SERMON Something Fishy

Easter 3 (B)(2009): Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48

Something about what we just heard is fishy. Figuratively and literally.

Figuratively, there is something fishy because, as early twenty-first century people, most of us have difficulty dealing with the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus' appearances. They seem so very unreal. Both too literal and too extraordinary to be real.

Take today's account. Unlike Mark's account -- an account that ends with the empty tomb -- and unlike Matthew where there is only one commissioning post-resurrection appearance to the eleven reported, Luke in his gospel describes two or three (depending upon how one counts) post-resurrection appearances. Among gospel writers, he is bested only by the gospel writer of John who describes four. None of the seven or eight post-resurrection appearances collectively reported by the writers of Matthew, Luke, and John are the same. Some are even mutually exclusive. Each represents a different faith tradition.

Today's appearance, for example, takes place on Easter Day. In Luke's gospel account, it is preceded by Jesus' appearing to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The two don't recognize Jesus, but he becomes known to them later at supper in the breaking of bread. And then vanishes. (Vanishing is, by the way, something that frequently happens in first century Hellenistic novels so its happening here struck Luke's first century readers as neither unreal nor extraordinary.) After that supper, the two disciples immediately take off for Jerusalem where the eleven and their companions are mourning. Today we hear about Jesus' second appearance. An appearance that occurs while the two disciples from the Emmaus road are telling the others about their encounter.

Vanishing aside, Luke's saying that Jesus becomes known to the Emmaus Road disciples in the breaking of bread is something that we can understand. Jesus is known to us in the breaking of bread. We are like those two disciples. But the appearance to the eleven and their companions in Jerusalem a few hours later is another matter.

In this appearance -- you may have noticed -- Jesus does all the talking. The disciples are startled and terrified. Speechless.

In the face of their silence, Jesus literally sets out to prove that he is risen. "Why," he asks, "are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts" -- and here "heart" does not refer to the seat of warm and fuzzy emotions; to near eastern Jews and others of the time, the heart was the place where intellect and reason resided, what we think of as "mind." "Look at my hands and my feet," Jesus directs; "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 Jesus shows them his hands and feet. And since Luke, unlike the other gospel writers, does not report Jesus' having been nailed to the cross, he presumably means that seeing his hands and feet should be enough to see that he was for real. Luke does not tell us whether those gathered took Jesus up on his offer to touch him.

Luke does tell us, however, that, in their joy, they are disbelieving and still wondering. So Jesus asks for something to eat, and they give him fish -- broiled, boiled, or baked, one of the above. And he eats it in their presence. And the fact that he can ingest food is all that is needed to prove that Jesus has been raised from the dead. We know this because Jesus shifts gears. He goes on to tell those gathered that, in his suffering, death, and resurrection, he has fulfilled the scriptures and that they now are to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

And, from our rational perspective, that's pretty much it. The literal attempt of Luke or the tradition he represents to have Jesus physically prove that he has risen from the dead.

And that might be true except for the fish. And the skill of the writer.

Now Luke is not alone in reporting the eating of fish in a post-resurrection appearance. In the second ending of the gospel of John, Jesus appears at daybreak to the disciples in Galilee by the Sea of Tiberias. There Jesus feeds them a breakfast of grilled fish and bread.

So Luke and his tradition are not alone in associating the eating of fish with Jesus after the resurrection. But in Luke, the circumstances for Jesus' eating the fish are very different than those of the disciples' eating the fish in John. Jesus, in Luke, is in Jerusalem. The nearest lake to Jerusalem is the Dead Sea, fifteen miles away. There are no fish in the Dead Sea. Nor were there first century equivalents of Burhops in Jerusalem that Passover weekend. In John, Jesus is in Galilee, next to a lake where fish are caught and eaten. As a matter of historical fact, it is unlikely in the extreme that the Jerusalem eleven and their companions would have had fish broiled, baked, boiled or otherwise to give Jesus when he asks for something to eat.

Yet that is what Jesus eats in today’s gospel. He could have eaten bread. Or bitter herbs left over from Passover. Luke is no dummy. There is nothing literal about the fish here. At the same time, there is nothing incidental about it either. The eating of fish ends of the first part of what we heard today -- something that Luke, a very fine writer, intended.

But why?

The answer is in what the fish symbolizes. And there is more than one answer.

In the Hebrew Bible, a sea monster, a fish of all fishes, the Leviathan, personifies chaos waters, death, and terror. It is in the Book of Job. The Psalms. Isaiah. Authors of later Jewish literature write of Leviathan’s being devoured at the Messianic banquet. A even still later Rabbinic legend proclaims:

The Holy One, blessed be he, will in time to come make a banquet for the righteous from the flesh of Leviathan. The rest of Leviathan will be distributed and sold in the markets of Jerusalem. The Holy One, blessed be he, will in time to come make a tabernacle for the righteous from the skin of Leviathan . . . The rest of Leviathan will be spread by the Holy One, blessed be he, upon the walls of Jerusalem, and its splendor will shine from one end of the world to the other; as it is said: "And nations shall walk at thy light, and kings at the brightness of thy rising."

In eating the fish in Jerusalem, Jesus is signaling loudly and clearly to the eleven and their companions not only that he has been raised from the dead but, more importantly, why. He is saying that, in his death, he has defeated the terror and chaos represented by Leviathan. He is telling them that the messianic feast has, in part, begun -- a feast that will depend on the coming of the power of the Holy Spirit and on their witness to the world for its consummation. And they are to understand that.

Just as they are to understand the significance of Jesus' eating the fish for another reason. In Greek, the word for "fish" is ICQUS. It's the strange word on page 14 of your bulletin. As my grandchildren will tell you, I frequently wear a fish like this around my neck. And the reason I do is because the Greek letters in the word ICQUS are the first letters of the Greek words for Jesus and Christ and God's Son and Savior. Early Christians in their persecution used the symbol of the fish, the ICQUS, as a secret sign to identify one another. Christ himself is the fish. Many early eucharistic vessels had this symbol on them. Look at our beautiful pascal candle. See the ICQUS symbol?

Like the ICQUS symbol, the significance of Jesus' eating the fish is not limited to the eleven and their companions or to the first century church. Gordon Lathrop, a Lutheran liturgist, tells us that "[s]ome scholars . . . think that the old practice of eating a fish meal on Friday night (on the Sabbath) originally meant to recall the hope for the meal of the Day of God. No wonder [he adds] that Christians continue to eat fish on Friday, the day that they believe Leviathan was caught and cut up."

But the significance of Jesus' eating the fish today is not limited to the practice of eating fish on Friday. As Gorgon Lathrop also writes: "Christ himself is the fish. And the eucharist [-- in other words, our service of Holy Communion, our service of Holy Communion this morning --] is the foretaste of that great meal. It is eating the death and terror and chaos which are gathered into Christ’s cross, now cut up and peacefully ordered into love."

But there is more. And that "more" is seen in what follows. After telling the eleven and their companions that they must be witnesses proclaiming his name to the nations, Jesus adds, "And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high." And the eleven and their companions do as they are directed. And we know from Luke's Book of Acts that they become clothed with that power on Pentecost. It is the power we hear described by Peter -- a power that had just made a lame man at the temple gate where Peter is preaching able not only to walk but to leap.

This is not just then; it is now. It is a power that we know through God's grace and gift of the Holy Spirit. Here and now. That all of us -- old members and new, friends and visitors alike -- that we, like they, may be witnesses to and a presence in the world. All very fishy. Thank God.

April 26, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church