Sermon for Evensong on 11th May 2025, Easter 4

Psalms 113, 114

Isaiah 63:7-14

Luke 24:36-49

Peace be with You

You are very welcome, on this sunny afternoon, to the fastest-growing service in the Anglican church. Certainly in numbers attending, Evensong is where it’s at. That might seem a bit counterintuitive, when you think of the success of some of the great big evangelical churches such as Citizen Church here in Cardiff, which offer an entirely different way of worship, but apparently there are statistics to back it up.

I have from time to time tactfully enquired of members of the congregation what they particularly like about Evensong, and one of the more surprising answers which I have received was from a rather formidable lady of a certain age, who said that she particularly liked Evensong because there was ‘none of that shaking hands or kissing nonsense’.

Indeed I read once upon a time that our brothers and sisters in the Methodist Church had a bit of difficulty over exchanging the Peace as it became very popular among the teenage members of the congregation, who certainly weren’t shaking hands.

They could have relied on a theological justification, because all the biblical references which are relied on as the background to this part of the liturgy refer to the exchange of a ‘holy kiss’ – see Romans 16 verse 16, 1 Corinthians 16 verse 20, 2 Corinthians 13 verse 12 and other references in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Peter.

Be that as it may, we will not be exchanging the Peace in this service, although I am sure we are at peace with one another in this happy band of pilgrims here in Saint Peter’s.

But ‘Peace be with you’ – who said that? “Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” That’s in our New Testament lesson this evening. But also those were the first words that the new Pope, Leo XIV, spoke to the crowd at Saint Peter’s in Rome after he had been chosen by the conclave.

What a week to be thinking about peace! We have been celebrating V-E Day, peace in Europe at the end of the Second World War; and we have been hoping and praying for peace in Ukraine and in Gaza, in Sudan, in Syria, and in the Yemen; and most recently, between India and Pakistan.

Peace be with you! This is a message that an awful lot of people around the world need to hear. Peace is the result of expressions of brotherly love, of the kind of love, love for one’s neighbour, that Jesus made such a central part of his teaching.

So it’s entirely logical that the new pope should make this his first message; the new Pope, the new man in the line of apostolic succession, as it’s called, from Saint Peter. I think we’ve all spent a fair bit of time recently boning up on how the apostolic succession works, meaning how the Conclave works, so that excellent film, ‘Conclave’, has been very timely, and some of us have also enjoyed watching again the splendid imagined dialogue between the two previous popes in the film ‘The Two Popes’ with Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce in the starring roles.

Their real-life successor, Pope Leo, has begun his papacy with a message of peace, just like Jesus. I hope that the context of Pope Leo’s message will be looked back on in almost as wonderful a way as the context to the first time that these wonderful words, peace be with you, were uttered, by Jesus himself; because Jesus went on to demonstrate that he had risen from the dead: he wasn’t a ghost. You could touch him and feel him.

Last week we were reading about Doubting Thomas: Thomas said, ‘Unless I can touch him and feel him and put my hands where he was wounded, I will not believe that he has risen from the dead.’ And then Jesus appeared and gave Thomas the chance to do all those things; so Thomas realised who Jesus really was, that he was the Messiah, he was God on Earth.

This passage that was read to us tonight from Luke’s gospel is Luke’s version of the same story. He doesn’t mention Thomas, so this could be a slightly different way of looking at the miraculous events of the resurrection.

In a way, if you think of the story of doubting Thomas, what he says, and does, is really a way of reassuring you that the story is true. Thomas stands for all of us. We would need proof, especially of something so earth-shattering as raising somebody from the dead.

Luke has it a different way round, and it is possible that Luke’s proof is even more convincing than the live evidence of Thomas, because what Jesus does, to show to the disciples that he isn’t a ghost, that he’s real and that he really has risen from the dead, is to ask them for something to eat, and then to eat it in front of them. Obviously somebody who eats something has a physical presence; he is not a ghost.

I find the story of Jesus eating the fish very interesting, not just as a way of making this earth-shattering event more believable, (as ghosts don’t just eat their food and leave their plates clean in front of people), not just for that reason, but because the nuts and bolts of what Jesus did are very interesting in themselves, I think.

Our reading says, ‘They gave him a piece of broiled fish.’ ‘Broiled’ fish. What sort of fish do you think that is? Have you ever ordered ‘broiled’ fish in a restaurant? If you ordered it in any of our fine Penarth chippies, what would you expect to get?

At first, when I thought about this, I thought it was because we are using a version of the Bible called the New Revised Standard Version, ‘Anglicised edition’; and it’s called ‘anglicised’ because it is in fact an American Bible. Translated originally by an American team of scholars, it has been, or at least it claims to have been, revised in accordance with English English, as opposed to American English, by British scholars led by Professor John Barton.

But although I have a lot of respect for Professor Barton, I’m not sure that he has spotted all the Americanisms. The only broiled thing that I can think of is a type of steak called a New York broil. These days broiling is something you come across only in the USA.

But the funny thing is, if you actually look at the King James version of the Bible (1611), even as early as that, the fish is described as ‘broiled’. I think the explanation is that American English has actually kept some old usages – you know, they use some words which we would think of as archaic; for instance the word ‘gotten’, as in ‘he’s gotten himself into trouble’. ‘Broiled’ is one of those. It’s an old word for ‘roast’ or just generally ‘cooked’, so a better modern translation simply says ‘They offered him a piece of fish they had cooked which he took and ate before their eyes’ [NEB].

When you go back to the King James Bible and look at it, Jesus appears to have eaten an utterly disgusting combination, because in the King James it says that not only did he eat the broiled fish, but he also ate a honeycomb, he ate ‘a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb’. When you get to the Revised Version (1881), where they have had access to better copies of the original manuscripts, the honeycomb is not mentioned in the main text, but is relegated to a side note, which says: “Some authorities have ‘and a honeycomb’”.

My instinct is that, say, a piece of cod and a honeycomb is a truly disgusting combination – although I have to tell you that Kenny says, from an African point of view, that they are both individually nice-tasting foods; and Africans tend not to mind combining different tastes, so she wouldn’t have any particular difficulty with having a piece of fish and honeycomb at the same time.

But I think the more likely explanation is that an early manuscript contained a mistake. In the original Greek a ‘piece’ of fish and ‘honey’ are both very similar words: μέρος, a piece, μέλι, honey; mer-/mel-… I think it could be that one got mixed up for the other in the text, and so that might be how this mythical honeycomb crept in.

And the thought that what I consider to be a revolting combination, for someone else, is not, but is delicious, is indeed worth considering. We are what we eat. I am a beefeater; you might be a ‘cheese-eating surrender monkey’ and my friend in Hamburg is a Kraut (which is the name for a cabbage in German). So what was Jesus? He ate the fish – so he was alive. And he was a man, ‘a man in full’, as Tom Wolfe would have described him. Not a ghost. What he was offering was peace, brotherly love. And to remember that, we are encouraged to greet one another with a holy kiss.

But before you get too excited, the ‘kiss’ is translated from a Greek word φίλημα which doesn’t have sex overtones but does mean brotherly love and affection, so I think you can maintain proper British reserve next time the Peace comes around. But just think what the brotherhood of man brings, what variety of approaches, of tastes. True peace. So with Pope Leo, with Jesus himself, I say, Peace be with you!