Feeding Jesus

Luke 24:36-48
April 26, 2009

I’ve recently gotten on Facebook,
that internet webpage that helps you connect with people
all over your life
and so I’ve gotten re-connected with some of my classmates
from high school
That is weird
I graduated high school 26 years ago
and haven’t seen any of those people in all of those 26 years
It’s fun to see their pictures now --
I’m always surprised at how much they’ve aged
but with most of them, I can recognize them if I look close enough
I can recognize their eyes,
or their smile
that may have a few wrinkles added to it
or a different hairstyle and color
but usually there is something there in their face
that hasn’t really changed in 26 years
and I can see the teenager I remember

What is it that makes us who we are?
What is it about us that people can recognize in us
if they haven’t seen us for a couple of decades?
Our smile?
A dimple?
a birthmark?
something in our eyes?
Usually we see it in each other’s faces,
the person we knew and maybe loved
We look into each other’s faces to find the person we remember
But when Jesus comes back to his disciples
he shows up uninvited to their dinner party
a couple of them are talking about their walk into the town of Emmaus
about walking with a stranger
all that time they didn’t know who he was
it wasn’t until he came inside with them
broke the bread and said a blessing
they knew
and as they were telling this story,
Jesus shows up in the room
Everybody’s terrified
how did he get in?
And how did he get back from Emmaus so quickly?
Besides, stories or no stories, they know he’s dead!
Some of them saw the body
He’s supposed to be dead!
Jesus chuckles, apparently he’s not offended
“Look at me,” he says
But he doesn’t say, “look into my eyes, it’s me. “
He doesn’t say, “here, look at my smile, or the dimple on my cheek,
look into my face…”
He doesn’t say that
He says, “look at my hands and my feet… see that it’s me.”
So I got to thinking about hands and feet
Normally, if we wanted someone to recognize us,
we wouldn’t take off our shoes and say, “here, look at my feet.”
Or simply turn their attention away from our faces
and say, “look, look at my hands…”
But Jesus did
So I got to thinking about hands and feet and resurrection
Hands and feet are not usually what we notice about each other
unless, of course, there’s something different
like a finger or toe missing, or a raging scar
Normally, we don’t notice hands and feet

Sarah often complains about what she inherited from us
as far as physical characteristics
She got her big hands and fingers from her father
not sweet and delicate hands at all
Her older half-sister has always complained about that, too
Sarah gets her big feet from me
(I always said that they’re good for swimming…)
When I was a teenager on vacation down south
my Uncle David looked at my bare feet
and said, “You got yourself a firm foundation, there…”
Which was a nice way of saying, “You’ve got big feet, girl!”

Feet are pretty personal
we can be pretty self-conscious about our feet
I mean, c’mon, they’re kind of funny looking if you think about it
I find that whenever I’ve tried to get a church to
have a footwashing service
like Jesus did in the Bible,
most people don’t want to have anything to do with that
They don’t want anyone else to touch their feet
and yet, I remember once
when I was having a really hard time
and a friend of mine offered to paint my toenails
First she washed my feet in water with good-smelling stuff
that was meant to soften them up a bit
then she towel-dried them gently
and put lotion on them
It was very personal and vulnerable, of course,
but it was also soothing, comforting and healing
It made me cry

Touch is a very powerful thing
We all desperately need to be touched with gentleness
And yet we also tend to be afraid --
sometimes for very good reasons,
Our society has confused touch and intimacy
with sexual exploitation
and so we tend to be all or nothing
touch is seen as a violation and abuse
as it often is
and so we tend not to touch at all
so we’re not misunderstood

‘See my feet and my hands,’ Jesus said, ‘see that it is me’
I’ve started to notice people’s hands more lately
As I said, Larry’s hands are big and soft, very warm
his patients love it when Larry holds their hands
one man he visited in the hospital
from one of his former churches
once said that he has the hands of God
Male pastors, especially, tend to be told by parishioners
that if they’re hands are soft,
it’s obvious that they haven’t done any real work in their lives

I’ve seen many of your hands
I’ve shaken them,
I’ve put bread into them
I’ve held them when you’re in the hospital
I can remember certain people’s hands
that are particularly soft
those that tend to be cold or warm
those that prompt us to say, “cold hands, warm heart,”
as if we need to make an excuse for the temperature of our hands
Our hands contain stories about us
Sarah can show you a scar she got from falling on the gravel once
or show you a scar on her knee
from a scooter accident in Pennsylvania
“Look at my hands,” Jesus says, “and my feet,… see that it is me…”
They looked at his hands
Those hands had smeared healing mud on the eyes of the blind
or held the face of a leper
those hands held the hands of the dying
and made them warm again
Those hands held the cup of wine
and broke the bread at supper with them
those hands washed the feet of his disciples, gently, lovingly
Those hands turned over the tables of the moneychangers in the temple
and cracked a whip in anger
Those hands worked with wood over the years
created things, simple, everyday things that people hardly notice
but would notice if they weren’t there
like a table or a chair
Those same hands wiped the tears of those in grief
and held the trembling and demon-possessed
Those hands were used for blessing and loving and healing
and yet, now, as the disciples look upon them
those beautiful hands are scarred
not by a cut from a thornbush
or an errant saw in the wood shop
but those gentle hands
are marked by big, ugly, angry wounds and bruises
where a nail had pierced straight through flesh and bone

Those feet
Those feet that had walked hundreds of miles
through deserts and gardens
Those same feet that had been washed with the tears of a woman
and dried with her own hair
those feet that danced at weddings
and climbed mountains
they, too, were bruised and discolored
by horrible, violent scars
that told their own horrible story
“Look at my hands and feet,” Jesus said,
“see that it is me…”
Don’t just look at the scars that may seem so ugly to you,
but look at my hands, my feet
they are still my hands and my feet
no matter what has been done to them
they are still the hands and feet you remember
The hands that touched you with blessing
the hands that embraced you with love and acceptance
It’s me, guys!

What I love about the Resurrection
is that it shows us how important God’s creation is to God
So important, that Jesus didn’t just slough it off
and say, I don’t need a body anymore
I can just be a holy spirit
No, Jesus came back in flesh and blood
“a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bone like I do,” Jesus said

God comes to us through our bodies
So much of Christianity in the past
was about hating the body and denying it
in order to embrace the things of the spirit
but I don’t believe that God hates the body that God created
It’s a pretty masterful thing, if you think about it
why would God be ashamed of it?
I think by coming to the world wearing flesh and bone
having blood pumping through his veins
knowing the pain of a splinter
or the sensation of tired feet at the end of a day
God blessed creation
God blessed our bodies by having one

God comes to us through our bodies
As babies, we are touched by water at baptism
reminded of the creating waters of the womb
reminded even of how we were fed by our mother’s bodies
We taste the goodness of God
through dry, crumbly bread
or particularly good homemade bread
that you get to chew for a long time
We can taste God with our mouths when we take the bread in our hands
when we drink that sweet, sweet juice
and if we spill a little, we can feel its stickiness on our fingers
When I’m done serving communion,
I have hands full of bread crumbs,
that I can’t quite get all brushed off
When we pass the peace of Christ,
we shake each other’s hands
cold or warm,
sometimes we give a hug or a kiss on the cheek
but we touch each other
if someone is crying,
we rub their back, we give them a tissue
we touch them, we hold their hands

When I visit people in the hospital, there have been many times
that people who have gone through surgery
want to show me their scars
well, you don’t get much more personal than that!
As you know, those hospital gowns don’t cover much anyway
but often, male or female,
every so often, someone wants to show me their scar
I think maybe to say, hey, look at what I’ve been through
this is now a part of me
it’s a part of my story
and therefore a part of who I am
and in the years to come,
they will tell that story many times
“See my hands, see my feet, see that it really is me…”

We believe in a God that loves us
that loves what he created
God is never embarrassed by what God made
in all it’s messiness or humanness
God sees the beauty
where we might see ugliness
We know our scars, we know our wounds
some of which we can hide
some of which aren’t marked in our skin
and therefore can’t be seen by others
but they are there, and they are part of who we are
and God knows
God sees
and says, nonetheless, “you are beautiful…”

I think of Susan Boyle,
who is a 48 year old single, unemployed woman
who decided to try out for Britain’s version of
American Idol
It’s called, “Britain’s Got Talent”
She’s not attractive at all by our standards
She looks like one of our aunts that we meet at reunions
who can be kind of embarrassing,
who grabs us by face and gives us a big wet one
She doesn’t stand out in a crowd
When she walked on stage,
the judges were skeptical
When she said that she wanted to be the next Elaine Page,
a well-known Broadway star,
they obviously rolled their eyes
She didn’t even have matching stockings on
and you were pretty sure this poor woman
was going to embarrass herself
But as soon as she started singing
her voice came out so clearly and beautifully
you wondered if you were hearing Elaine Page in disguise
You could see the instant astonishment on people’s faces
and immediately while she was still singing,
the audience got to their feet, cheering and clapping
She was the ugly duckling turned into a swan ….
Now she’s all over the magazines, all over Youtube
and even with a little makeup and help with her wardrobe
she still looks like one of our aunts that we steer away from
at reunions
but now people look at her differently
they know that there is something extraordinarily beautiful inside of her
and all she has to do is open her mouth and sing
She defies the world’s accepted standards for beauty
I love it when that happens
I love it when the underdog shows off
and God turns everything we believe in about the world
completely upside down

That’s what God did in the Resurrection
turned everything we believe about the world
upside down
People die, bodies stop breathing
bodies bleed, and deteriorate in the grave
it is impossible for the dead to come back to life
and yet Jesus shows up
and says, “Surprise!”
and then he starts looking around for something to eat
I bet he had fun with that…
and I believe that God always has fun with us
when God shows us that the impossible truly is possible
and when God invites us to believe in the impossible
to see the beauty that is all around us
to take a second look
to look in the mirror and say, “wow, you’re awesome!”
To embrace our brothers and sisters
to touch, to feel, to feel the wetness of tears
the warmth of sweaty palms or ice-cold fingers
To celebrate our own flesh and bone
even if it sags in places, or we walk with a limp
or we have age spots or too many moles
God made these bodies
so that we can know the wonder, and endless blessings
of God’s goodness through our bodies
through all of God’s creation
and over and over again,
God says, “surprise!”
Things aren’t always what they seem
The dead come back to life
and live forever
the flowers that fade and die in autumn
burst through the ground once again in spring
the barren, ugly trees that seem lifeless
suddenly are full of blossoms and flowers
we who often feel like nothing special
find ourselves beloved and cherished by the living God
of the universes and galaxies
who loves us so much
that he put on this humble skin and bones
suffered many of the indignities of being human
even suffered the ultimate indignity of death
even came back with those ugly, dark, violent scars
to show us
that life and beauty have the last word
They recognized his hands, not just by the scars
but by the act of breaking bread and feeding his loved ones
by the act of lifting the cup and filling their thirst
“Do you have anything to eat?” he said
Because Jesus got hungry, too
and he, too, wanted to be fed by the ones he had fed
And we keep on feeding him,
feeding the movement he started
feeding the spirit of new life and resurrection
we do that, by doing what he did:
feeding the hungry, offering water to the thirsty
touching the one who desperately needs a gentle touch
offering blessing and honor and dignity
to those who otherwise don’t have it
we feed Jesus
we bless Jesus
we thank Jesus
by doing what he did
by seeing beauty where everyone else sees ugliness
by celebrating these awkward but beautiful bodies God gave us
to use as an instrument of celebration
and of grace …