Eastertide #13:

It is I myself

(Luke 24:39)

That hymn about how we shall know Him by the nail prints in his hand, continues to play in my head. It speaks of a remarkable continuity between Jesus’s earthly body and his heavenly body. When our resurrected Lord first appeared to the disciples, they figured they saw a ghost. “Look at my hands and feet,” Jesus says to them, “see it is I myself …for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Lk 24:39). He was so real that he hung around for something to eat. Without “flesh and bones” he wouldn’t be Jesus—he wouldn’t be himself.

He is God, yet we can’t help but be surprised by how human our resurrected Lord remains. He does not shed his humanity. In fact, he seems to have fun with his resurrected body—pretending with the Emmaus couple; or, barbequing breakfast on the shore of Galilee. Nor, will he abandoned his humanity when he ascends to the Father to intercede on our behalf. So human, that the Apostle calls the Son of God today, “The Human Christ Jesus” (1Tm 2:5).

It’s because of Easter that we believe in our own resurrection: “Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1Cor 15:21-23). It will be “I myself” raised from the dead. Not exactly “myself,” but a cleaned-up, “further clothed” (2Cor 5:4), and fit for glory self. Like Jesus, we are not ourselves without our bodies.