Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Luke 24:36-48
March 2, 2003
While I find it hard to keep up with local press coverage, my friend David Mosser manages to sift through news dispatches from Great Britain. Which was how he learned, last November, about two British mental health workers who visited a female client, chatted for several minutes, decided she wasn’t interested in talking with them, and then left (presumably to fill out a case report in the car before continuing on to their next stop). What they somehow failed to observe was that she was dead.
They had let themselves into the flat of Patricia Harris, a 43-year-old paranoid schizophrenic, who they found sitting in the kitchen….curtains drawn….her back toward them. When she failed to respond to either their greeting or their chatter, they figured it was “just one of those days” and they left. It took another 24 hours….and a follow-up by two more seasoned case workers….to confirm what they could have learned with a longer look or a simple touch. That she was done….cold….gone.
Today’s text is not about how to tell that a 43-year-old woman is dead, but how to tell that a 33-year-old man is alive. The man is Jesus. The place is Jerusalem. The story is Luke’s. The witnesses are 11/12ths of the original dozen. The question is resurrection. Is the rumor true? Is this really him?
Lay aside, for a moment, your bewilderment as to why I would preach a text that follows Easter, 50 days before Easter. After all, Lent begins on Wednesday….Ash Wednesday. Lent is 40 days in the countdown. But you don’t include Sundays in the countdown. So add seven (allowing for the Sundays), and add another three (from today through Tuesday)….and it would appear that I am 50 days early. You’re right, I am. But don’t worry about it. Trust me.
All that’s at stake now is that there is a dead man walking….or at least standing….in their midst. What’s more, his presence is terrifying (which I, for one, don’t find the least bit surprising). They think they are seeing a ghost. Some translations use the word “spirit” (drawn from the Greek word “pneuma”). A better translation is “ghost” or “apparition” (drawn from the Greek word “phantasma”). Trust me, go with “ghost.”
What follows is the need of Jesus to prove he isn’t….a ghost, I mean. So he tells them to look at his hands and feet. Moments later, he swallows a piece of broiled fish. As for the fish, the important issue is not what he ate, but that he ate. We have parishioners today who can’t. Eat, I mean. Their ability to swallow has been trumped by a tumor or stilled by a stroke. The message (here) seems to be that Jesus has a body that works like a body….or else why would the text take special note of the fact that not only did he ask for something to eat but, when it was served, “he took it and ate it in front of them.” Which has nothing to do with allowing the disciples to observe his manners, but everything to do with allowing the disciples to observe his throat.
But enough about the fish, already. Of greater interest is his invitation to look at his hands and feet. In John’s story, something similar takes place, albeit a week later. You remember John’s story. That’s the one where Thomas is invited to make a physical check of Jesus’ extremities (“Put your hands in my holes, Thomas”). As to whether Thomas does, John doesn’t say. Here in Luke’s story, everybody’s invited to check Jesus’ extremities. But as to whether anybody does, Luke doesn’t say, either.
So are Luke and John telling the same story? The possibility exists. But it’s hard to say. What is easier to say is that both Luke and John employ similar stories to combat similar heresies. What heresies?
That Jesus’ resurrection was not so much physical, as spiritual.
That, in life, Jesus only “appeared” to be in the flesh (meaning that history should remember him, and the church should worship him, as being far less human and considerably more divine).
But hands and feet are as human as they come….as physical as they come….and maybe as ordinary as they come. “Look at my hands and feet,” says Jesus. “Did you ever see a ghost with these?”
Funny, though, that Jesus doesn’t say: “Look at my face. Listen to my voice. Give me a little quiz, the better to check out my memory. Ask me to preach a sermon, the better to check out my theology.” Jesus doesn’t say any of those things. Just, “Look at my hands and feet.” Presumably, Jesus wants them to see the holes. Although Luke doesn’t say “holes.” Neither does Luke, in his narrative of the cross, mention “nails.”
Let me ask you a question. Could you identify anybody by their hands and feet alone? I mean, those of you who are married. If we veiled your spouse’s identity, save for hands and feet, could you pick your spouse from a line-up of other people’s hands and feet? I’d like to believe I could. But I’m not sure.
Hands and feet, says Barbara Brown Taylor, are simply not the first things we notice about one another. Yet, upon closer examination, hands and feet are so telling of who we are. One of my hands has a finger that doesn’t bend, since I dislocated it playing basketball in a church league tournament on the same day Al Kaline hit three home runs on his way to a break-out season. That was the year Al hit .340 and telegraphed to the world that he was on his way to stardom. I heard every one of those three home runs sitting in an emergency room, waiting for someone to pull my pinky into place. Which eventually was done, albeit without anesthetic or expertise.
And on my left hand is a rock-hard, callous-like collection of skin, which the doctors tell me has nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with being a southern European. Genetically speaking, Slovenia did this to me….meaning that something of the story of my people is in my hand.
And the stress of my work is in my hand, too. My cuticles are far from pretty, given my tendency to pick and chew on them when feeling pressure. Which beats ulcers, I suppose. Although cuticles are more visible than ulcers. And you can tell from the fingertips of my left hand that I once played violin for twelve years, and from the fingertips of my right hand that I squeeze every last word I write from a hand-held pen.
As for my feet, they are more private, somehow. I rarely go barefoot. And it would probably surprise you to learn that I don’t own a pair of sandals. Not that my feet have anything to be ashamed of. No corns. No warts. No blisters. No hammer toes. In fact, the length of my toes is perfectly symmetrical, with the big toe being tallest and the little toe, shortest. As a child, I probably liked it when adults played “This Little Piggy Went to Market” on my feet. But as an adult, the one time I allowed somebody in a worship setting to wash (and perfume) my feet, I didn’t like it. Perhaps I feared that my feet might offend. Although I remember taking note of Jesus’ word to Peter (when Peter recoiled at the idea of his Lord washing his feet). Jesus said: “Peter, if I do not wash you, you have no part in me.”
I can identify many of you by your hands….especially those of you who come at 8:15. Every month I hold the loaf you reach for. I see hands with partial fingers….hands with gentle tremors….hands with not-so-gentle tremors….and hands sufficiently crippled so that breaking the bread is as demanding as eating the bread is satisfying. I see delicate hands, muscular hands, soft hands, hard hands, damp and sweaty hands, even nervous hands. Over the years, I have seen surgeon’s hands (which are antiseptically clean) and auto mechanic’s hands (which no bristled brush or bar of Borax will ever clean). “Clean,” of course, being relative. Wasn’t it Linus Van Pelt who once showed his hands to his sister, Lucy, telling her that they would one day be the hands of a concert pianist, a portrait artist or a rocket scientist….only to have Lucy look at them and sneer: “They have jelly on them.”
But all our hands have jelly on them. Dirt, too. And blood. Somebody’s blood. Mary Martin may have been able to “wash that man right outta her hair.” But as many times as you said to someone, “I am washing my hands of you,” you probably found it hard to accomplish (and were largely unsuccessful).
Hanging around funeral homes like I do, I know that while a few close family members may lean over the casket and kiss the face of the deceased, to whatever degree the rest of us interact with the body, we are likely to touch the hands of the deceased.
“Look at my hands and feet,” he said. And when they did, what they saw were hands that had broken bread, poured wine, pressed poultices of mud and spittle against a blind man’s eyes, lifted a little girl from death to life, danced in the air when he taught by the sea, and dared touch (against all superstition and taboo) the flesh of the ritualistically unclean and the leprously diseased.
And looking at his feet, they probably saw (in addition to the wounds from the nails) the remains of the road….along with the visual remembrance of that vulgar woman who, at an altogether lovely dinner party, scandalized everybody by wetting his feet with her tears and then drying his feet with her hair.
You know, it might have been easier had Jesus stayed dead. Then they could have embalmed him (which, if you remember, is what the schedule for Easter morning originally called for). Yes, they could have embalmed him….prepared him….dressed him (blue suit, red tie, Sunday school pin, Masonic emblem, maybe a little American flag on his lapel)….and combed his hair. Then we could have filed past him….eulogized him….maybe even sainted him. All in all, a nice, clean, complete picture.
But if today’s text was the last day we saw him, then “embalmed” was not the last way we saw him. Instead, we saw him as someone whose feet touched earth and whose hands touched life.
Which is our situation, too, is it not….people whose feet touch earth and whose hands touch life. For most of us, Lent is going to come and go and we are still going to be here. So as important as it is to tell his story from cross-bearing to tomb-transcending, it is also important to ask: “If we are the ones left, what does it mean to be the body of Christ?”
In recent years, I have not been a huge promoter of Lenten disciplines. You have not heard me urging you to read this, pray that, or give up something else. Putting a quarter a day into the slot of the cardboard folder some churches send home for Lent (the better to extract ten dollars from you by Easter) has not been a hallmark of my ministry.
But I wonder if there is something you could do with hands or feet….daily or weekly….to mark the time and keep the season. Use your imagination. Your hands can make and bake….touch and reach….lift and carry….gather and give. While your feet can stand up….step out….make a visit….or cross a bridge. So much of Lent-keeping has, over the years, tended to be cerebral. What would happen if, just once, we expressed Lent in ways more physical? As for me, I will do the only things my hands know how to do. I will write 40 notes….by hand. To whom and about what, I do not know. After all, I still have three days to figure this out. But God will lead me (as concerns the who, what, how and why).
One look at the hands and feet of Jesus and we know where he’s been. But after gazing upon the hands and feet of you and I, will anybody know where we’ve been?
Note: I am deeply indebted to the marvelously-talented Barbara Brown Taylor for raising some of the same questions and treating some of the same themes.
