“Keeping it Real”
Pastor Randy Butler
I’m calling this sermon “Keeping it Real” because the last year has seemed so unreal. We have been stumbling around in a pandemic haze, isolated, unable to visit as much as we like. We can’t touch each other, we can’t shake hands, we can’t hug. It was great to be in worship for Easter this year. But even that had a touch of unreality about it – fewer people, no singing out loud, subdued greetings. It felt incomplete. When I first arrived in Baker I heard about the great Easter feast that was prepared by one of our members – but in two Easters I’ve never been to it, because of COVID. We have not celebrated that most sacred of meals – the Presbyterian Potluck, where you sit close, pass and share the food, pour the drinks, talk and eat. What a strange time it has been – unreal, surreal.
Our text tells us that it is the first day of the week after the Sabbath. And the disciples of Jesus are stumbling around in a haze too. Jesus had been crucified a couple of days earlier. And yet on this day there was word of an empty tomb, the body of Jesus gone missing. And a couple of them had even claimed to see him; that he walked with them from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They claimed that he was alive, risen from the dead. And so it is that evening. They are talking about all these things and Luke says that Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” They were startled, even terrified and they thought they were looking at a ghost. This cannot be real, they thought.
Seeing the shock on their faces he says, “Wait a minute, it’s me – look at my hands and my feet – go ahead and touch me if you want. It’s me Jesus – flesh and bones just like before. I am definitely not a ghost.” And then to make the point he asks if they have anything to eat. We assume after all that ghosts don’t eat, and yet here he is eating, just like everybody else. I like to think that he is having fun with this little demonstration – eating a piece of fish with a big grin on his face while they stare in amazement. “Look,” he is saying, “I’m real.”
But we can understand the disciples because we too wonder if Jesus is real. Easter has come and gone. He is risen indeed, but a lot of life has happened since, and perhaps Jesus seems sort of ghostlike to us too. We forget, and we are faced with the concrete realities of our jobs, our families, our very real bills to pay and real deadlines to meet. We are immersed in our reality and Jesus seems unreal, like a specter on the horizon, a ghost. His presence and reality is transparent, foggy, and we are left with a kind of phantom faith, a vague sense of God and God’s presence on the margins of our lives. So how do we keep it real? How do we move from this vague sense of God to real contact with God? Our text gives us some clues.
First we stay close to Christ’s humanity. Preacher Fred Craddock notes the continuity between the risen Christ and the Jesus who died. They are one and the same. Christ remains flesh and bones, even in his risen state. He has a physical body - he eats, has physical substance and form, his wounds are still visible. He is transformed no doubt, but he is not so spiritual now that he doesn’t need a body, that he can discard his wounded body.
We do not follow an eternal Christ divorced from historical existence. The Christian life is not so spiritual that it is without suffering for others, without a cross, without our own wounds, without engagement in the concrete life of this world. Craddock says that Easter is forever joined to Good Friday; to follow the risen Christ is to follow the one who bore the cross.
When we meet and talk with each other as fellow followers of Christ, and with members in the community our conversations are not always lofty and spiritual. More often they concern the worries and fears and losses and pains of everyday life. Certainly we pray and bring God to bear on the issues, but we are often talking about a loved one, the loss of a job, the fear of sickness. Our spiritual life is not vague, ghostlike, floating in the heavens. Rather it is anchored in real life, in the flesh and bones humanity of the crucified and risen Jesus. Do you have anything to eat? Asks the risen Jesus. That is how real he is. We keep it real by staying close to him, the real Jesus.
Second, we stay close to scripture. When Jesus finishes eating his fish he reminds them of the big story of scripture that points to his life and suffering and resurrection. He does the same thing with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. In both cases Luke says that he opened up the scriptures to them. He became present to them in the scriptures. The Living Word somehow inhabits what is written. So that the disciples would say, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us as he opened the scripture to us, while he was teaching us?”
One of my early memories as I was coming to faith in Christ in my college years was being in group Bible study with others from our college fellowship group, and I remember my heart really stirring within me as we talked openly and honestly about what we were reading. My heart was burning within me. And Christ was becoming real to me. Christ is made known, becomes real as we read and study, discuss and pray the Bible together in our churches. Martin Luther once said “The Bible is alive; it speaks to me. It has feet; it runs after me. It has hands; it lays hold of me.” Jesus becomes real as we encounter the Living Word in the written word of scripture.
And last, we keep it real by bearing witness to what we know about Christ and serving in his name. Jesus is sending the disciples. They are witnesses of these things and they are to proclaim his message. Speaking and serving makes it real, makes him more real.
We all think and process differently. I’ve heard some people say that they aren’t entirely sure what they think until they express it to someone else. What is vague and unformed in our minds becomes clear when we say it out loud. When it moves from our minds and takes the form of words it becomes concrete – real. This is true of how we share our faith experience too. When we share our spiritual experience verbally with others at the appropriate times it becomes more real for us too. Anyone who has taught, any teacher, will tell you that they learn as much or more than their students.
And of course when we serve we embody Christ. We become Christ’s hands and feet. We become “Little Christs” as others have said. We aren’t getting by on phantom faith anymore, we are living out our faith by serving in practical and concrete ways. In 2018 we went to Haiti with twelve or fourteen people from our church in Seattle. Several youth went with us. We connected with and stayed in a church in a village called Chardonnieres way out on the Southwest peninsula. Our focus was to establish a relationship with our new friends in this church there, one we hoped might last over the years. And one afternoon the men from our group were invited to join the men’s group from their church. So we met and we had some conversation together but the highlight of the afternoon was playing games together. We played simple, silly games with balloons and tennis balls. Some of our youth and grown men - Haitian and American men playing games, competing and laughing our heads off. And as we were settling down and closing our time together one of the young men from our group turned to me and said, “You know, today I feel like we are doing what Christ wants us to be doing. I want to do more of this.” We were preparing another group to go when COVID hit, but every one of the youth who went on the first trip signed up to go again because in that experience Christ was becoming real to them.
So let us keep it real and stay close to the humanity of Christ, stay close to the Living Word of God in the scriptures, and speak and serve as Christ’s people in Baker. May Christ be ever more real to us and with us in the days ahead. Amen.
