If a ghost suddenly materialised at your dinner table, what would you give it to eat? I doubt if that’s a question which has ever troubled you; but, if it has, the much respected academic journal “The Beano” has an answer (or does anyone here know it?) Yes: you could give them “Spook-hetti” although, if they were Hungarian ghosts, they might prefer a nice bowl of “Ghoul-ash” with death cap mushrooms (the recipe’s online)!

At first sight, the story we’re going to be looking at this morning is about a
ghost eating dinner. But of course it isn’t: it’s the somewhat puzzling story of Jesus appearing to his disciples in a locked room. And I think we can understand those disciples’ confusion, as this took place on the evening of Easter Sunday at a time when the amazing but incredible rumour of Jesus’ resurrection was just beginning to circulate among his band of followers, a time when they were still reeling from trauma after the terrible events of Good Friday, and terrified of the knock on the door which would have meant that Roman soldiers had come to arrest them for being linked with this traitorous leader. It was clearly best for them to keep their heads down and do all they could to come to terms with the situation … and then Jesus turned up and blew everything apart.

I’m sure we all know this story very well. But to understand it properly we need to set it in context and ask, “What, if anything, did the disciples believe about ghosts?” Now they were, of course, Jewish; and I have to say that, at that time, Jewish belief in the afterlife was rather sketchy and confused. Some people believed that the souls of dead people went to live in a shadowy underworld called Sheol; on the other hand the Sadducees, who had so often crossed swords with Jesus, believed that death was the end of everything. It was only in the early Middle Ages that Jewish thinkers started developing more elaborate views about the afterlife, and even then they couldn’t agree: the great 12 th century Spanish theologian Maimonides was certain that souls have no bodies and can’t be seen by living humans (which means that ghosts can’t exist); while his near-contemporary Nachmanides strongly disagreed, saying that they could indeed appear physically if they wanted to.

However (and it’s a big “however”): although the people Luke was writing about were Jewish, the people he was writing to were mostly Gentiles: Greeks and Romans. That means we must also ask what they believed about ghosts and the afterlife. Well, some of them agreed that death was the end of everything; but most thought that souls had an ongoing shadowy existence in Hades (although particularly brave or virtuous people would go to the Elysian fields, to the Isles of the Blessed, or, very rarely, to the abode of the gods). But there was also a belief that dead people – especially heroes – could come back to earth as disembodied spirits; these might retain the marks of their death, including any bloody gore, and they could communicate with the living. However they couldn’t be touched or grasped and they certainly could not eat. There are also references in ancient Greek literature to revenants: reanimated corpses who appear as they were in life, can eat, drink, be touched and even take part in sexual intercourse – the very stuff of horror movies! But their revival was thought to be very much a short-term thing and – unlike the disembodied spirits – they couldn’t appear and vanish at will.

And there’s one other thing that I must say: that no-one believed in resurrection in the Christian sense, as a return to physical, bodily life. The Greeks and Romans certainly didn’t; and the nearest we get to it is in a few Jewish writings such as Daniel 12:2 “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt”; or in books written between our Old and New Testaments: “All Israelites have a share in the world to come; … but he that says that there is no resurrection of the dead prescribed in the Law has no share in it”. Nevertheless, Jewish belief about life after death at the time of Jesus was still imprecise and vague; if a person lived on at all it was basically through their good deeds and teachings, and their cherished memory among their family and friends.

I’m sorry to have gone on about this historical stuff for so long; but we need to know it if we are to understand the effect that Jesus’ sudden appearance had on his disciples, and what Luke’s readers would have made of it. The disciples, who probably didn’t believe in either ghosts or physical resurrection, would have thought they were seeing an angel, a messenger from God (the Greek word used here actually means “spirit” – it’s the translators who’ve give us “ghost”). And, if you cast your minds back to the Christmas story, you’ll remember the reaction that got from Zechariah, Joseph, Mary and the shepherds: they were all terrified and had to be reassured, possibly because they thought their last hour had come. That ties in well with the disciples’ reaction here (and indeed with the reactions of the two Marys and the guards at Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning) – fear was the name of the game. The one thing that would not, indeed that could not, have entered anyone’s mind, although he’d predicted it, was the truth: that Jesus actually had risen from the dead and was truly alive once more. That just didn’t figure in their thinking.

So Jesus was left with a dilemma! How on earth could he convince these people – his friends, in fact – that he had returned from death? We need to remember that, at this point, only three people had actually met the rise Jesus: Mary Magdalene (whose story could easily be discounted as she was obviously a hysterical woman); Peter and Cleopas (who had just returned, panting, from Emmaus and were still recounting the story of the mysterious stranger they’d met on the road). Jesus has two ideas, both intensely physical. First, he shows them his horribly scarred hands and feet: you can almost imagine him shoving them in their faces and saying, “Go on – I dare you – touch me!” But it seems that no-one is prepared to take up the challenge: that will have to wait until Thomas is present in a week’s time. And the other disciples remain unconvinced.

Jesus is left scratching his head: “What on earth do I do now?” And then he has a brilliant idea: “I know how to make them believe: I’ll have some dinner!”

So he turns to the disciples and asks: “Do you have something here that I can eat?” – “Is there anything in the fridge?” (He sounds like a ravenous teenager who’s just got in from school!) This might just have been honest hunger as Jesus presumably hadn’t eaten in the grave and it’s been days since the Last Supper. But what’s more likely is that Jesus is determined to help these disciples realise that he’s not an angel or a ghost, for there’s no way that a spirit being can eat! And you know what happens: in fear and trepidation (for how can a ghost take hold of anything?) they hand him a piece of fish which he chews and swallows.

Now that’s mind-bendingly unbelievable; and it proves, as one writer has said, that Jesus is “not a ghoulie or ghostie at all, but God at home in the flesh, wearing everything from bones and nerve-endings to taste-buds and a digestive tract”. He certainly doesn’t need a T-shirt with the words, ‘I eat, therefore I am’ printed on it! And so, if the disciples have been looking for Jesus to be a spiritual being without a body or an abstract philosophical concept, they are disappointed – except, of course, they are in fact amazed, relieved and thrilled to the core. At a stroke, both Gentile and Jewish view about resurrection have been catapulted out of the water and refashioned. Their Master is alive!

I said last week that John wrote his Gospel with the aim of persuading people to believe in Jesus as the Son of God – I said it because he tells us so. And Luke, in his own way, is just as clear, for he starts his Gospel by saying that he wants to write “an orderly account” of “the things that have taken place among us” which been proclaimed by those who saw them, in order that his readers “will know the full truth about everything that [they] have been taught”. And here, at the climax of his story, he writes about the resurrection in a way which shows both Jewish and Greek readers that Jesus hasn’t simply ceased to exist, that he isn’t a disembodied spirit on its way to Hades, nor a revenant corpse that’s come back to haunt the living: he demonstrates that Jesus simply couldn’t be squeezed into any concept of “death” or “ghosts” or “spirits” which people held at that time. Luke’s readers may well have found this puzzling or disorienting, but that’s precisely the point: just as much as John did, he wants his readers to believe that something exceptional, something unique, something that only God could do, has occurred.

John used seven of Jesus’ miracles to demonstrate to his readers that Jesus was the Son of God and to nudge them towards faith. And Luke, using language and ideas that would have been familiar to his readers but which seem strange to us, had the same aim. In fact each of the four Gospels is tailor-made for a different audience, although we may not realise it; and that makes us ask, “So how can we tell the story of Jesus’ life, death and (especially) his resurrection in a way which makes sense to people today and brings them to faith?” Quite clearly there’s no quick and easy answer to that question, or else every preacher in the land would know what to do and every church would be packed to the rafters! And, in fact, there will be different approaches for different contexts and listeners: the Easter story does not change, but the way we present it must. As foreign missionaries have known for decades, we have to speak to what people already understand and “scratch where they itch” – which might turn out to be a surprising and unexpected place!

That might sound depressing: for if Ministers don’t know how to best communicate the Gospel message in the 21 st century, what hope is there for so-called “ordinary” Christians? I think the answer, though, is relatively simple; and it applies to all of us: we have to live the Gospel in practical ways, declare our belief Christ’s resurrection in what we do as much as in what we say, behave as witnesses to his life. Doing that doesn’t relieve of the responsibility of using the right words to share our faith, but it must surely help. The early Church grew because – according to Acts 4 – its members were “one in mind and heart” and because the apostles bore witness to Jesus’ resurrection “with great power”. It was a fellowship of true “Easter people”, and we’re told that “God poured rich blessings on them”. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest!