Becoming the Body for One Another (Luke 24:36-39)

Becoming the Body for One Another

May 25, 2025

Easter Season

Luke 24:36-49

By: Pastor Mike

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Without warning, the risen Jesus appeared in the midst of his disciples gathered in Jerusalem. They were together telling feverish stories in hushed tones about the impossible possibility that Jesus is alive. The women had a story, Peter had a story, the two from the Emmaus road had a story. When Jesus suddenly appears as a member of the group, the disciples experience a whole range of volatile sensations: terror, fear, disbelief, doubt, joy. Jesus rides out that moment of disturbance with them, offering more and more of himself until they are ready to have their minds opened to understand their new vocation as witnesses of Jesus’ forgiveness. 

One of the beautiful features of Luke’s Gospel is the way that the opening and closing chapters talk to’ and at times parallel each other. Luke chapter 1, concerned with the incarnation of Jesus – the Son of God conceived and born in human flesh – contains two stories that share many elements with this resurrection story from chapter 24.

When Zechariah the priest is praying in the Jerusalem temple, the angel Gabriel appears to him to tell him that he and his wife Elizabeth will have a son in their old age, a little boy who will grow up to be John the Baptist. Luke says that “when Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear” (Lk 1:12). Later, Gabriel visits a young woman named Mary, and announces to her that she will give birth to a holy child, the Son of God.  She, like Zechariah, was “was greatly troubled at his words” (Lk 1:29).

A Greek word links these two scenes to one another and to chapter 24. Tarasso, to be inwardly disturbed, like calm water that’s been struck and churned into a froth. It’s a word that can mean being startled, greatly troubled, baffled, confused, agitated, terrified. Like Zechariah and Mary in Luke 1. Like the disciples in Luke 24. An encounter with holiness and mystery sets them off balance, freaks them out. Doubts creep in, and their systems struggle to adjust to what they are experiencing.

Another parallel: in the same way that Jesus says “Peace” to the disciples, Gabriel says “Do not be afraid” (Lk 1:12, 30) to both Zechariah and Mary. And just as the disciples are being prepared at the end of the story to receive the Holy Spirit and become the Church – witnesses of Jesus death and life; proclaimers of forgiveness – so at the story’s beginning Gabriel is setting the stage for the Holy Spirit to saturate John and Jesus and the women who will conceive and give birth to them. 

These connections between beginning and end are not just artistic and interesting. They teach us something about the arc of faith, about how we come to trust that God is alive and moving in the world and wants something to do at a personal level with us.

An apparition of a dead person. A nebulous image. A faint trace of something. Such are the dictionary’s definitions of ghosts. And why wouldn’t most of us struggle from time to time with the sense that God has faded into the insubstantial realm of the ghostly, that God is not someone vividly alive and in touch with our hearts and our world? Rampant political corruption and the corrosion of once-reliable systems and safety nets in our - country. Genocide in Gaza, civil war in Sudan, the rapid warming of the global climate. Deregulation of artificial intelligence, widening wealth gaps, news algorithmically fed to us to keep us both enraged and scrolling. The stories and symbols and scriptures central to our faith, even God’s name, co-opted by Christian nationalists who worship power over others. The things we’ve suffered; the ones we’ve lost. The things we’ve done and left undone. Our shame and grudges and sins. 

It's not hard to understand why God might seem ghostly. God as faint memory, as vague concept, as caught somewhere between life and death. The idea that Jesus has defeated sin and death and lives among us and wants to clothe us with power can seem like a fantasy. Crashing against the hard, sharp realities of life, have you ever wrestled with the reality of God, not least with the reality of the good and kind Jeus of the Gospel? Have you ever doubted, ever been troubled or confused or afraid, ever had questions? If you’d be honest and answer Yes, then you can understand the initial reactions of Zechariah and Mary and the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. In a world that crucifies, what does it mean to be suddenly met by a Jesus who lives? 

Jesus’ encounter with the disciples in Luke 24 shows us the way Jesus guides us from our fears and doubts into trust and openness. For starters, Jesus is not annoyed by our questions and doubts. Our struggle to see clearly and to trust draws him more deeply toward us. He doesn’t shame or punish the disciples for needing time to come around. He doesn’t present them with a treatise on the theology and physics of resurrection. He doesn’t smack his forehead for the umpteenth time and grumble about how their initial terror proves once and for all that they’ll never be good enough to do what he needs them to do. 

He wants them – he wants us. And he is patient and kind in relentlessly offering himself. No matter how long it takes, eventually we come to see that Jesus – the Man of Sorrows, the Prince of Peace, the Friend of Sinners, the Forgiver of Enemies – is not a ghost who haunts us with see-through promises. He is not a phantom who appears every so often to frighten us into doing or not doing something. Jesus is not a melancholy memory haunting the halls of our minds or our churches. He is a person – a person who speaks and touches and eats. A person holding out his hands to each of us.

He moves us to this place of trust in three simple gestures. First, he speaks a word of peace: “Peace be with you” (v. 36). Second, he shows them his hands and his feet and invites the disciples to touch him (v. 39). Finally, he asks if they have anything edible lying around and then eats the piece of fish that they give him (vv. 41-43). From speaking to touching to eating. This is a way of deepening involvement, deepening physicality and intimacy. 

Jesus spoke to them. He told them that he loved them, that he had forgiven them, that they have nothing to fear if they would trust in him and commit to his way. He proclaimed God’s peace in their midst.

Then he presented his hands and feet to them. This is significant. The wrists and shins, hands and ankles bore the scars and mangling of the crucifixion he had endured. We know from John’s Gospel that the resurrected body of Jesus is a wounded body; though glorified, Jesus still bears the marks of what he went through. He presented the fullness of who he was – what he had suffered and what he had overcome and the love that suffused it all – he presented this to the disciples. He held nothing back from them. It was as if his body was testifying, ‘See God’s beauty and glory shining through my wounds.’ He gave them permission to feel the firm reality of his victory by touching his body, his lived story.

Finally, he asked them for something to eat. On a surface level, we might say that ghosts don’t eat. They don’t have bodies to metabolize the food; they don’t need calories. This was proof of Jesus’ physical presence. On a deeper level, we see here that Jesus asks the disciples to feed him. He calls them into action – the act of serving. They pull from their own resources to feed this hungry body who stands before them. And as they are drawn into that act of participation and service, they come to know the living God, not the ghostly apparition. 

Now, the risen Christ appeared to the disciples for forty days and then ascended into heaven. He showed us the way, and then poured out his Spirit so that we might practice the way for one another and for the world, everywhere and at all times.

This is how we love each other into the Body of the Christ. Whenever I feel like Jesus is slipping into the realm of the insubstantial, the vague, the hardly there; whenever God feels ghostly, this is how I need you, the Church, to minister to me.

I need you to come and be his Body for me. I need to hear you speak his word of peace. I need you to calmly be with me as I move through those stages of inner disturbance, through my doubt, fear, and bafflement. I need you to tell me that God is loving and forgiving and cares about what I’m going through.

I also need you to come and offer yourself. Be the tangible hands and feet of Jesus to me by sharing your story of beauty and brokenness. Let me see and handle the reality of his victorious life in your pockmarked story. How you’ve suffered and sorrowed but not lost your soul, because he’s guarded it with his love.

And then I need you to ask me for food. By which I mean, I need you to gently call me into action, to ask me to participate again in helping you address your own hunger. Invite me to share the meager thing I have on hand, so that I can stop wallowing in my distress, waiting to figure things out in my head, and instead be met by truth through loving contact with your needs.

That’s what I need from the Church when God feels like a ghost, when the promises of God feel like they’re fading or showing themselves to me in the slightest, most fleeting of moments. Proclaim peace, share your story, ask me to feed you – and you will make Jesus present to me, because you are, in fact, his Body.

And this is the same pattern for how we love the world in his name, how we do the work of witnessing that he has called us to do.

We are called to speak peace to the world: forgiveness and freedom in his name, boundless love and mercy.

We are called to put ourselves on display, be bold with our stories – with the beautiful love that has gathered up our suffering into a testimony. We need to be in touch with, accessible to, reachable by those in the world who need to see the proof of his triumph over hopelessness, addiction, shame, or anger. The proof is in our bodies, our stories, our resurrected wounds.

And then we go the furthest step, and eat in the presence of our neighbors. We sit around the table, fellowshipping and sharing life. Maybe we even ask them to feed us, to share something of their own resources with us. We hunger for what they have to give, and by honoring their story, their gifting, by receiving with gratitude what they have to offer, we call them into a healing participation in the body of Christ.

You might ask yourself: What do I need from the Body of Christ today to shore up my own trust and hope? A word of peace? A companion whose story can give me hope? A place to offer what I have and see what happens? Ask for what you need and it will be given to you.

And you might ask yourself: How is Jesus calling me to be his witness in the world? Where and to whom am I being called to speak his peace? Where and to whom am I being called to share my story and the fullness of my presence? Who does God want me to break bread with, or invite into the great work of feeding the hungers – spiritual and physical of the world? 

May God lead us out of the ghostly and into his goodness.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.