The Thing About Ghost Stories

Ghost Story

Many times the ghost stories we tell are ways of processing our grief and understanding that while we are trapped in the present, the past has a way of bleeding into our lives.

One of the lesser discussed pieces of grief is the tendency towards fear. People that moored you in safety and affiliation are gone, you slide down into insecurity, into fear.

The former passage of the walk to emmaus takes the form of the meeting of a curious stranger on the road which at least now is a common story one usually ends with the information getting to the main charqcter discovering the information of the stranger’s long ago death.

The disciples tried to talk about the things that they had heard about Christ and try to wrap their minds around what they heard of his raising, and Luke’s account has Jesus appearing in their midst while they are procssing.

Startled and terrified are their reaction to this sudden apearance.

They think they have seen a ghost.

There are many stories that shadow the form of these appearances. There are stories of people picking up a hitchhiker who turned out to be Jim Morrison, and folks that claim they ordered ommlettes from a diner owned by Elvis, years after their deaths.

There is something in us that as a society recognizes on its popular center and marginal edges that some things last past their departure date.

And the absolute humaness of the ghost story is the fact that people’s influence extend far past ttheir immediate prescence and people die, they fail us, they hurt us, and they leave us.

The diciples left and scattered when Jesus was arrested, but Jesus let himself be arrested. Jesus chose to leave the Garden and in the wake of that moment they experience horror after horror, trauma after trauma. They were stuck in a nightmare that they could not wak from and this is where Christ interrupts them.

Grounding Touch

Why are you frightened and why do doubts rise up in your hearts. Look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see.

Have you ever had to grab ahold of someone, just to steady yourself?

Jesus offers himself not just for the viewing but for the touching.

I remember holding the fear watching countless ghost stories thinking what happens if it touches them. No one stops to find out or slows down to face that touch. They just run.

The disciples are invited to touch the resurrected Christ to solidify his presence in their beings.

Jesus offers it almost as a way to ease their fears, and calm them down. He lived with these men for 3 years. How many times had they held out a hand to help Jesus to his feet or lead him through a rowdy crowd. How many embraces greeted the ending of long days of work and travel. Or at the end of feasts and weddings.

The fear of touch in ghost stories, I think is the fear that feeling the lesser touch from the one we knew would somehow lessen our memories of that touch.

When the disciples touch the risen Christ, the are met with the fullnes of who he was and the immensity of who he is now.

One of our needs as humans is touch and as such is a place of vulnerability and difficulty for most people.

There are selfish, abusive, and unwelcome touches that we have to address in the midst of our need for heart filling steadying and grounding touches. We have to be careful around touch but it is a need.

The Human Chain

I was walking along shoreline this week, thinking about the text and wondering if it was possible for the chain of touch to reach across Oceans of Time and Space and also literal oceans to reach us today. There is no way to really measure the possibility of that physically being true.

But spiritually this not only true but a neccesity in our beliefs. We believe that Christ has touched us and as a consequence we are called to reah out to others.

There are people in our community that either broken from the chain of human touch, or at least on the margins of the human chain.

How many hugs and pats on the back, do you think that our unhoused neighbors get?

How about the neglected and the abandoned children that are most often never seen in our neighborhoods?

These are the people that find themselves accustomed to many unmet needs the bulk of which is love and next to it is touch.

The human chain of touch is broken and these folks are single links separated from the Human connection.

How can we repair these links?

Christ Stands with His Hands Out

Christ repaired his connection with the disciples with his hands open and outstretched. He was not afraid for them to touch him and he asked them for food admittting his hunger, showing his need.

As representitives of Christ we are his hands and feet.

We are called to be out there making those same connectional repairs, with our hands out.

At the end of every 7:30am Garden service at Corpus Christi First United Methodist Church we sing the same song, I believe for the last 4 years which is the whole time it had been offered.

Sing with me if you can catch the tune.

“Christ has no body here but ours No hands, no feet here on earth but ours Ours the eyes through which he looks On this world with kindness

Ours are the hands through which he works Ours are the feet on which he moves Ours the voices through which he speaks To this world with kindness

Through our touch, our smile, our listening ear Embodied in us, Jesus is living here

Let us go now, filled with the Spirit Into this world with kindness”