Sermon: Luke 24: 36-48 April 14 2024, at St Luke’s by Sylvia Miller-Hardie

I love this little cameo from the writers of Luke’s gospel - where it addresses the disciples’ journey from grief to hope. If you’ve ever been on that journey yourself, you will understand the emptiness that accompanies loss and grief. You will know how it feels when it seems like the world has ended and you are scrambling to find new life and purpose amidst the rubble of your dreams.

It’s a number of years now, since I found myself in unexpected, deep grief. In the months before it, my husband & I had planned some study leave from our ministry positions. He liked to write prayer poetry and was going to work on another book of that. I wanted to look at the way the gospel stories recounted how Jesus managed self-care and deep faith in the midst of his busy ministry demands. I had been given a chance, through the Church, to do some study at Cambridge and all the arrangements were made. We had managed to secure Pulpit supply to cover our 3 month absence and we were excitedly looking forward to our adventure. And then devastating news hit us. Within weeks my husband had died.

Plans changed. I cancelled my Cambridge accommodation and study - I couldn’t face going there alone. Although I kind of regret that now! I’ve always been an avid fan of the TV series “Inspector Morse” and its later spin off, “Lewis”. And I would’ve loved the chance to spend a few weeks exploring Cambridge and Oxford after seeing those Detective Mysteries filmed around there! However, it was fortuitous that we already had pulpit supply covered because that allowed me to take immediate bereavement leave and a shortened study leave. And the topic I’d chosen for my study leave turned out to be such a gift. It launched me into a study that I needed more than I could ever have realised. Because instead of contemplating Jesus’ self-care and deep faith in the midst of his busy task of ministry - as I had planned - it became a lifeline into a new discovery of my own faith in the midst of shattered dreams and future.

So, I always enjoy when we reach this text in the lectionary, because I can relate to it. I don’t know if you noticed in the text we just read - but it begins with Jesus pronouncing ‘Peace’ on his shattered, grieving followers and then he goes on to speak about having an open mind – to faith and the Sacred story and to the rich possibilities for life which may yet be before them.

I think there’s a connection between peace and open mindedness.

I spent my childhood in a very closed faith. We attended 3 church services on Sunday and often 1 more through the week. We were taught the strict limits of our beliefs. And we had it drilled into our psyche about what the danger of traversing those limits would be. From the pulpit we heard a lot about “fearing God” and while they were quoting from a text that was more readily translated as “honouring or respecting God’s way” – fear was what their teaching instilled in most of us. We feared the judgement and punishment of an angry, jealous and capricious God. We feared a God, who could strike down the innocent for a misstep, or take away something we loved, just to punish us. Amidst such a closed belief system, there’s not a lot of room for peace – you spend your life trying to measure up to an impossible standard of holiness. Instead of peace; fear, subjugation and guilt tend to frame your life and faith. Which is why I have always loved this cameo from Luke – about finding this gift of God’s Peace through the openness of enquiry and exploration, no matter what your circumstances may be.

“Peace be with you!” Jesus is reported as saying. And then it says “and then he opened their minds to the Scriptures.” Their minds were opened to see what the sacred stories of other people’s lives and experiences of God can offer. Their minds were opened to give them (and us) a new perspective on faith and the new possibilities for life before them. I believe that works for us in the same way today - we find inner peace by opening our minds to our faith story, not closing our beliefs into a tomb of faith. We find peace by opening our minds to the experiences of others around us, validating their life journey. And by opening our minds to the beauty, possibility and care of the world around us.

To illustrate, let me tell you a story – as told by the theologian Rubem Alves. You may have heard it before, but its worth a retelling! The story is about a sleepy fishing village where life had gone on in the same way, with the same routines, carried out by the same families, for generations. In that sleepy fishing village, boredom and safety and familiarity mixed with the salty air. Each new day was just like all the other days before it. Every morning the villagers woke to the same sounds of the sea, the same faces of their community, the same work of mending their nets, dragging them to their fishing boats and sailing out for the day’s catch, only to return at night to their same little houses. Each day was like every other - until that day - when a stranger washed ashore onto their beach. At first they thought it was a huge piece of driftwood brought in with the tide, but as they looked closer, they realised it was a body. “Mmm, nothing new in that” someone commented, “death comes to us all.” So, the women, who’s custom it was to care for the dead, carried the body into one of their houses and in a quiet hush began to prepare it for burial.

The women worked in silence until one of them said, “you know, if he’d lived in our village this man would’ve had to duck his head every time he entered one of our houses, he’s so tall!” The others looked and nodded and fell silent again. A moment later another said, “Look at his hands, they’re so big, yet fine boned and with such delicate skin, he couldn’t have been a fisherman. I wonder what he did with these soft hands in his lifetime – did he paint, heal, make love, write books, teach?” The women looked at his hands, and smiled to themselves. Then as they washed his neck, they thought about what his voice sounded like – did he speak in dulcet tones? Was his voice rich and deep? Did he

sing to delight a room? “Look at his feet” one suddenly remarked, “it would take some shoes to cover these large feet”. And then as they cleaned the sand and silt from his feet they mused about where those feet had walked in his lifetime and how he’d ended up on their shore. As the women worked and wondered, they became aware of lost and forgotten questions stirring within them: Who was he? Where had he come from? How had he lived and loved? Their minds began to bubble up with ideas and possibilities about this stranger from the sea. And as their imaginations grew, they began to smile and laugh a little. They began to feel like they almost knew him and to mourn his death. They could never be certain of who he was or how he’d come to end up at their village, but his presence in their midst gave rise to something new within them - beyond the sameness and boredom of their former days. It was as if his presence had opened up a new world of possibility and thought, seeded from their own hopes and dreams. And after his burial the villagers danced and sang and made up poetry about the man from the sea. Until over time, his legend grew from the stories they told, which were really stories about themselves and their own longings. And it was said, the village was never the same again.

I wonder, is that what these post-resurrection stories from the Gospels do for us? Do they open our minds to the buried hopes and dreams that lie latent within us? Do they mix with our own story and elicit a longing for more, a longing for delight and opportunity beyond the everyday losses and limits we encounter?

The post-resurrection stories of Jesus suggest that something new opened up in the lives of the weary disciples after his death - something beyond all their expectations of themselves, or others. As Rubem Alves comments, “the real truth about life often belongs somewhere in the land of our hope-filled dreams.” The villagers in Alves’ story couldn’t say anything certain about the stranger washed onto their shore – they didn’t even know his name. Yet out of his silence he helped them to dream again. Their imagination came to life: “Had he lived in our village....had we heard his voice...had we been touched by his hands......or known the paths his feet walked....” The stories they told about the dead man were as much about their own forgotten dreams and buried hopes, which were being revived as his presence among them brought their spirits and imaginations to life again. Every story became a confession from their own heart.

In the same way, as we retell the post Easter story about Jesus’ life and death and resurrection - his story becomes integrated with our own story. Each year we retell the story - from generation to generation - with the few scraps we have of Jesus’ actual life and ways - woven within our own experience of life and faith and hope in God. Perhaps that’s what Jesus always intended! Perhaps he knew that if his life and ways didn’t resonate in the lives of those who followed him - if his story didn’t integrate with our story - then the story would die or be locked in the past. Because for God’s love and peace to find currency in successive generations, it must be assimilated into our stories and our ways.

And one last thought on this little cameo - I find it interesting that in this story of encounter between the risen Christ and his followers - Luke validates the risen Christ through his hands and feet. “Look at my hands and my feet,” the risen Jesus said. Was he evoking their memory by inviting their participation in the ongoing story of faith? Because surely his hands reminded them of how he broke bread with them at the end. How he had pressed lumps of mud against a blind man’s eyes to restore sight, and reached out to touch a leper into wholeness and written in the sand before a woman, about to be stoned by her accusers.

And did his feet evoke the memory of how they’d walked across the countryside together bringing healing and hope? Or of how he’d entered the homes of criminals and corrupt bureaucrats, and dined with them, treating them with respect, forgiveness and love? Or maybe evoked the memory of how Mary had anointed his feet with her perfume and her hair? When they looked and remembered his hands and feet – what did it evoke in them of how they could use their hands to help and where they might walk to bring love and forgiveness? Because memory evokes imagination and stirs up new possibilities in us. It is through our hands and feet that the resurrection story of God’s peace and presence in our midst continues to be told. As Teresa of Avila wrote in the 16th century: Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on the world. Yours are the feet, with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands, with which he blesses the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet. Christ has no body now on earth, but yours. No hands, no feet on earth - but yours!

It is in the telling our own stories of God’s grace, in offering our own experience of God’s love, in sharing how we’ve found wholeness in the Divine embrace, that we can offer hope to the brokenness of our world and tender hearts of love and open hands of help - to resurrect and restore peace in others.

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