Sermon 4-14-2024

Washington City Church of the Brethren

Dana Cassell

Luke 24:36b-48

I was following this week’s action by Christians for a Free Palestine on Instagram, where both Pastor Jenn and Pastor Nate made appearances, witnessing outside and blocking access to a Senate staff cafeteria inside. “Congress and their staff will not eat,” they said, “until Gaza eats.”

Y’all know that Jenn and Nate are regularly involved in this work of witness. I knew that, too. But I didn’t expect to see other faces in those instagram videos that I recognized. There, putting on a stole and singing her way to join the chain of people blocking the cafeteria, was my seminary roommate, Katie Aikins. Jenn and Katie were arrested together from the cafeteria, and Jenn managed to re-connect us. So, I’ve been thinking about Katie this week.

Katie is an experienced pastor in Philadelphia, now, but in 2007 we were both brand-new first-year seminary students, paired up as roommates in aging school-provided housing. Katie grew up in Iceland, part of a missionary family, and she brought Icelandic sensibilities with her to Atlanta.

I have a clear and distinct memory of Katie’s disdain for American drive-through coffee culture. She was so angry about the fact that Americans were so busy and harried that we would treat something as sacred and lovely and important as enjoying a cup of coffee just like any other dumb errand, not even bothering ourselves to get out of the car while we did it.

“It’s called a coffee BREAK for a reason!” I remember her exclaiming, as she carefully and intentionally prepared espresso – one for her and one for me – in our tiny apartment kitchen.

Katie’s indignance has stayed with me over the years, and I cannot – absolutely cannot – patronize a coffee drive-thru without her critique ringing in my ears. 

And the thing is: I agree with her! What a pleasure to prepare coffee slowly, to pour it into a beautiful favorite mug, to sit with hands wrapped around the warm cup, steam rising into your face, as the sun rises or sets, taking a moment to rest and reflect before or after whatever other effort was claiming your attention.

I was thinking about Katie this week, and coffee, partly because I was thinking about Jesus and how much Jesus loved to eat. Maybe that’s cliche by this point; thousands of years’ worth of churches and theologians have reflected on the fact. Christians have arranged our sacred rituals around eating together for centuries. We make a big deal about how we eat together and when, who gets to participate and who doesn’t, what we should serve and what is absolutely unworthy of inclusion on God’s buffet table. 

But I was thinking, this week in particular, about how Jesus loved eating so much that he did it several times between being resurrected and ascending back into heaven. 

In Acts, Luke’s second book, he tells us that Jesus was around for 40 days between his resurrection and ascension. We don’t have a record of much of that time, only a handful of stories from the gospels and a couple of paragraphs in Acts. But the gospels – well, at least Luke and John – are very careful to include stories about Jesus EATING with his friends during that time.

And I kind of wonder: why? Why, of all the stories that they could tell us, of all the things that Jesus could have chosen to do during those 40 days, why are the stories about eating so important?

Jesus could have done anything he wanted during those bonus days with his friends and family. He could have taken a trip to the seaside for one last trip in a fishing boat. He could have paraded down the streets of Jerusalem, mocking the Roman officials with his existence. He could have gone home and hung out with his nieces and nephews. He could have strutted into the temple and given the ornery priests a fright. He could have traveled around more, preaching and teaching and healing more sick people, raising more dead people from their graves.

And, to be honest, Jesus probably DID do some of that stuff. Forty days is kind of a long time to be back on earth. Did he sleep? Did he get bored? Were the people who knew about his existence clamoring for his attention? Did he find quiet mountaintops to hide away?

We just don’t know everything that filled those weeks. But we do know, because the gospel writers insist on telling us, that the resurrected Jesus ATE.

Now, scholars will tell you that in the ancient world there was such a thing as a “ghost test.” People who encountered a strange being and weren’t sure if that being was alive or dead could ask three questions to determine if it was a living person or a ghost:

1. Are their feet touching the ground?
2. Do they have bones inside their skin?
3. Are they capable of eating?

And the resurrected Jesus was definitely capable of eating. Proving that he wasn’t a ghost is probably one reason the gospel writers include so many eating stories in their accounts of those post-resurrection encounters. It was likely a real, live, earnest question in the early days: what WAS this? Was this actually Jesus, the real guy, or some kind of heavenly ghost, showing up in his place?

The resurrected Jesus wasn’t a ghost, and it was important to make that clear.

But I think there is more going on in these stories than just a ghost test.

In John’s gospel, Jesus cooks breakfast on the beach for his friends on the third day after he was crucified. In Luke’s gospel, he meets two disciples on the road to Emmaus and they invite him, thinking him to be a stranger, to join them for dinner after a long day of traveling. He agrees, and when he picks up the bread, blesses it and breaks it, the disciples suddenly recognize him for who he really is.

And then, a little later in Luke’s gospel, we get today’s text: Jesus appears to the gathered disciples, says “peace be with you,” and shows him the wounds in his hands and his feet. And the disciples are befuddled. Luke gives us the absolute best summary of an emotional state that we can only imagine: how WOULD we feel if our friend, teacher, leader, the one who we watched teach and preach and heal for three years, who we believed to be sent from God, who was brutally murdered by the state at the urging of the church just…showed up again, full-bodied and of sound mind? 

I’d probably do a quick ghost test, check to see if the guy’s feet were touching the floor.

Luke says it this way: “yet for all their joy, they were still disbelieving and wondering.”

Yet for all their joy, they were still disbelieving and wondering.

Just take a second and settle into how that might feel, in your mind but also in your body. Joyous. Disbelieving. Wondering.

And in that moment of joyful wonder, disbelief and disruption, Jesus says, “hey, do you guys have anything to eat?” And the disciples are shaken out of their trance, shuffle around in the kitchen, and find some broiled fish for Jesus to eat. He took it, Luke says, and ate in their presence.

It’s the ghost test, right? Jesus is proving that he’s really alive. But I think he is also soothing his friends in a very elemental way. Eating – and eating together, in particular – is an act of belonging, of calming, of stepping back and remembering how alike we are and how similar our human needs are. We all need to eat. When we do it together, we bind ourselves to each other. We meet bodily needs but relational ones, too.

I think the gospels insist on telling these stories about Jesus eating after the resurrection because eating is powerful. It is an activity of nourishment but also of safety. 

It’s scientifically proven, in fact. Food in your stomach activates the parasympathetic nervous system, whose job is to return the body to a state of rest and rejuvenation. It returns a stressed out body from the “fight or flight” stance to a resting posture. 

I suspect, in other words, that Jesus insisted on eating so much during those 40 days after his resurrection – or, at least, the gospel writers insist on telling us the stories of Jesus eating so often – because eating is a signal to our bodies to calm down, stop scanning the scene for danger, take a break, rest and digest.

I suspect that Jesus kept inviting his disciples to sit down and eat with him in those days because he knew how profound the act of eating together could be, how efficient it is at returning us – our bodies and our brains – to the present moment, the bodily reality before us, the fact of our existence and the fact that we are created, beloved, and held fast in God’s love.

Jesus knew what Katie knew: it’s called a coffee BREAK for a reason! How else are we going to receive, process and integrate the wiliness of the big world around us if we don’t pause every now and then to look around, have a snack, rest and digest?

Eating is powerful. That’s why the protest in the Senate cafeteria ended up in the Washington Post and NYTimes and Al Jazeera. Eating is powerful. That’s why Israel bombed the World Central Kitchen convoy, providing meals to starving Gazans. Eating is powerful. That’s why active duty U.S. military members going on a hunger strike to protest American involvement in genocide catches the attention of the powerful. 

But I think the power of eating holds just as true in the less visible and more mundane ways that we practice it, too. It’s why we have communion as an ordinance. It’s why we eat a whole meal together at Love Feast. It’s why churches have potlucks and soup kitchens and food pantries. We know how important eating is, and we know – in our bones and in our brains – that its power is not simply in filling empty stomachs. 

I think Jesus did so much eating with his terrified friends in those days after his resurrection and before his ascension because he knew that eating – stopping, pausing, filling our stomachs and quieting our brains – is one way to calm ourselves down and ground ourselves in the present moment. It’s a way to take a step back from the crises and the unknowns before us and tend to very basic needs.

Last time I preached with your congregation, we followed worship with a top-tier potluck. I can’t eat with you today, but I’d like to leave you with this invitation:

The next time you eat, whether it is a church potluck or a quick lunch at your desk, an afternoon coffee break or a chaotic family meal time filled with kid chatter, consider Jesus.

Not Jesus on the cross, not Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount, not even tiny baby Jesus in the manger, but Jesus, the friend who invites us to sit down with him for a meal, the roommate who insists that it’s called a coffee BREAK for a reason. Consider Jesus’ suggestion that you unclench your fists and relax your brow and let go of the day’s agenda for just a few minutes while you fill your stomach and quiet your mind. 

And then, maybe, look around and notice what’s *actually* in front of you: the people bustling through the coffee shop, your family seated around a table, the food grown and harvested and prepared and served by so many sets of hands. Just take a minute, and listen to Jesus’ words to his friends that day: “you are witnesses of these things.”