chrishansenhome

I was surprised that I was compos mentis enough to deliver a sermon this morning. I'm still quite groggy but I thought that I'd post it in case anyone was interested. I'll put most of it under a cut.

April 22, 2012 3rd Sunday of Easter
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 10 AM.
First Reading: Acts 3:13-15,17-19; Ps: 4;
Epistle: 1 John 2:1-5;
Gospel: Luke 24:35-48 (Year B)

“And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes.”

In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.

If I look a bit tired, the reason is that I just returned on Friday from a trip to my family and friends in Massachusetts in the United States. This is the first trip out of the country I've taken in three years, and I really enjoyed it.

During my trip, I had a great lunch with a friend who is a columnist for the local newspaper. As my hometown possesses the best natural harbour on the East Coast of the United States, she took me to lunch at the local yacht club, to give me an idea about how the other half lives.

The specialty of the restaurant at this yacht club is a delicacy called a lobster roll. To people in my town, the lobster is perhaps the most exalted of all shellfish. However, I had never eaten it before in my life.

I had entered the restaurant intending to get a burger. However, my friend told me that the best item on the menu was the lobster roll, so I thought for a moment and decided that I would have one. To my delight and surprise, it was delicious.

A fish also occupies a special place in today's Gospel. Not because it's a special fish, but because it shows a special facet of the risen Lord.

As we all know, ghosts are not material persons, but only shadows. They have no solid bodies—indeed, they pass through walls and doors as if they were not there. You can't touch them.

Ghosts don't eat either. So offering Jesus a piece of fish, which he then ate, tells us something about Jesus after the Resurrection.

He is risen! And not only in spirit, but also in body.

Now, along with the rest of us, I do not even pretend to know what the reality of resurrection might be. Anyone who does pretend to know it is certainly misguided. Anything that we know about resurrection life has to be presented by allegory.

Is resurrection like eating a lobster roll or a grilled fish? Is it just like our lives now, just a bit better? Instead of fish fingers, do we get lobsters whenever we want them?

I am more inclined to think that risen life is connected with what Jesus did after eating the fish. The Gospel says, “He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures...”

One of the effects that preachers fondly hope comes from their words is that the minds of the people in the pews are opened to understand the nuances of the scripture readings for the day. In the short time in which a preacher speaks, however, he or she can only explain a tiny part of of a small portion of the scriptures. And even that tiny part of a small portion can be explained in many ways. Scripture is a deep ocean, in which you can discern many things.

So imagine the situation where the Lord has opened your mind to understand the scriptures. One side effect of that would be no need to preach or listen to sermons.

Perhaps fortunately for preachers, we haven't yet been given the gift of completely understanding the scriptures. But that takes us back to the question of what resurrection means to us in these days of Easter.

To me, the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus means one thing: death is not the end of everything. It is certainly the end of bodily life on earth, but it is also a beginning.

Preparing for that beginning is the work of our entire lives. Everything we are, and everything we have done, is only a prelude.

This doesn't mean that we have pie in the sky when we die—or even lobster in the sky. Living is hard work for nearly all of us. Lobster roll moments for many of us are far fewer than fish finger ones.

Our lives are lived in the shadow of death; in these times we are constantly surrounded by reminders of death—from the funerals of loved ones and friends to reports of death on the battlefields of Afghanistan or in natural disasters over the globe.

Living thus we should remember the simple lesson that Jesus has taught us in this gospel reading: he is resurrected and is alive, and we too shall be resurrected and alive, just as he has promised. So we die as we have lived, in the hope of resurrection.

Perhaps this is the understanding of the scriptures to which Jesus opened the minds of the discples.

What Jesus was and did during his lifetime on Earth prefigured what he was and did after his Resurrection and what he is and does now. And as for Jesus, so with us. We may not have to eat a fish to prove it, but the Gospel message tells us that we will be alive, just as he was.

To the same Lord who gives us that assurance of life eternal be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and praise both now and evermore. AMEN.