Time and again in the Gospels, the resurrected Christ meets his followers around food and drink. He shared food repeatedly with tax collectors and sinners, with the broken and the wounded. For the disciples on the Emmaus Road, Jesus is known to them as bread is broken. Jesus appears to his disciples on the beach, calling them in from their boats and their labour to share breakfast cooked over a fire.
As we hear in today’s Gospel, Jesus appears suddenly and unexpectedly to his shocked disciples. He wishes them peace and asks for food. ‘Shalom’ he says, ‘peace be with you’. But the disciples are shaking with fear. The one who is dead is right here. ‘Why are you afraid’ he asks. Jesus then offers them tangible proof that he’s real, he shows them his wounds, he asks for food. The one who had fed 5,000 people, who had shared meals with tax collectors and sinners, asks his friends to give him food. He refused to let them run away or treat what was happening as if it was a mere story, or an idle tale. The one who was dead was now alive. A resurrected Jesus is not a ghost or a spirit, but a physical being.
Christ prepares a feast for us here today, a feast where God is revealed to us as we eat together, as we share the bread and wine. It’s around this table that God’s kingdom is worked out. God says to us today, ‘come and eat,’ and in the eating you will know me. Come and let your mind and your body be nourished so that you are ready to take up your calling as a child of God, and to share his presence with the world.
In peace, Lynda