Eating with Jesus was always event. You never knew exactly what might happen and who would join this open meal, literally open to anyone and excluding no one. A homeowner, such as Simon the Leper, invited Jesus, only to have a woman , a known sinner, wash Jesus’ feet with her tears and dry his feet with her hair. Or the Last Supper where Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and shared a meal relating it to his impending death. Or you might be surprised by the locations of a meal—on the field with 5000, or at home of an infamous regional tax collector Zacchaeus, or in the home of a religious critic.

Meals provided Jesus with occasions to stress the central themes of his message of God’s companionship of empowerment. The themes of forgiveness, unconditional love, shared abundance, compassionate care, inclusivity, healing, the mutuality of discipleship, love, and non-violence. Jesus loved food and wine, and he took the opportunity to break all the etiquette rules and purity codes for meals held by Pharisees and other religious groups.

For outcasts, throwaway people such as tax collectors and prostitutes, these meals were therapeutic and liberative. The open table was healing for many participants. The meals were egalitarian, where all were equals and where all were beloved children of God. They shared stories of their pain at religious exclusion and social shunning at these meals and dreamt about God’s empowered companionship and the type of new society created. They experienced healing from destructive elements of Jewish religious fundamentalism with its stress on a judgmental, patriarchal God. Religious people stigmatized them as sinners, and Jesus told them were forgiven before they even came to sit down at table.

The table of radical inclusivity was revolutionary. Around meals, they found companionship with Jesus and God and with one another. In the nourishing and healing environment of meals, they discovered friendships and some felt call as disciples. Jesus’ meals as healing and empowering occasions have been overlooked by the church over the centuries.

In addition, Christians have read the Last Supper not in the context of Jesus’ meals but the only meal and gave it undue importance, making it an exclusive event for justifying an exclusive male priesthood. For Jesus, his last meal with the disciples was important but so were all his meals with folks. Its particularity was his emotional preparation of his female and male disciples for his death for God’s reign. All Jesus’ meals symbolized the inclusivity of all into God’s reign.
But meals with the risen Jesus were even more eventful. They were to be inclusive, healing, and empowering. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus invite a stranger who had accompanied them on their journey to join them for an evening dinner. When the stranger broke bread, the two grieving disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. He symbolized his continued presence in community with remembered events and the breaking of bread. His walking on the road to Emmaus and joining them for dinner addressed their grief over his death and ritualizing his mission and presence.

Or today’s gospel, after two appearances of the risen Christ, the disciples went back to what they know best, fishing. Did they have to get away from the intensity of feelings from community scoffers, doubters, or their own feelings of guilt from abandoning Jesus to the Temple police and ultimately final crucifixion? Jesus surprises a group of disciples at the Sea of Galilee; they returned to their ordinary lives and have gone fishing.

Easter night and the following week, Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room. The first meeting was mixed in its emotions, happiness in Jesus as risen from the dead, deep shame and guilt at abandoning Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Peter, both for his denying Jesus three times and his abandonment of him. Peter brashly professed his faith and commitment as a disciple to the ministry of Jesus. He faced Jesus with shame and guilt over his betrayal. Jesus forgave him and started the process of healing.

Jesus appears as a stranger, and he calls out to them: “Have you caught any fish yet?” Then he instructs to cast the net on the right side of the boat, and they did so and caught a multitude of fish. The beloved disciple recognizes the stranger: “It is the Lord!”

Peter strips off his clothes and swims to shore. The disciples bring the fish to Jesus who has lit a charcoal fire to barbeque the fish and serve bread with the meal. None of the disciples were bold enough to ask. “Who are you?” The stranger reveals himself in the serving a meal of fish and bread.

This meal on the shore of Lake Tiberias was thus no ordinary meal. Jesus was not presiding over the meal, but preparing the meal for several disciples. This is reminiscent of Jesus’ action at his final meal where he washed the feet of his disciples—the duties of slave and women. Here again he takes a service role in cooking fish for breakfast for the few disciples after a night of fishing.

Jesus’ risen presence is revealed at meals, and these risen meals also include healing and empowerment. There was unfinished business between Jesus and Peter. Even though Peter betrayed him and abandoned him, Jesus is there to restore his relationship with Peter. The grace of unconditional love and forgiveness counters the past failures of Peter. The breakfast on the beach was to continue the healing of Peter and to empower him as whole as possible for the on-going mission of God’s companionship of empowerment.

Peter got a lump his throat and became speechless for a moment; he was more embarrassed by his denial of Jesus than his nakedness, dripping with water. He is confronted with his own guilt and shame in letting down Jesus in the moment of his greatest need—his own death. He promised Jesus faithfulness and reliability. Instead he abandoned Christ; he lied and denied that he even knew him to save his own skin. He faced Christ stirring the charcoal fire and looking him straight into his eyes. He melted with shame and guilt. But Jesus served him breakfast and reminded him of the many times that they shared meals of forgiveness and love during his ministry.

Peter knew that this appearance was meant for him and about his relationship with Christ. There was unfinished business yet to be dealt with. Maybe for a moment, he wished he was anywhere but there. When they had finished breakfast, Jesus spoke to Simon Peter. Now, we are getting to the point of the story. This story is about the rehabilitation of Simon Peter. But Jesus’ questions to Peter are wider than this event; the risen Lord asks these questions of ourselves. This may be the important question asked in the Bible.
“Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” Love meaning self-sacrificing love, love “more than these.” And write “boats, nets, fish, food, family, and friends.” Jesus was asking what are you prepared to do for me? Peter answers, “I love with the love of a friend.” He is not able to love unconditionally as parent loves a child. Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to follow me, let that person take the cross and follow me.”

Why did Peter deny Jesus three times in the first place? I think it was because he, like all of us, loved life and the things of this life such as family, friends, fish, boats, nets, etc. Peter loved this life, and he didn’t want to die. It is simple as that. That is why I think Peter denied Jesus in the first place. He loved the things of his own life way more than the possibility of his premature death for God and Christ. But Jesus probes Peter of his reliability. Are you prepared to deny yourself and give up everything to follow me? Can I rely on you and your word to continue my mission?

Peter’s threefold profession of his friendship love for Jesus parallels his threefold denial, that Jesus is giving Peter the chance to fill the hole he has dug for himself with three huge shovelfuls of love.

But there is more. Jesus is not only trying to bring Peter back to where he was before but to move him beyond that. Jesus looked Peter in the eyes intently. Peter answered, “Yes, Lord, I love you as a friend.” Then Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Jesus wants to be assured that Peter loves him. Jesus is not sure about the reliability of Peter’s love and so Jesus asks Peter a second time, “Do you love me as a friend?” Jesus changes the verb from self-sacrificing love to where Peter is at and uses Peter’s verb to love as a friend. Even this friendship love requires reliability and consistency of word.

By the third time, “do you love me as a friend?” Peter feels hurt and responds, “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you.” The risen Christ entrusts those whom he loves to one who loves him.

Jesus says, “Feed my sheep.” He goes on says, “Very truly, I tell you when you were younger you were able to fasten your belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you, and take you where you do not wish to go.” Jesus predicts, “Peter, you may love me as a friend, but over time that love become unconditional love that I now share with you.”

Suddenly it is clear. Jesus has made this encore appearance for Peter’s benefit. In the same way, he returned for Thomas in the upper room, to move him from doubt to faith, he now returns for Peter, to move him from faith to active discipleship.

Jesus also asks us that same basic question: Do you love me more than these? Do you love me more than your family, your friends, your occupation? This is a personal question for each one of us. We, too, like Peter, will come to that time and place in our lives when Jesus will ask us that fundamental question: Do you love me unconditionally more than these things and people? Do you love me more than your own life?

There is a consequence in saying “yes”. Jesus says, “Feed my lambs and tend my sheep.” The Latin word for shepherd is Pastor. How do Christian pastors feed the lambs and tend sheep?

The first purpose of a pastor’s life, of a shepherd’s life, is to feed the lambs in the community and to help them grow into good disciples. Pastors are called to remind the community of their mission, radical inclusive love—the vision of God’s unconditional grace.

He is instructing him on how to become a Pastor, open-hearted and open to the new requirements of serving the post-Easter Church. He had to reliably live up to his word with courage. Peter learned that he had to think before acting. We finally got to the core. Jesus knows everything, including the death by which Peter was going to die, by Roman crucifixion, being lifted up onto his own cross.
Jesus knew that eventually, in his old age, that Simon Peter was going to mature and that his love for Christ would move beyond friendship love to unconditional love and that he would die by crucifixion. It did come true. Simon Peter died a martyr’s death, on a cross, upside down, in Rome, under Nero. Peter who had denied Jesus three times at the home of Caiaphas would be faithful to Jesus onto death. Jesus knew the future and prophesied about Peter’s death. At his death in Rome, Peter thought that it would be too much of an honor for him to be crucified in the way Christ was crucified so he requested to be crucified upside down. Peter learned the humility to follow Christ.

The Gospel of John is one of the most beautifully written gospels. It stands in Greco-Roman multiculturalism. But what I want to talk about the clashing cultural beliefs about death and afterlife in John’s community. I will use the example of the Beloved Disciple and Doubting Thomas. They make the case for counter positions. This is not just a historical exercise of reconstructing this morning. It also reflects a deep divide and compromise.

Celsus, a non-Christian writer, criticized the appearance accounts of the risen Jesus. He actually mocks Christians.

If Jesus had wanted to demonstrate his power was truly divine, he ought to have appeared to those who maltreated him and to the one who condemned him, and to all everywhere.

Celsus makes a point that I thought as kid when I heard the Easter season resurrection readings each Sunday. Why didn’t Jesus just appear to the high priests, Pilate, and the masses in Jerusalem that chose Barabbas over himself?
Let me explain: The community of John, somewhere in Asia Minor such as Edessa or in Syria, is composed of Greek-speaking Jews and Greek converts. The appearance accounts of the post-mortem Jesus risen from the dead were a terrifying prospect. In Matthew, the women at the tomb are told by angels to “stop fearing.” And the second apparition of Jesus, some of the assembled disciples are doubtful.

Even before Jesus appearance in the upper room, the Beloved Disciple runs to tomb and looks into see Jesus’ funeral shroud thrown aside into a bundle but observes the funeral napkin rolled up neatly. He places his faith in Jesus and his words without seeing the risen Christ. In today’s gospel, the disciples neither fear nor doubt when Jesus appears in the upper room. I always thought it might the case of suddenly facing the risen Jesus with feelings of guilt and shame over abandoning him or Peter denying him three times. From that encounter, the Beloved Disciple and the disciples on Easter Sunday are full of faith trying to convince Doubting Thomas of their experience. Thomas was not present during that resurrection appearance, and he expresses doubt. The resurrected dead body makes no sense to him. What is a clue to the gospel today is Thomas’ need for a physical demonstration of the physical reality of Jesus.

In Luke’s story of Jesus’ appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is not merely a ghost without flesh and bones. When they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, Jesus says,

Look at my hands and feet that I am myself. Touch and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. But they were still incredulous. (Lk. 24: 39-41)

It was logical for the disciples to believe that Jesus had died and thus they were now experiencing a ghost or the soul of Jesus separated from his body.The community of John suffered division among its members—the primary group affirming that Jesus really died in the flesh. The other group asserted that Jesus did not have a real fleshy body on either side of death, either on the cross or after burial. They denied the reality of the earthly and physical Jesus or the resurrected Jesus. In 2 John v.7, a letter from that same community that wrote the fourth gospel mentions deceivers who have left the community and “who do not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.” This is the later community who claimed Thomas as their apostle. We have writings from this group of Christians: The Gospel of Thomas and The Acts of Thomas. Some speculations went as far to deny that Jesus died on the cross, it was an apparition, not real flesh and blood man.

Many Christians at the time of the writing of John’s Gospel, somewhere between 90-100 CE, some 70 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus and well after the death of the all Jesus’ immediate disciples, had conflicting views of the afterlife. Early Christianity proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus yet it inherited traditions of a variety of religious notions of the afterlife, few of which included the resurrection. Some included the ascension of Jesus, angelic body of Jesus, and the exalted and transformed body of Jesus,

On one side of the afterlife, there is a group of Jews that held to resurrection of the body at the end of time. This notion comes from the ancient Persian notions of the end of time in which God will resurrect the dead and unite the body and soul for a final judgment. This seems to be held by the followers of Jesus and some of the Pharisees such as St. Paul.

The prevalent Greek notion stresses the soul over the body. Many Christians held Jesus had risen from the dead as a spiritual being, in a spiritual body of light. For them, the body was corruptible, mutable and mortal flesh, while the soul, the spiritual body, was eternal. The earthly body was bonded to the material body, and it weighed down the soul. Upon death of the body, the soul was released to go to God. For those emphasizing the soul, the post-resurrection body of Jesus is something other than the very same flesh in which he was crucified. Both the resurrection of the body and the release of the spiritual body were two methods that early Christians tired to describe Jesus arisen from the dead.

Doubting Thomas is described as not having faith (apistos) in the tale of the physical resurrection of Jesus from the grave. There is division between the immediate disciples of Jesus who have experienced Jesus as fleshy human being, now resurrected, and Thomas who holds an alternative position of the release of the spiritual body of glory.

If the disciples had said to the absent Tomas, “We have seen the spirit of the Lord,” there would be no problem. There are many common stories of ghostly appearances in the Greco-Roman world. For Thomas, the body was the negative accompaniment of earthly life, and death was release of the spiritual body from its limitations. The post-mortem soul could participate in all embodied functions such as eating and joy.

But the disciples in the upper room said to Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” meaning in the same physical body with which he died. Thomas and his later faction of Christian community hold that the body traps the soul. He is weary of any talk about the fleshy existence of the risen Jesus. Greeks believed very much in an immortal soul.

Yet John’s community is different from the other communities which developed gospels. It affirms in the opening hymn that we recite during the Christmas Eve service; “the word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Incarnation is about the flesh and blood of a very human Christ.

No cultured Greek would ever ask to stick his hands in the wounds in Jesus’ arms from the spikes or the holes in his feet or the wound in his side from the centurion’s spear.” Would anyone here in Thomas’ position ask the risen Jesus? “Let me put my fingers in the holes in your body from crucifixion.” But does the insistence of Thomas, which we traditionally understand as doubting really doubt as much as holding a different viw of the resurrected Jesus?

The wounds in Jesus body indicate that the earthly fleshy Jesus, who has died, now survives the grave. The retention of the holes in the body of Jesus would not necessarily authenticate that the risen Christ is Jesus who died on the cross. So Thomas asks to touch the risen body, rather than just seeing the risen apparition.
Thomas’ doubts express his not placing faith in Jesus and his words at the resurrection of Lazarus in the tomb. “I am the resurrection and the life; that anyone who has faith in me shall live even if they die.” (Jn. 11:23) Thomas is expressing a position that the resurrection of Jesus is just purely spiritual. He emphasizes the spiritual body of Jesus, not the flesh while the disciples are holding to the resurrected Christ in the flesh. When Jesus appears to Thomas, he has faith in the risen Christ affirming ‘My Lord and My God!”

Let’s step back and review a few points.

The risen Christ is neither a resuscitated body nor a ghost or a spirit. What bodies can go through walls and appear in the midst of the disciples in the upper room!
It is a body that can’t be touched. Jesus says that to Magdalene, “not to cling.”

There are stories in the appearance accounts where the disciples do not easily recognized Jesus until he does something familiar from his earthly life. Mistaken as the gardener by Magdalene, Jesus says “Mary” in a recognized familiar tone for her to respond with “Rabboni.” Or there are the two disciples not recognizing Jesus as he walked with them on the road to Emmaus until he breaks bread with them. Or Jesus on the beach cooking fish when the Beloved Disciple realizes that is the Lord. Then Peter strips down and jumps into the lake and swims to shore. There is something discontinuous as well as continuous with the risen Jesus from his previous fleshly existence.

What we see in the original witnesses is human attempt to make sense what happened on Easter with the cultural stories and notions of death and afterlife various had at their disposal.

But there is a deeper issue that stands at the center of today’s gospel between the Beloved Disciple who looked into the tomb, seeing the rolled napkin and placed his faith in Jesus’ words and the absent Thomas who refused to place his faith in Jesus until the risen Christ asked him to place his hands in the wounds wrought by Roman torture and crucifixion.

For some of the Pharisees and Jesus’ disciples, they believed in the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. It seems Paul believed that when a person died, that person would not be raised until the end of time. And then there was the Greek position that the soul was trapped in the body, and when a person died, the soul was released to join God.

Both positions have come to be our modern Christian position on death. At memorial services, we speak of the spirit of the deceased joining God. Many of us have had the experience of the dying of a dear one, dreaming about her or sensing the presence of the deceased through something remembered or a song or an anniversary or place that generates a vivid memory. The deceased person is physically absent but present to us, and that is real. Something of our life force, spiritual energy, or soul joins with God and Christ.

But God created us with bodies, where we learn and appreciate a physical world. Christ too was incarnated in the flesh and experienced what it means to be human, experience our joy and our pains. We believe that the material universe was created for an intended purpose to be joined to God in unimaginable ways. This is the vision of the future for all of us—spirit and physical flesh united and recreated anew with God’s flesh and Spirit.

Early followers of Jesus proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus as the foundation of their faith; and it is certainly the foundation of my discipleship in following the Christ. Thomas’ position of a spiritual resurrection of Christ was probably the understanding of Paul in his vision of the resurrected and glorified body of the risen Christ.

It says to me that both the Beloved Disciples and Thomas were each partially correct in some fashion, offering us a vision of the risen Christ who united physical body with spirit. They were attempting to comprehend what happened Easter morning within their own languages of the afterlife. Both the followers of the Beloved Disciple and the disciples of Thomas hope to share the resurrected life of Christ. Some looked to an afterlife with fleshy bodies and others imagined spiritual bodies like angels. We will answer that question in the afterlife or something more unimaginable than we can conceive. It maybe the new speculations will talk about the quantum body of the crucified and resurrected Christ. All these are speculations, our attempts to understand something beyond our comprehension.

The tensions played out between these two perspectives leading the Christian movement to a clear proclamation of the real fleshiness of Jesus during his life and in his afterlife. It stands as sign of our fleshy connection to the resurrected Christ and our fleshy connection to the pain and sufferings of people, other life, and the Earth. We all shared a fleshy origin, and our flesh and bones are important to our spiritual journey and facing our mortality.
But for me I recognize this story of doubting Thomas. I recognize the disciples on the first night of Easter and on the eighth day after. I look to the resurrected Christ who carries the wounds of his crucifixion and all other crucifixions continued today. The world needs answers to our crucifixions and crucified Earth. The world looks to us for something tangible for our world to hope. It is the mystery of resurrected life with the wounds that Christ carries. God cares not only for the crucifixion of Jesus but all crucifixions whether it is brokenness of homelessness, the woundedness of poverty or mental or physical illness, or the human ravages of the Earth and its degradation, the world is looking to us to turn the passion of Christ and all crosses into compassionate change.

I look to Christ’s resurrection as the source of compassion for the world. Compassion is the inner message of the resurrected Christ. We are called to live our faith in the risen Christ who says, “Blessed are those who have not seen but placed their faith in me!” (Jn 20:29)