Embodied
Luke 24:36b-48
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
I keep going backwards. On Easter I preached on a passage written years after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension; last week I preached on the Acts of the Apostles spreading the good news in the immediate aftermath of Jesus’ ascension to the heavens; and today I’m going further back to immediately after the resurrection. And there’s an appropriately very Easter theme— the belief in the bodily resurrection and the incredible, awesome hope that comes with it.
Today we meet the disciples after they’ve heard the news that Jesus has been resurrected, but they have not seen Jesus yet. They’re inside, likely hiding from Roman authorities who are no doubt looking for more Jesus followers to make examples out of. Our scripture for this morning
starts in a rather odd spot—“While they were talking about this…”—They were talking about the resurrection, talking about how they had heard from the women that their Lord had risen… and yet when Jesus walks in and greets them, they’re still filled with fear, awe, and disbelief. (As an aside, this could very easily be a “believe women” sermon, but I’ll save that for another time). Jesus is showing them what they were just discussing, and, presumably believed to be true—and yet, seeing the real thing in front of them was still shocking.
And when Jesus saw their awe, he questioned them—“…why do doubts arise in your hearts?”—but it feels gentle, simply a question more than a scolding. And there’s no doubting Thomas in this story, so without anyone demanding it, Jesus offers them his hands and his feet so they may see his wounds, so they can see that it is the very same Jesus they knew and trusted and followed, still scarred from the cross. And then… “Do you have anything to eat?” It’s almost comical, right? Such a common, earthly question in the midst of the disciples still shocked and questioning. I imagine this simple question stopping them in their tracks, quieting mid-sentence to tentatively and slowly make him a plate. I imagine them gawking at him, slack-jawed, as he ate that broiled fish. But I also imagine seeing him eat, seeing him take part in this deeply human, biological need of consuming sustenance, made them realize that Jesus did truly rise from the dead.
That was the point—he needed to do something so simple, something we take for granted, to show that not only did he rise from the dead, but he was more than just as spirit or a ghost—he was the same human person he was before, in need of sustenance and energy—the same as before, only scarred. And then it was around this meal, communing, back together with his friends, in the flesh, that Jesus is finally able to make them understand. His well-meaning, but often obtuse disciples, finally understand Jesus’ mission as one to be born of a mortal woman, to live a short time to minister to all, to suffer, to be killed and to rise again. And he gives them their mission— to continue his own.
The thing that really stuck out to me upon my reading this time around was the physicality of it all— the showing of the bodily scars, the hunger and asking for a meal, the eating in the presence of his friends. This is what helped the disciples to believe, to understand the miracle that happened, and to be inspired to set out on the dangerous and incredible mission of spreading the good news—that death has been conquered, that life is possible for all.
I read an article from The Atlantic a couple weeks ago that I can’t stop thinking about— it’s called End the Phone-Based Childhood Now by Jonathan Haidt who just came out with a book on this very topic entitled The Anxious Generation. The statistics were alarming, and I was especially disturbed and shocked reading them as the mom of a daughter—I didn’t get my first smartphone until graduate school, so there was no navigating constant social media and screen time for me as a child or a teen, and so despite the fact that Frankie isn’t even a year old, I think often about raising her in this strange new world that I really didn’t have to deal with. The article showed that self-harm rates among girls ages 10-14 have skyrocketed since 2010; rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm among generation Z are at higher levels than any other generation we have data for. 2010, 2011, 2012—these are the years smartphones began to be ubiquitous.
There are so many reasons social media and constant use of smart phones are terrible for adolescents and teens, but one thing that Haidt writes that made me connect his article to today’s scripture was this—
…perhaps the most devastating cost of the new phone-based childhood was the collapse of time spent interacting with other people face-to-face. A study of how Americans spend their time found that, before 2010, young people (ages 15 to 24) reported spending far more time with their friends (about two hours a day, on average, not counting time together at school) than did older people (who spent just 30 to 60 minutes with friends). Time with friends began decreasing for young people in the 2000s, but the drop accelerated in the 2010s, while it barely changed for older people. By 2019, young people’s time with friends had dropped to just 67 minutes a day. It turns out that Gen Z had been socially distancing for many years and had mostly completed the project by the time COVID-19 struck.
Haidt then goes on to talk about four reasons this sharp decline of face-to-face interaction is so detrimental and tragic. He writes that real world interactions are embodied, that we use our hands, we use facial expressions, we learn how to respond to body language. He explains that real world interactions happen in real time; we’re immediately interacting with one another, instead of stressing out over a text that doesn’t get an immediate response—on oh, is my friend mad at me? (I may not have grown up with smartphones, but I know that anxiety quite well). He then notes that one-to-one or one-to-several communication is the norm in real world interactions, leading to deeper relationships, rather than online when you might be broadcasting to a large audience, or communicating quickly with various different people and groups at one time. And lastly, he writes,
…real-world interactions usually take place within communities that have a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest in relationships and repair rifts when they happen. But in many virtual networks, people can easily block others or quit when they are displeased. Relationships within such networks are usually more disposable.
So. Let’s imagine Jesus’ death and resurrection happening today. Imagine the disciples simply texting each other about it. Maybe some are flakey with their phones and they forgot to charge them, so they’re incommunicado. Maybe some of them super anxious are just furiously texting and driving the others crazy. Maybe you have a doubting Thomas being a cynical devil’s advocate and taking away from the miracle that occurred. Maybe you have people using AI, creating deepfakes of Jesus, making everyone super skeptical and suspicious. Maybe you have a couple of this ultra-skeptical disciples just blocking the group chat, being completely done with it, less people to spread the good news.
Point being—I don’t think the good news would’ve been spread in today’s world that is so full of misinformation, distrust, anxiety, and isolation.
It was the disciples being with Jesus, in person, in the real world, seeing him in the flesh, reading his body language, sharing a meal with him, and really listening to him that made them believe and then made them go out to tell people what had happened, and tell people what is possible.
So in this world, where digital communication isn’t going anywhere, how do we spread the good news? How do we help people to understand what we do, what the spirit of resurrection really is? It’s certainly not by sharing a meme to our Instagram accounts. And sending texts of good wishes is lovely, but nothing replaces face-to-face communication, being in community with one another. Having real, embodied interactions with one another helps us to understand each other, helps us to understand the truth of one another and the truth of the world. There’s less room for misunderstanding and misinterpretations, and therefore less from for anxiety and separation.
In his article Haidt cites the French sociologist Emile Durkheim saying that “…a society that fails to bind its people together with a shared sense of sacredness…is not a society of great individual freedom; it is, rather, a place where disoriented individuals have difficulty setting goals and exerting themselves to achieve them.”
A shared sense of sacredness. How do we bring this back, church? How to we bring this back to the least religious state in the country? How do we bring any shared sense back to a country that puts so much emphasis on individual freedom to the point in which we are wholly failing our youth? How do we come [i]together to support a happier, safer, generation of people. How do we come together to support each other? Because make no mistake, this is affecting people of all ages, as we can see with the rampant spreading of conspiracy theories and misinformation—we’re seeing people lost in isolation of the internet ether, trying to find connection and community in all the wrong places in all the wrong ways.
I was talking to Dexter the other day about the fact that our first session of Pub Theology went well, and he made the excellent observation that these days we have to “bring the church to the community, rather than bring the community to church.” And I think that’s true—we have to look for new ways to be the church in the world, new ways the church can really be one with the community again.
Last week we talked about how the apostles were riding high after their experience seeing the risen Jesus, living a utopian existence despite prosecution from the Romans, bound together by this miraculous and sacred experience. Surely it was easy for them to remain a united front when they had shared so much incredible trauma, grief, and unfathomable joy together. And in today’s passage, we see how that joy came to be—it started with some disbelief. It started with not understanding. But Jesus gently helped them to understand with some broiled fish—a shared meal. Something so simple to help them realize that the impossible had become possible. Death had become life.
We can start simply. We can continue to share meals with one another and with the community. We can continue to share music and joy with the community, as Jan has been with her singalongs and as she’s planning at the end of month. We can continue to share our knowledge, our wisdom, and most of all, our love with this broken world. But we have to make a real effort. We have to work together, really together—these experiences have to be embodied. We have to be face-to-face, we have to be the church out in the world and show people what binds us together.
“You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus says to his friends. We’re not, though. And yet, thus far, we’ve managed to bind ourselves together through this shared faith, through shared ideals, through shared love—through the shared belief that there is something greater than us, something that can bind us all together, regardless of how fractured and broken things are today. And so we will continue bringing the community to the church, and bringing the church to the community—we will continue to share meals, to share our gifts, and share our love with all who we encounter. And we will create a better world—connected, embodied, in real time—for generations to come. Amen.
[i] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/03/teen-childhood-smartphone-use-mental-health-effects/677722/
