The Gospel is a Song
An Eastertide sermon by Jamie Howison, on Luke 24:36b-48
Here is how tonight’s gospel reading begins: “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” “While they were talking about this,” which should beg the question, who is talking here, and about what? That pushes us back to the matter of the immediate context of this evening’s reading, which is actually really important if we want to lay hold of the fullness of this gospel text.
The who is the eleven remaining disciples, who are engaged in conversation with a man named Cleopas and his companion, perhaps his wife. Cleopas and his companion had left Jerusalem early that Sunday morning, having already heard that some of the women had gone to Jesus’ tomb and found it empty. There’d even been talk of angelic messengers who had told the women that Jesus was alive, but these two had had no idea what to make of it all, and so had decided to still head out in the direction of Emmaus, quite probably on the first leg of their journey home. These two weren’t numbered among the disciples, but they were followers of Jesus who had been caught up in the hope that Jesus “was the one to redeem Israel,” as they themselves say in the context of the story. And maybe that hope had been so dashed by his death at the hands of the Roman Empire that they just headed toward home, regardless of what the women might say about an empty tomb. Sometimes heartbreak can be like that.
Well as you know, as they walk along that road they are joined by a stranger and they begin to talk together. Luke—consummate storyteller that he is—alerts the reader to the fact that this stranger is in fact Jesus, leaving Cleopas and his companion in the dark on that count. And as they walk, they tell the stranger about their dashed hopes and the strange story of angels that the women had shared, to which the stranger replies, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” and then launches into a wholesale interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures, showing how a suffering Messiah should surprise no one.
As the day nears its end these two travellers decide they need to stop at Emmaus, and they urge this stranger to stay on with them. In Luke’s telling, this is what happens next:
“So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”
Boom! The big reveal! Of course! “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” And back to Jerusalem they run, straight to the disciples to tell them, “how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
That’s what they were talking about when the risen Christ suddenly stood among them with his greeting, “Peace be with you.”
Yet they’re terrified, afraid they are seeing not the risen Jesus, but a ghost. No, Jesus says, it isn’t a ghost… it is me. See the scars in my hands and feet… it is me. And so Luke continues, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, Jesus 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.”
Well, his eating a piece of fish seals it for them, and they can now see him in his fullness, just as the breaking of bread had done for Cleopas and his companion. Was it significant that it is fish that Jesus eats? While there is no way to know for sure, I believe it was. First bread and now fish, which could well hearken back to the stories of the feeding of the multitudes with what? Bread and fish. For this reason, many scholars believe that the fish had a much larger symbolic significance in the early church. Long before the cross was adopted as the primary symbol of Christianity, the fish filled that role. Part of this was on account of the letters of the Greek word for fish— ikhthū́s spelled iota, chi, theta, upsilon, sigma—forming an acrostic proclaiming Jesus: Iēsoûs Khrīstós, Theoû Huiós, Sōtḗr - Jesus Christ, God’s Son and Saviour. But beyond that, the fish was an important symbol—a Jesus symbol—because of stories like this one, and the feeding of the multitudes, and the resurrection story in John where Jesus grills fish for the disciples on the beach, and his early call to the fishermen to leave their boats behind and follow him in the “fishing” for people. When they can’t quite get their heads around the fact that he is risen, his eating a piece of broiled fish settles and persuades them.
Then, and only then, can he do for them what he has just done for Cleopas and his companion on the road, namely to “open their minds to understand the scriptures;” “the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms.”
It is about what they can touch, taste, smell, and see. It is at once the familiar—taking food—and the utterly new, because it is also more than just food for the sake of food. This bread and fish are now in the realm of the symbolic, of the sacramental, which speaks to them of something deeper. Based firmly in the teaching of St Augustine, the classic Anglican definition of a sacrament is set out in the old catechism as “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” and in a very real sense that is precisely what broken bread and broiled fish do for these people in these stories; it moves them inwardly and spiritually, allowing them to not only hear the words of the scriptures but to integrate those words into their very selves.
In his book Art and Faith, Makoto Fujimura observes that, “Some things, of course, are best conveyed in a three-point sermon. But we would lose a great deal if we heard the Good News delivered only as linear, propositional information, for the gospel is a song.” The gospel is a song, Mako insists, which is why these bits of shared food are so very significant in these stories; why symbols move us, why we always have music in our liturgies, why the breaking of eucharistic bread is so central to who and what we are. It is also why the extension of hospitality through shared meals is so crucial to the building of relationships, to the building of community.
Oh, I know. We can only do such things provisionally and partially right now in these unsettled and unsettling times. We are all limited in how and where and when we might actually share meals together; whether fish and bread or burgers and pizza. Maybe we get creative and do that on zoom, or we drop off a meal for someone at home, or we sit socially distanced in a back yard, paper plates balanced on our knees.
We break bread in this way. We sing in this way. We proclaim the Word and we offer prayer in this way. It is not a bad thing, and along the way it has not been without some lovely surprises, with new friends joining us online, and old friends rekindling connections. But still we long for when the outward and visible signs can be fully celebrated together, here in this space, raising the roof with the fullness of our voices together.
“What if the entire Bible is a work of art,” Mako Fujimura asks, “rather than the dictates of predetermined ‘check boxes’ for us to get on God’s good side? What if we are to sing back in response to the voice of eternity echoing through our broken lives?”
Well, right now to “sing back in response to the voice of eternity echoing through our broken lives” is to hear stories such as the ones told tonight, and to respond with bread in this way, with singing in this way, with prayer in this way; hands and hearts open wide to what Christ is yet doing in us through Story and Sacrament, through art and symbol and music, and through his deep and abiding promise that he brings us his peace, right in the midst of hard days and broken hearts.