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The Eyes Have It
A sermon preached by the Reverend Dr. Stephanie J. Nagley at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Bethesda, Maryland – April 30, 2006
The days past the empty tomb bring us sighting after sighting of Jesus in the flesh. We may think that is the sure and certain evidence that Jesus was very much more than just a man.
But the truth is resurrection sightings and potential sightings were a dime a dozen back in first century Israel . Hardly a day went by someone wasn’t arguing about who they had seen or who would be seen showing up yet again.
The Sadducees didn’t buy into the resurrection idea. For them dead was dead. But the Pharisees liked the idea and to support their case all they had to do was go back to Ezekiel and Daniel.
We read the passage from Ezekiel about the valley of dry bones, when bone was reattached to bone and sinew to sinew until before you knew it the corpse came back to life.
And in Daniel it is promised to those who suffer and are martyred that they will rise from the dust of the earth.
Resurrection was part of a long standing Pharisaic hope that the world would change and God would at last be King. The messianic age and the kingdom of God were code phrases meaning that at long last redemption and justice would come.
Resurrection was not intended to be just that of one person and that the rest of the world would just go on as it always had. No, resurrection was the time when this upside down and chaotic world was set right and put in order.
Resurrection was the raising of all the righteous dead – that’s why Jesus’ rising gets linked to that of Moses and Elijah and even John the Baptist.
So, how are we to understand what those disciples saw and what they were trying to tell us?
The disciples have gathered together and two of them are regaling the others with yet another sighting – a little like one tells a tale about the fish that got away, they are telling the others about meeting Jesus on the road.
And just as they are finishing up their story he appears. At first they thought it was just a ghost brought on by the night and the wine and the story about meeting him on the road. But they rubbed their eyes and walked around him. He let them touch him, but we don’t know if any of them were brave enough to do that.
He showed them the marks on his hands and feet. And then, to further prove this was a genuine resurrection, he took some fish and ate it.
But there had to be something more than the stringing together of bones and flesh that made this sighting different than all the resurrections suspected and hoped for.
Jesus stood before them and none of the other righteous climbed out of their graves. Jesus stood before them and the world didn’t right itself. Jesus stood before them and in a way nothing had changed.
Once again, as it had since the beginning of his life, the great hope had taken place and taken place in a way nobody had imagined.
The bones and flesh came together, but the body was not that of a body resuscitated. The body of resurrection was a body of transformation.
In other words, the disciples who thought they saw a ghost instead had an experience of Jesus after death that changed their lives even though the world continued as it always had.
The resurrection appearances of Jesus changed the disciples’ world view, even though the world had not changed.
I can’t argue with what they report they saw. I wasn’t there. But surely what the disciples are telling us is that something happened to them, something they couldn’t have imagined or made up or created on their own.
This resurrection was a new thing.
The disciples stood there gawking at him full of joy and disbelief. And no doubt, like the women who discovered the empty tomb, they wanted to run for the hills.
But Jesus asked them to stand their ground and to follow him. He asked them to witness to the power of life over death, of hope over despair, of love over hate, of peace over war.
He stood there and opened their hearts and minds to the real meaning of our story with God in scripture. That this journey we take with God is to be a great exodus.
The resurrection is the final exodus, the final journey from slavery to freedom for all of God’s people.
The resurrection is our road to trusting that when our hearts are tuned to the love of God we can dare to dream, we can dare to do anything that reflects that love and not have failure. We can dare to have the last word on our striving.
When the disciples saw Jesus and they were opened to the true fullness of our story with God they looked through the eyes of faith.
And so we pray this day that we, too, have the eyes of faith.
Our vision is not of this world only as it is but of the world as it can be.
Our vision of a world is a new creation and a new way of life for everything and everyone that dwells therein.
This is the meaning of the resurrection to those who saw Jesus standing in front of them. That is the story they were telling us about what happened after the empty tomb.
But it’s a long time since that time. And we’re here and listening to the post Easter story for the umpteenth time.
Maybe we need to reconsider what the resurrection means to us and the story that we need to tell about the Risen Christ.
We know the story, but knowing the story may not be enough anymore.
There are a lot of people who know the story, but that doesn’t seem to make the world a kinder or better place.
In fact, sometimes I worry that Christianity is pretty much on its death bed. I worry that we’ve lost the liveliness of what happened before and after Jesus died. I worry that we have heard the story so many times we aren’t hearing the story at all.
And I worry there are those people and those churches that have taken the story of Jesus and buried it, replacing the real deal with something that isn’t Christian at all.
As someone said, “sitting in a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more that sitting in a chicken coop makes you a chicken.” You can know the story and you can go to church but that’s not enough.
The resurrection is about transformation – it’s about changing lives and changing the world in which we live. I think it’s about giving us the courage to be courageous and outrageous and alive with God.
But then I’m probably preaching to the wrong people. You’re here because you think there might be something to all this. Somewhere along the way Jesus stood in front of you and said, “Take a look, take a good look.”
You may believe there’s a power in this world that empties tombs and raises the lame and gives sight to the blind. Or you may just be curious, like the person who was attracted to church because he knew the sermons were so horrible something had to be going on that made the people come.
We may know the story but this isn’t about knowing, this is about trusting, and looking through the eyes of faith. And through the eyes of faith what we’re attempting to see is the evidence of resurrection.
But for us we’re not going to see Jesus, not exactly. Time has passed and the resurrections that tell us he’s here are a little different.
He’s here you know. It’s just that he’s here in the person next to you. Look at that person’s hands and feet. You’ll see the wounds if you look closely. Look at your own hands and feet, there are the wounds where life has pulled and twisted you, the signs of how life has taken you on a journey and changed you, perhaps reawakened you, perhaps resurrected you.
Henri Nowen tells a version of a story about a young man, who is running from an enemy. The young man finds a village in which to hide. The people were kind to him and protected him. Then one day the enemy came into the village searching for the young man. They threatened to burn down the village unless the villagers handed over the young man. The villagers were afraid and rightly so. They turned to their minister for guidance.
The minister was torn between protecting the people and the young man. The minister went to his study and read the Bible hoping to find the answer. After many hours he read, “It is better that one man dies than the whole people are lost.”
The minister closed the bible, called the soldiers and told them where the young man was hidden.
That night an angel came to the minister and asked, “What have you done?”
He said, “I handed over the fugitive to the enemy.”
The angel said, “But, don’t you know that you handed over the Messiah?”
‘How could I know?” The minister replied.
The angel said, “If you had put down your bible and looked into his eyes you would have known.”
Our experiences of the risen One come as we look at each other and into each other’s eyes. We look through the eyes of faith. That’s how we see Jesus now. That is how resurrection happens for us each and every day. And when we see him in each other how can we do less than set the world a spinning, and spin the world toward the long awaited kingdom of God.
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