The Persuasive Fish

The Persuasive Fish--January 31, 2019

"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 it in their presence." [Luke 24:36-43]

Jesus is fully human from beginning to end to new beginning.  He doesn't shed his skin at the cross to become a disembodied spirit or a beam of light or a warm and fuzzy feeling--he remains one of us through the grave, into resurrection, and forever.

That's a big deal.

In fact, it is so big a deal that the risen Jesus goes to great lengths to convince his doubtful disciples that he is not only alive, but as fully human as he ever was.  There on the evening of the first Easter Sunday, as Luke recounts it, Jesus shows up, having had a very busy day of appearances.  After the morning resurrection appearances at the tomb, he walks along the Emmaus road with Cleopas and his companion, breaks bread with them and opens the Scriptures up to them along the way, and now here comes back to the locked room where the rest of the disciples were hunkered down, and shows himself.  And he not only invites them to see and touch his hands and feet, but he also offers them the most persuasive evidence he can at the moment: he eats a piece of fish in their presence.  The idea, of course, is that ghost don't eat (in addition to not existing in the first place), and that if it had all been a mass group hallucination, there would have been a piece of fish left on the floor where they all thought they had seen Jesus.

But the way the story goes, it seems that the fish sticks did the trick to at least give these disciples hope--not only hope that Jesus was somehow alive beyond death, but that he remained as fully human, as fully embodied, as he ever had been.  Jesus doesn't leave embodied life behind even after the empty tomb.  That's a really important thing, because being embodied is simply part of what it means to be human.  And the Gospels believe that the whole Christian faith stands or falls on whether Jesus really is one of us, and not simply a talking hallucination, a spirit-being, an angel, a religious invention, or a figment of our imaginations.

There have been, of course, those other voices, sects, and religious off-shoots that didn't like the idea of a God who fully entered human life, from messy birth in a borrowed barn to a criminal's death.  There have been voices that said, "Tut, tut, this Savior Christ must have only appeared human, or maybe the divine part of him beamed back up to heaven right before the cross so that he didn't have to go through the suffering.  Or maybe it was a trick and Jesus didn't actually die but switched places with a look-alike just before the first nail was pounded into a wrist." All because the idea of a God with permanent scars on permanent skin seemed scandalous.  And it should sound scandalous--it is.  But that is precisely the claim that the Gospels all want to make.  And that is exactly what the piece of fish is about: it is a lingering piece of evidence that whoever it was that appeared in the locked upper room on Easter evening was really, fully human, and not merely a disembodied spirit or a trick of the light.

Part of what that means, too, is that Jesus now and forever still bears the scars of having gone through the cross, still owns a body, even if it is somehow glorified and transformed, and still shares our humanity now and forever.  God has committed, once and for all, to share human existence with no givesies-backsies, as the kids say on the playground.  Jesus wears our skin, and shares our woundedness, forever.  The eaten fish stick is the persuasive evidence that the one who rose from the dead still shares our humanity.  It may not seem as poetic or dramatic as the stone rolled away in the dim light of dawn, and there may not be any Easter hymns that sing, "You ask me how I know he lives?  He ate a piece of cod!"  But it is a detail that the first Christians held onto as a sign that the Risen One has always been One of Us, fully sharing our human life, even into resurrection.

That means, too, that our hope as Christians is not for a way out of being human, but for a transformation of how we live within our humanity--no longer bent, broken, and distorted by our selfishness, hatred, greed, fear, and sin, but as God meant for us to be.  All those children's stories, stock-image cartoons, and tired jokes about people dying and becoming angels when they get to heaven have missed the point--we don't lose our humanity in eternal life, but actually gain it in a fuller way than we have ever known it. In the resurrection of the human Jesus, we are freed from the ways we give into fear, hate, and the Me-and-My-Group-First mentality that robs us of some pieces of our humanity.

All of that is there, waiting to be recognized as Jesus takes a piece of fish to eat on the first Easter evening.  It is a sign for us, too, that Christ has forever entered into our humanity, and chooses to be inextricably tied up in our life.  Whatever kinds of messes we find ourselves in--whatever kinds of messes we put ourselves in!--God has taken them on in Jesus, and forever wears the scars in a human body from bearing them.

Turns out, that was a pretty persuasive piece of fish.

Lord Jesus, thank you for sharing our human life all the way, and thank you for the lengths you have gone to in order to help us believe and know that you are with us.