Sermon: "Easter 3," Easter, May 4, 2025

Luke’s Gospel: Jesus and the Outsiders, Outcasts, and Outlaws

Scripture: Luke 24.36b-48

Preacher: Rev. Ryan Slifka

Title: Easter 3

This Sunday is the second-last Sunday before I go on sabbatical. But it’s the very last Sunday in our sermon series on Luke’s gospel. Luke’s story of Jesus.

You’ll remember from Keith Kovacs’ sermon last week that the resurrected Jesus appeared to a couple of his disciples on the road to Emmaus. Thinking he was dead and gone for good, they didn’t recognize him at first. That is, until they invited him in, they sat at table, and he broke bread. Suddenly they recognized him. And *poof* he was gone. Then they ran back to Jerusalem to tell Jesus’ disciples what they had seen.

Today’s scripture begins where the last one left off. We have all of Jesus’ disciples–minus Judas–sitting around discussing the whole Emmaus road, bread-breaking encounter. Can you believe it?

And suddenly, mid-sentence, there’s Jesus right in their midst. “Peace be with you” he says. “Shalom.” Now, they are understandably rather freaked out. Because it’s not every day that anybody suddenly appears, let alone your recently murdered leader who you assumed was the Messiah. Again–understandably–they think he’s a ghost. And they don’t appear to truly recognize him. And if they did, really, they had all betrayed him, denied him, and abandoned him to death. So if it’s a ghost, perhaps his unfinished business might include revenge. You can run, disciples, but you can’t hide!

But that’s not what happens. “Calm down,” he says. He holds out his hands and his feet, which we know from John’s gospel still bear the scarred nail-holes of his crucifixion. “Go ahead, touch me,” he says. “As far as I know, ghosts don’t have bones to be broken, nor skin to be scarred.”

At this point the disciples are pretty excited, but they don’t quite believe it yet. Too good to be true, maybe? But what does the Lord do? He invites himself to supper. “Got anything to eat?” And they do. They toss a little broiled fish on a plate, which he gobbles up with gusto. Remember the movie Ghostbusters? There’s this little green mischievous ghost named Slimer who spends most of his time stuffing his face only to have it fall out of him eventually. Not Jesus. Apparently it all stays in Jesus–not a ghost!

All kidding aside, the point Luke’s making here is that the resurrected Jesus is not a ghost, nor is he a disembodied spirit. But the resurrected Jesus is flesh and bone. He has a body. A body.

Now, apart from the fact that human beings generally don’t reappear at all after they’ve died in neither bodily nor spiritual form, there’s something about Jesus reappearing as a body that is particularly problematic. Why? Because the human body itself can be a deeply problematic thing.

Most of us don’t really like our bodies to begin with. As the father of a teenager, and a former teenager myself, I can attest. It’s that time when our minds feel at war with our bodies. It’s a time where we not only hate how they look, but also how they feel. We’ve always been susceptible to social trends, thinking or wishing we had different bodies, but now through our phones we’re bombarded with endless idealizations of the human body that intensify our dislike of them. And, while we may leave the more intense forms of this behind as we grow, many of us still wish we had different faces, different bodies, and sometimes act on it. Or if we are one of those fortunate beautiful people losing that beauty as we age. It can hit us especially hard. 

Not only that, but our bodies are also frail and fragile things. I mean, I’m getting to know this already, just shy of turning forty. But as we age, our bodies don’t function the way they used to. Gradually, they start to let us down, and become a source of immense grief. They get in the way of daily tasks that once took for granted, they get weaker, we become more prone to sickness and disease. I once had a gentleman in long-term care say to me that if he ever had a whiff of dementia he’d want a medically assisted death. When I asked him why, “well,” he said, “I don’t want to be a prisoner in my own body.” It’s hard to have this happen to us, or watch it happen to others who we love.

Our bodies can be problematic because they are the source of so much alienation. So much suffering and strife. So why when Jesus is raised, why does he have a body? Why would he have a body? When clearly a ghost, spirit or spectre would be preferable.

Why not a ghost? Why a body?

Well, according to the scriptures—which the risen Jesus breaks down for his disciples—the body is good.

Remember way back in Genesis, with the creation of the cosmos. God creates the universe, all of it. Physical reality culminating with life, climaxing with human beings, bodies made of the very stuff of creation.

Like, there’s a difference between the Christian view and the Greek view, and any other world view that sees our bodies, physical reality as a prison to be escaped or left behind. There was, in fact, an early Christian leader named Marcion who wanted to drop all of the Old Testament because he believed that the God described in it had to be an evil or lesser God because the world he created is subject to decay. Which the early church rendered a heresy. Why? Because creation–all of it–at the very beginning. God looks at it all and calls it good. Calls it good.

All of it’s good. Inherently, created by God to be.

It’s good, but as the theologian Cornelius Plantinga puts it, it’s “not the way it’s supposed to be.”[i] It’s good, but its fallen. It’s good, but incomplete, unfinished. It’s good, but captive to fear, evil, oppression, futility and decay.

And, according to the scriptures, God will not only redeem God’s people, not only repair the good creation, but will bring it to its final, original intended purpose of goodness and praise. Which is life with God forever. A state of everlasting peace. Which in Hebrew is shalom. Shalom, salvation, liberation, healing. The very word the risen Jesus speaks in their midst. “Peace be with you.”

The late Lutheran theologian Wolfgang Trillhas put it like this: “The physical and earth dimension of our human existence,” he says.

“The physical and earthly dimension of our human existence is indeed mortal dust, but it is not only that. It is also the agent and medium of the blessing of God, recipient of grace, an image and vessel of all joys and sorrows. The sacraments of the church are received physically. How could the body not also be a partner in the hope of our eternal life?”[ii]

I love that. Our bodies are the “agent and medium,” of God’s blessing. Partners in the hope of eternal life.

Our bodies are where our lives happen. Through our eyes we see every beautiful sunset, and our lips and stomachs process every delicious meal. We are the product of our parents’ bodies.  On our feet we stand on the earth, with our hands and our arms we embrace our parents. Our spouses, our children and our friends. Our backs are the broken by injustice. Even the gospel itself makes its way to our heads, and to hearts, through our ears. In baptism we feel God’s grace drip down our backs, and at the Lord’s Supper–which we’ll partake in shortly in the service–we taste God’s goodness.

You could say that Christianity is the first “body positivity” movement. We believe, not in the immortal soul, but the resurrection of the body. Because it’s this world, these bodies, are the “agent and medium” of God’s blessing. The ones Jesus came to save.

The moment Jesus stands with his disciples is a token, a sign, a downpayment, a living promise of that future. Not a future where this world is left behind, or our bodies discarded. But where the good world, and bodies God created are finally glorified. Made new redeemed for good. In the disciples’ midst, that peace, that shalom is touching down, colonizing the present. Not only have their eyes seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, they’ve reached out and touched it. 

The risen Jesus has a body, because the body is the thing God loves! The risen Jesus has a body because he comes to fulfil the scriptures. The risen Jesus has a body, because God has blessed the body as good, and frail, fragile and fallen as it may be, God has claimed it forever.

This is what makes this scripture a very good place to end our sermon series on Luke, actually. Because this is the promise of the gospel. This is the hope and joy that motivates, that fuels the church around the world, and this community of faith.

The fact that Jesus has a body is an affirmation of all bodies, all of creation. That our bodies are created not only to end in futility, or to be a prison to be escaped, but as objects of God’s redemption.

My body. Your spouse’s body, even after the diagnosis. Your child’s body, even as they collapse in your arms. The bodies of ailing parents slipping away. The bodies of who you’ll outlive, and enemies who will outlive your. Even your body. The body that disappoints you, the body that fails you. The body that gives into sin, and will eventually give up to death. Not gone forever. But torn from the grip of sin and death. To be made forever new.

Which means we can stop seeing our bodies as an obstacle to the good life, or a problem to be solved. Rather, we can see them as the very vessel of God’s grace. Even as they become more fragile. Even as they fail us. Even as they fade away.

The fact that the resurrected Jesus has a body tells us that our good bodies will be raised, made new, and saved. All the good stuff retained, while being brought to completion, healed of all their woundedness. As part of God’s healing of God’s beloved creation itself.

To end our series on Luke’s gospel, I’ll end with the prayer with a prayer from J. Todd Billings. Billings is Christian writer and theologian who I’ve not only learned so much from about this subject, but also someone who’s put it into practice. In 2012, Billings was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. Thanks to a stem cell transplant and ongoing treatments, he’s still living and teaching.

If there’s anyone who knows how problematic our bodies can be, it’s him. And yet, he continues to insist on the goodness of our bodies in the light of the resurrection. This prayer ends his book The End of the Christian Life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live. May this sermon and this prayer do the same for you.

Let us pray.

O Christ, fill our collapsing bodies and our flawed congregations with your Spirit to give us new life. May the Spirit’s work give the world glimpses of your kingship, your sacrificial love, your holy joy and blessedness. As your creatures, we give thanks for the wonders of creation, for each breath, for each taste of communion and fellowship. Until the final day, when dawn breaks upon us from on high and your will is done on earth as it is in heaven, ‘May our Lord Jesus Chrsit himself, and God our Father, who loved us and through grace fave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort [our] hearts and strengthen [us] in every good work and word’ (2 Thess. 2:16-17). We pray all of this through Jesus Christ. Ame

[i] Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).

[ii] Quoted in Jan Milich Lochman, The Faith We Confess: An Ecumenical Dogmatics, trans. David Lewis (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), 240.