Hunger

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
April 18, 2021

3 Easter B

When I was a child, Casper the Friendly Ghost was one of my favorite TV cartoons.  The options were limited in the early 60's, but Casper captured my heart.  Casper was a child ghost, a friendly ghost, who wanted nothing more than other children to play with.  The children in the cartoon adored Casper and envied his abilities to walk through closed doors, fly, let people walk right through him, appear and disappear whenever he wanted to.  Adults, on the other hand, were terrified of Casper.  All they could see was a ghost.  Ghosts were scary, even evil, so Casper was not someone that the adults wanted around their children.  Many hearts were broken throughout the cartoon series, but by the end of each episode, Casper was the hero because Casper had done something no one else could do to save the day, simply because Casper was a ghost. 

          When the risen Jesus appeared among the disciples, they were startled and terrified because they thought they were seeing a ghost.  I sometimes wonder how the story would be told if Jesus had appeared to a group of children.  “Wow!”  I can hear them say.  “How did you do that?”  “What was it like in the tomb?”  “How’d you get out?”  What kind of noise did it make?” “Can we touch you?”  But children are absent from the resurrection stories, for whatever reason, and we get the adult response to the resurrected Jesus.  To prove that he is not a ghost, Jesus says “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 that you see that I have.”  While their terror was replaced by joy, the disciples were still disbelieving and wondering.  So Jesus asks “Have you anything to eat?”  And Jesus is given a piece of broiled fish which he eats in their presence.  Eating proves to the disciples that not only is this Jesus, but that Jesus is truly alive; not a ghost, but a living, breathing, eating, resurrected human being.

          “Have you anything to eat?”  We have heard Jesus ask that question before.  Jesus asks that question when there are 5000 people to be fed and he takes the few loaves and fish that he is given and blesses that food and all 5000 people are fed with baskets of food left over.  At the last supper, Jesus takes the bread and wine that he is given, blesses it and gives it to the disciples.  On the road to Emmaus, immediately before our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to the two disciples he was with and they recognized him.  There are many stories in the gospels where Jesus takes food and gives it to others.  And we expect this story to be the same when Jesus says “Have you anything to eat?”         

However, this story is different.  Jesus takes the fish he is offered and eats it himself.  He eats it, not just to prove that he is alive, but because the resurrection has created a new reality.  Before, Jesus did the feeding.  Jesus fed others that they might know him in the breaking of the bread, that they might know the power and the love of God.  Now, the disciples are to feed Jesus, that the world may know the power and love of God.  

          This new Easter reality is reflected in the reading from Acts where the same Peter who denied Jesus three times is now speaking to his fellow Jews about the power of God to change lives, a power Peter experienced for himself on Pentecost.  The people are gathered at the temple where a man lame from birth has been healed through the action of Peter and John.  The people are amazed at what Peter and John have done, but Peter knows that the two apostles have simply been vessels for God’s power.  Peter, a Jew, is speaking to Jews about the power of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to overcome death, to forgive, to heal, and to make all things new.  Peter wants the world to know the new reality that has been created by the power and love of God.

          The resurrected Jesus comes to us, not as a ghost, but in a variety of people with a variety of hungers and says “Have you anything to eat?”  People are hungry to know the power and love of God.  Some are hungry for physical food and our work with the Hudson Food Pantry and Open M helps show them the love of God.  Some are hungry for a place to live and we serve them through Habitat for Humanity and Family Promise.  Some are hungry for the safety and security that comes from getting out of a violent relationship, and we are working to serve them through our support of Hope and Healing, also known as the Battered Women’s Shelter of Akron, with our auction that begins today.  Some are hungry for justice and equality, and we work to better understand the systemic racism and put an end to racially motivated violence.  And many are spiritually hungry to hear some Good News, to know that the world they live in is not all there is, to know that the pain they experience does not define their self-worth, to live knowing that death does not have the final word.  We feed them by proclaiming the good news of Easter with both our words and our actions.

          In this new post-Easter world, Jesus feeds us with his body and his blood, opening our minds to understand the scriptures and the claim of the resurrected Jesus on our lives.  Then Jesus asks us to feed him, that the hungry world around us might receive the food for which they are starving and know the power and love of God.  “Have you anything here to eat?”  Easter calls us to live with eyes wide open so that when we hear those words, in whatever form they take, we do not see a ghost, but we recognize the face of Jesus.

Amen