Today we're still away from MK, out in the margins with LK this time. He continues the Easter tale with another appearance of Jesus 'while they were talking about this...' 'This' being the couple of the Emmaus road together with 'the eleven & those with them', the latter no doubt including the women who've witnessed Jesus raised from the dead, swapping notes about what's been going on. Often we do too much talking, but can there ever be too much of the right kind of talking about our experience of the Easter event & what follows? There's a lot of controversy in today's 'post-Christian' church about what happened, or whether anything happened. That may be background to our preaching, but what's our foreground? Who is our foreground?

Jesus brings peace to the gathered company, but they aren't equipped to take it on board, yet.  Despite the 'this' they've been talking about, they're startled & afraid at Jesus' appearing among them. The best they can do is think it's Jesus' ghost (why use that word rather than the less loaded 'spirit'?) appearing among them. It might be worth asking whether Jesus is still no more than a ghost to many of us. How do we convey 'spirit' as a much more positive idea than 'ghost'?

Some scholars believe the more tangible aspects of Jesus' appearing, such as showing hands & feet, eating & drinking, etc., are add-ons to make the original appearances more than just a 'ghost story'. Whatever the truth of that, today's challenge is to preach & interpret Jesus' resurrection in a way that's not dependent on 'add-ons'. A key component of that is commensality. In our congregation, or sub-groups thereof, do we regularly share food with Jesus & each other? Not  counting sacramental & symbolic supping & sipping. Jesus was every bit as much into the real thing as into the sacramental!

What is the core of the Resurrection for us? Is there a core? A core that can take us past ghost stories? Break us out of our various rocked-in graves & locked-in rooms?

Opening people's minds to understand the Scriptures is hard going today. There's much misunderstanding, now as then. Misconceptions. Preconceptions. The early church became expert in re-reading the Hebrew Scriptures to make connections between what had been said & written before, & what had now happened. To the 'in-house' much of that can still make good sense. But some of it is frankly tenuous, not least to those of us who were not Jews before we became Christians. Even more tenuous are simplistic interpretations both over liberal & over literalist pontificated by those who 'know best', yet are still locked behind their own walls of fear such as losing control over the story, men losing control over women, ordained losing control to the whole people of God, me losing control of my life, me losing control over you, & so on. How can we be raised from the extremes of wishy-washiness & control freaking so we stop trading in either?

In the end (or should that read: 'In the beginning', always our top line rather than that over-worked 'bottom line'?) we either have a genuine experience of Christ raised from death or we don't. If we have that incomparable experience then we must witness to it. God's Spirit who in Ezekiel's terms breathed new life into Christ's tortured & dead bones breathes into us to make Christ present to us & equips us to witness to his Presence now. Are we ourselves evidence that God's Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus has raised us from our 'graves' & turned our lives around & back in God's direction? That's real, authentic, ongoing Easter Witness!