Oddly Specific Fish

Luke 24: 36b-48

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.

When Jesus said, “Peace be with you” he wasn’t saying, “Hey, guys you look super stressed out.  You should really like, you know, get some peace, man.”  No.  Jesus was ORDERING peace to get into the disciples!  “Hey Peace!  See these disbelieving, wondering, freaked out disciples still hiding behind a locked door?  Get in them now!”  Those disciples couldn’t get peace on their own!  Heck, they couldn’t even go OUTSIDE on their own!  In their entirely understandable, overwhelmingly human, completely flesh and blood, shocked disciple brains… they needed peace, not SUGGESTED to them… No, they needed to be grabbed by the shoulders, thrown in the shower and the handle labeled “peace which passes all understanding” turned on them full blast until they were soaked to the bone with it!  

We forget, I think, how traumatic this was for them!  We’ve heard the story our whole lives.  It’s familiar rather than shocking for us.  But remember, the guy they had been following for years, who they gave up jobs, family, friends and everything to follow… had just being brutally crucified!  Then his grave was empty!  Then BAM!  Jesus just appears!  Out of nowhere!  Into their living room! 

Do you remember how hard it was to even think straight during the hight of the pandemic?  That might be as close as we ever get to where the disciples minds were at in this time.  So it was into that sort of mind-numbing stress that Jesus appears and says, “Hey, you got anything to eat?”  Wait!  Huh?  Jesus Christ!  They’ve just been through a horror that’ll be told for millennia to come and you want… SNACKS!?  Apparently so… and so the disciples found him some broiled fish.  Not grilled, fried or poached but strangely and specifically broiled.   

It turns out that Jesus is pretty smart, and a bit tricksy too.  By asking the disciples this everyday question, “Hey, you guys got some snacks?”  Jesus helps them rise out the place they’ve been stuck.  With that simple question, Jesus gave their brains a chance at doing something more than just worry if the door is REALLY locked or not.  Human brains can’t resist thinking about a question.  It happens subconsciously, so a question asked is a question wondered about, and in that moment of wondering, locked mental doors are opened and that created the chance for the disciples to at least consider unlocking the physical door as well.  

Jesus first ordered the peace they needed to get into them, then he gave them a chance to step out from constant panic and onto The Way they had walked with Jesus before Good Friday.  The fact that Jesus came to them, through locked doors, gave them first the peace they couldn’t find on their own and then gave them a way to get unstuck… simply because those two things were what they needed most… that fact that Jesus did that, is something worth remembering.  Because THAT is something that Jesus does… not just for those original disciples, but for all of us disciples when our lives are at their worst.  

Luke was also up to something sneaky in this story as well.  You see, at the time Luke was writing this Gospel, there was a debate over how the faithful were to follow Jesus on this side of his death, resurrection, and ascension.  Some argued that since Jesus was now up in heaven, his disciples should now only concern themselves with spiritual things.  The worries of the flesh… physical, fleshy, earthly things like sickness, injustice, wounds, and hunger were simply inevitable consequences of a broken, flesh-filled world… and therefore should no longer be their concern. 

But Luke included this story because when HE saw that the resurrected Jesus had real, earthly, flesh and blood wounds and real, earthly, human, stomach-growling hunger… HE could see that Jesus was JUST as concerned with those physical things NOW as he had been before his death!  And if Jesus was still concerned with those things, then we disciples sure better be concerned with those things now as well!  

Luke reminded those early followers… that Jesus was PHYSICALLY present, giving his peace.  They touched his PHYSICAL wounds, and fed his PHYSICAL stomach with an oddly specific piece of broiled fish so there would me no mistaking it for just a symbolic or spiritual meal.  All those human, earthly concerns that Jesus had for people before Good Friday… THOSE were still Jesus’ concerns after Easter as well!

This story is included here in Luke’s Gospel to remind us that our focus is to be here… in THIS world, caring for our neighbors.  That there is nothing that should stop us from that work… AND when we inevitably get stuck because of the horrors of this life, Jesus will come to us… will break through our fears no matter how locked in them we’ve become… and will send his PEACE into our lives.  Then with that peace we will once again be set free from our fears and once again start walking again the Jesus Way amongst our neighbors, transforming a world that deals in death and crushes life, into a world that lifts all of creation into the abundant life God created for us all to live.  Amen.