship again and look him in the eye? There is something very final about the Last Supper — relationships are so damaged, it is hard to see how they will be restored. We sometimes make an understandable mistake when we think that the Passover meal in the upper room was Jesus' last earthly meal. There is a collective Christian absent-mindedness that forgets that Jesus not only came eating and drinking before his crucifixion, but continued eating and drinking after the resurrection. Nothing speaks so powerfully of the joy of the glorious embodied life of the resurrection than a feast shared with others after the fasting of Lent and Holy Week. This mornings gospel records that the apostles found it difficult to accept Jesus’s resurrected body. This  account of the resurrection does not show them joyfully celebrating the risen Christ, but struggling painfully to come to terms with the event. The resurrection joy takes its time coming, and has to seep through a thick layer of human resistance and disbelief. Luke expresses this beautifully in his curious phrase “they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered”. There is hope for all of us yet. For our own sake JESUS must have an “ordinary” resurrected body. If we hope to enjoy the life that he now lives, it must be just like ours,… just as surely as his Christmass body was one just like ours. So today's story  is a continuation of Christmass. God becomes flesh and bones. God  comes into our midst laughing, eating and drinking: Jesus became the flesh of a boy from Galilee, and he was resurrected to the same flesh. The resurrection completes Christmass by showing conclusively that Jesus was not merely wearing his body like a garment of skin, but he was, from the beginning to now, living in his body, as his body and with his body just like you and I. The risen Jesus cooks a great Barbecue on the shore of the sea of Galilee. He eats bread and fish, and breathes on the disciples. The resurrection life is not any other life, but it is this life; flourishing in its completeness and not even human violence can stomp on it and extinguish it. The life-after-death, is none other than the kind of life we experience before death. So Jesus is not resurrected to some abstract, ethereal, wispy, ghostly state of living, but to a particular historical and cultural setting. His resurrected body speaks a language, follows social rules, and interacts with named human beings. Jesus was resurrected into the ordinary life of his friends which includes us.

Something other things to think about.

The last Supper was a highly organised, pre planned event in a specific place, for a specific time. Everyone knew where and when beforehand, although few knew why.The Resurrection meals are spontaneous events that spring out of specific situations: an evening meal, a fishing trip, a visit.The resurrection is an integral and inseparable part of the fabric of our everyday life here and now or as one person put it. We believe in life before death and it will surprise you with its audacity and spontaneity. The Easter event will beg us this week to see it in the created world in which we live and breathe and have our being. The wonder of this encounter with the incarnate God, is not only beautiful, but makes us beautiful. Still, like those disciples  we find it difficult to understand and we are blind to who it is that stands right before us. We will find it even harder to integrate this into the pages of our diary this week. Perhaps it will help if I just fall silent now and let the Master have the last word.

I leave you with three phrases that the  Risen Christ offered his disciples. Listen closely and maybe you will hear Him speaking them to you today.

“Now… you are witnesses of these things….”

“Why do these doubts arise in your hearts?…”

“Peace be with you.”--