Flesh and Bones and Broiled Fish
26 April 2009
Lapsarian man has been redeemed. Fallen man has been saved and released from the enslavement of sin. The sin of Adam and the sin of Eve, “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh” has been over come by the flesh and blood reality of Jesus Christ risen from the dead; flesh and blood, flesh and bone; and broiled fish. The resurrection appearances of Jesus, the meeting with Mary Magdalen in the garden outside the empty tomb, the encounter of the road to Emmaus, the appearance to the disciples in the Upper Room, all have at their heart the physical reality of Jesus’ presence: not a phantasm, not an hallucination, not a trick of the light. But recognition came only after a lack of recognition.
Mary Magdalen mistook him for a gardener. Those of the road to Emmaus walked with him some way in ignorance before recognising him in the breaking of bread. Because Thomas had not seen him with the other disciples, gloomy, doubting Thomas, he needed to see, touch and feel the physical reality of his presence before recognition was assured. In the Gospel this morning, the disciples thought that they were seeing a ghost. It was the physicality of his hands and feet, the touch and the feel of his flesh and bone, the eating of broiled fish that convinced them. Touchingly domestic and ordinary it may have seemed but necessary nevertheless so that they may be authentic witnesses to the truth, the fulfilment of all that had gone before, all that now slotted into place. They understood what they had not understood before. No longer dumbfounded, their eyes had been opened, their senses engaged, their minds convinced. They were now witnesses to the fulfilment of Christ’s destiny.
The resurrection appearances of Jesus are not straightforward. They remain a stumbling block for many. But would they have been any more convincing if he had been recognised immediately and without hesitation of doubt, or the dogged scepticism of Thomas? “Goodness, Jesus, Master, Rabbi, how good to see you. Welcome back. How was harrowing Hell? A little broiled fish?” Would such an acceptance, as if nothing had happened, be more convincing; or would it be even more deeply suspicious? Because something had happened. Things were different. They did not recognise him until he has proved himself, until he had convinced them, had overcome their natural inclinations and hesitancies. Some may possess the facility to believe easily and uncritically, but that is not given to most of us: and we need some convincing.
The reason that the disciples were nonplussed and the reason there are those today who remain unconvinced is because all this, far from being
expected, far from being a normal phenomenon of everyday existence, took everyone by surprise. You sometimes hear sermons on the Resurrection (I have preached some myself) and apologetics for the Resurrection which argue that the Resurrection was something akin to the regular breaking of morning after night, it was as sure as the dawn and as natural as the movement from winter to spring. Well, it might have been in the eye and mind of God but that is not how it looked to those witnessed it then and not how it looks to us now.
The whole point about the Resurrection, the point entirely missed by those who want some rational explanation within their own experience, is, that it is not like any other experience. To try to see it as something within our sphere of comprehension is to reduce its significance and to miss the point. It is not a natural event: that is the point of it. It is much more than that. It does not simply endorse or mirror the regular pattern of the natural world. It defies it and transcends it.
Christ’s Resurrection is an event; an event within history and an event beyond history; an extraordinary and transforming event, the event which is the basis of our Faith and we share in that event through that faith and through our baptism. The reality of Christ’s Resurrection: resurrection not resuscitation: is the absolute victory of an “indestructible life” over the forces of death and annihilation, of the light of truth over the error of darkness, of the good over the evil in their stark polarities. It speaks, and speaks powerfully and forever, of the destruction of all that is evil, negative, corrupt and debilitating in the world and it is a victory in which we can and do share and in which we can and do live.
The Resurrection asserted and continues to assert something beyond the constraints of time and space within the confines of this world and its natural order. It speaks eternally that through Jesus Christ we can change death into life, darkness into light, despair into hope. And hope is not the same thing as mere optimism. Viewed in the perspective of human history, there seems little scope for optimism or sometimes even for belief in the power and goodness of God but the Resurrection gives us something better than optimism, it gives us hope. The Resurrection asserted and continues to assert ultimate goodness will triumph in the world when the opposite seems so often to prevail. In the Resurrection the values of truth, and goodness, and justice, and supremely love are triumphant and victorious, however weak and powerless they appear to us in our darker moments, in our narrow and limited understanding.
One of the characteristics of Catholic Christians is that they take the world as God’s creation seriously and believe that it is fundamentally good. Yet they also take the Incarnation seriously and believe that the world needs to be redeemed and sanctified. The Catholic Christian holds these two together because we embrace the whole of life. We take seriously the fact that God who was in Christ is the God made the world and the God who redeemed the world and that he did not make a great mistake when he did that.
Attesting to that is that fact that the Resurrection is the significant tenet of our Faith that marks us out that makes us different from every other religion. The Gospel today provides that insight into the essence of our Christian life. When we share in the life of Christ, when we appreciate how he touches us and has made a difference to us and the way we live our lives, we are aware of something powerful. But to leave it there is somehow unsatisfactory. Language like that leaves us with something lacking: it is too nebulous, too vague, too wispy and soft-centred. In order to make this experience more hard-edged, more concrete in its reality, the Gospel speaks of Christ’s tangibility, his physicality, his real presence witnessed in flesh and bone and in the eating of that broiled fish. Here we can understand that there is something firm and rooted, focussed and anchored in the human condition that is connected to the holy.
Some years ago, Monsignor Graham Leonard said that rather than use the familiar phrase, “the risen life in Christ” he preferred the phrase “the transfigured life in the risen Christ.” To use the risen life of Christ could too easily and glibly give the impression of our lives detached, as remote and isolated from the ordinary patterns of everyday living: something floating outside reality. Whereas the transfigured life in the risen Christ suggests that sense of glory that was seen in Our Lord’s Transfiguration and which has to be seen in every aspect of our human life.
And it is within the ordinary living of our lives that we can experience that transfiguration. It is not something that is reserved for a spiritual elite. We do not have to be extraordinary or to do extraordinary things to consecrate our lives, ourselves to God, to experience transfiguration in the risen Christ. That transfiguration is to become what we are, to become that which God made, to realise in heart and mind that which God has given us. The further we move towards that full and authentic realisation of ourselves, the more vivid is the reality of that which is holy: it is not an inaccessible world. We are at our best, and at our most holy, when we know ourselves. It is for this reason that the prayer of Saint Augustine can have such resonance for us: “Lord, let me know myself, for then I shall know you.”
To assist us in our transfiguration in the risen Christ, we have an Easter faith and the sacraments of the Church, those means of grace and hope of glory. They must not be thought of as mere ritual and rites of passage, pleasant ceremonies to mark our path through life. We must never think of sacraments simply as aids in life, help along the way. They are profoundly more significant than that. They enable us to be transfigured into what we are meant to be. They are the means of entering into a relationship with God himself: a relationship that will be fully consummated in eternal life with Christ. We are clearly not committed to the manifestly false idea that eternal life is the continued living this earthly life forever: endless life without perpetual youth is an unappealing prospect. Rather, the promise that we are offered by Our Lord in his Body, the Church, through faith and through the sacraments is an entry into an existence that raises us above our ordinary lives and invites us to experience the transfiguring fact that an existence is infinitely more real and more permanent than that which we commonly experience in merely living. When Our Lord says to us that he is offering us eternal life, it is a gift of his very self. It is a gift unconditionally made, expensively won for us, gloriously affirmed for us in his risen life, made in perfect love and in our acceptance of that gift we are able to enter into that relationship and fellowship with God ourselves, a transfiguration into glory.
Father William Davage