Luke 24:36-49
Holy Humor / Easter 2
April 27, 2025
William G. Carter
While [the disciples] 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 in their presence.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. 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.”
Of all the jokes and gags told
today, do you know any about ghosts? I have a few.
- Why
did the ghost starch his sheet? He wanted everyone scared stiff.
- What’s
a ghost’s favorite type of music? Sheet music.
- What
did the ghost wear to improve his eyesight? Spook-tacles.
- Where
do ghosts go when they want to surf? The Dead Sea.
- What's
a ghost's favorite makeup to wear? Mas-scare-a!
- How
does a ghost unlock a door? With a spoo-key.
- What
room does a ghost not need in a house? A living room.
- Why
do ghosts love elevators? It lifts their spirits.
- Why don’t ghosts ride in elevators? When the elevator goes up, they fall through the floor.
Let’s talk about ghosts. As far as
I know, I have only had one encounter with a ghost. I went to a conference.
They put us in a large house, a three-story mansion. After signing in, I
received my room key. And the man at the desk said, “Wait a minute. Room 37.”
He looked both ways and said, “Are you afraid of ghosts?”
Is the room haunted? “That’s not something we can prove,” he replied, “although we have had reports of strange occurrences in Room 37.” I gave him a long look. He said, “It’s not like anybody died in that room. Not that we know of.” Well, what if they did? He said, “They’re probably still there.”
So, the conference started well. There was dinner and an opening session. It went until 9:00, and then everybody scattered. I walked across a very dark conference center to my three-story house, punched in the security code, pulled the door shut behind me, and walked up the long staircase. The place could have been better lit. Lots of shadows in that hallway.
When I got to the third floor, I found Room 37. It was at the end of the hallway. Fishing around for the key in my pocket, I opened the door and said, “Anybody in here?” You can’t be too careful. I didn’t hear a reply, so I unpacked the small suitcase, put on my pajamas, and pulled out the book I’d been reading. A murder mystery, of course. Then I plopped into a large wingback chair and turned on the reading light.
About two chapters in, the light went out. I flicked the bulb with my finger. Nothing. So, I got up to turn on another light across the room – and the reading light came back on. OK, I returned to the chair, opened my book, and the light went out again. I muttered under my breath, “You know, I would really like to read for a while” – and the light came back on. It was unsettling… for a murder mystery.
I read for a little bit longer and the light went out again. No use fussing with the paranormal, so I put down the book and crawled into bed. I tried to sleep with one eye open. Tossed and turned, re-fluffed the pillow, rolled over. After about an hour, I drifted off. Then somewhere around 2:30, the bathroom faucet started running full force. I sat right up in bed, turned on the light. Nobody else was there, nobody I could see.
I turned off the faucet, crawled back into bed, stared at the ceiling. Every little sound in that old creaking house, I sat up and looked around. At breakfast, somebody said, “You look awful. Did you sleep?” And my host said, “He was in Room 37.” Everybody else around the table said, “Oh, right!” And they went back to their meal.
Did I see anything? No. Did I hear anything? No. Was I spooked? – that’s an appropriate phrase – was I spooked? You bet.
So, I can’t imagine how it went for the eleven disciples to see Jesus three days after he was killed. Suddenly, he was just there. Nobody saw him enter. Nobody knew how he got there. No, they blinked and there he was, two fingers in the air, saying “Shalom!” Was he hiding? Did he walk through the wall? Nobody knew – and they were terrified.
What made it worse is that the eleven had just been told a wild tale about Jesus disguised as a stranger. It’s the story we heard last Sunday in worship. Two other disciples were trudging off to the tiny town of Emmaus, dejected by what they had seen on the cross, incredulous about what they had heard from the tomb. This Stranger stepped alongside, heard their tale, then gave them a two-hour-long Bible lesson to explain it. He called them “stupid.” He said they were slow.
It was kind of rude, but they listened. When they drew near their home, they invited him in for dinner. And as we heard, he took the bread as if he owned it, broke it, gave it to them. They realized it was Jesus. Then he vanished – like a ghost. It was enough of a shock to send them running back seven miles to Jerusalem. They knocked on the door, gave the password, hurried inside. As they told their story, he was again, showing up, inside a room that we can presume was locked. They had only one logical conclusion: was this a ghost?
Now, I don’t know if you believe in ghosts. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Maybe like me, you stayed in a room with faulty wiring and a leaky faucet. Or maybe you’ve had a moment you cannot explain. Most of us, if we felt safe, might confess to seeing somebody in a dream – and we are completely convinced it was real. Others of us have had even more mystical moments if we dared to confess them.
Ghosts inhabit our stories. Like all those Harry Potter books, floating apparitions of those who died tragically, passing through walls, peeking underwater, commenting truthfully on the deceptions underway. Or that most famous Christmas story apart from the New Testament accounts. It’s a ghost story, leading Ebenezer Scrooge to say, “How do I know you are not a dab of mustard or an underdone potato?” To which Jacob Marley howled!
The eleven disciples saw Jesus and thought he was a ghost. He said, “Why are you frightened?” And the line Luke left out of the Bible is, “Why do you think?” People who die don’t come back. But he did.
So, he said, “Look at my scars – hands and feet. See, it’s me!” Again, the line Luke left out of the Bible is, “We see the scars, but that’s not particularly comforting.” And he says to them, “Want to touch them?” Again, the deleted bit of dialogue, “No, we don’t want to touch them. No, thank you.”
What Luke does say is a remarkable description, “in their joy, they were disbelieving.” They were overwhelmed – and overwhelmed.
Then he said something else. “Got anything to eat?” It was stunning. Like a teenager coming home from soccer practice, ravenous with hunger, peering into the refrigerator, “Is there anything here to eat? I see half a jar of pickles, some mustard, and three containers of expired yogurt. Is there any food here?” They gave Jesus a piece of fish. Then they all leaned forward to see if they could watch it go down into his belly. It’s a bizarre story.
I remember the late, great Jimmy Connors, three-term mayor for the city of Scranton. He always had a joke. And if he was forgetful, he wrote them down on 3 by 5 cards. Here’s one of his favorites: “A skeleton walked into a bar and said, ‘Give me a beer and a mop.’” It’s a dumb joke, but it makes the same point.
They watched Jesus eat that piece of broiled fish. Did it go down into his belly? Could they track it down his throat through his translucent body? And the answer was, “He really did eat the fish.” To be fair, he hadn’t eaten anything since Thursday night. That was, as we say, his Last Supper. Three nights later, he was eating a leftover piece of broiled fish. Well, didn’t he have some of the bread he broke up in Emmaus? No, the Bible says he broke it, but it doesn’t say he ate it. In fact, he vanished before supper. And now, he’s in Jerusalem.
Go ahead and try to figure this out. I can’t. You can’t. The disciples couldn’t. It was more than they could comprehend. It still is. But just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s not real.
Of all the stories! Why does Luke add this account to his larger story? No doubt there were deep questions bubbling up in the generations after Jesus. What really happened on Easter? How could Jesus choose to disguise himself? How could he get from one place to another so quickly and effortlessly? Was he just a vision, a fantasy, a phantasm? Within a hundred years, a teacher named Marcion taught that Jesus was so divine that he could not have been a human. Since God doesn’t have a material body, Jesus didn’t either. He only appeared to suffer.
Hearing all that, the church said, “No, that’s heresy. Jesus was real. He took up physical space. His body was wounded because of us. He came back breathing through the mystery of God’s power. He still had the scars, yet he was completely alive. And he ate a piece of fish.” We can’t explain anything more than that.
But we can listen to the story he tells and the meaning he provides for it. The Messiah came to us from God. A deadly mix of religion and politics conspired to kill him in a ghastly way. But then God raised him and sent him back to us, to announce God’s forgiveness for what we had done. And in his own voice, Jesus called us to turn from our destructive ways and proclaim the mercy that has the power to set us free. This is the Good News. All of us are invited to live it and tell it.
Easter is more than a ghost story;
and in a way, it prepares us for the Ghost who is to come. This will be the
Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. Jesus predicts what we have come to know, that he
continues among us to keep his story alive. This is more than a fantasy. It’s
reality. We embody it here and now in our own time and place.
“Let repentance and forgiveness be proclaimed everywhere,” he said. Everywhere, starting right here.
Love God, love one another. That’s
the aim. Take God seriously. Take one another seriously, from the tips of their
heads to the bottom of their smelly feet. And that reminds me of a song…
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.