Not-ghost
[Jesus said to them,] “Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” – Luke 24:39b (NRSV)
I love a ghost, a cryptid, an unexplained mystery. I really want the most supernatural explanations possible for these stories. Alas, I always end up believing they’re just gas leaks or military tests or, like, bears with mange.
So I wasn’t all that surprised when, in preparing for a recent interfaith panel about unseen agents like ghosts and demons, I kept thinking about all the things that aren’t them. The spectral evidence that judges at Salem shouldn’t have admitted. The demons and devils that white American settlers said Native peoples were, but which they certainly are not. All those people in the Gospels possessed by something, but something that surely was not Satan’s lieutenant or whatever.
Perhaps it’s because I’ve been formed over many years by Christian stories of a particular not-ghost: the resurrected Jesus. The Gospel writers, worried that people would think the resurrected Jesus is all spirit and no flesh, made sure you know that he felt hunger, ate, had wounds in his body that could be touched. Believe what you want about ghosts, they said, but this guy isn’t one.
The Gospel writers didn’t use logic or science to counter the outrageous idea that the ghost of Jesus had returned. They countered it with an even more outrageous claim: that he’d been resurrected.
I always end up explaining away the supernatural stories I hear. I used to think I reached for prosaic explanations because the stories themselves were so outrageous. The truth is that the gospel has ruined me for weirdness: once you’ve come to believe in the physical resurrection of an enfleshed God, you become a lot harder to impress.
Prayer
For being so much more than a ghost, thank you. Amen.
About the AuthorQuinn G. Caldwell is Chaplain of the Protestant Cooperative Ministry at Cornell University. His most recent book is a series of daily reflections for Advent and Christmas called All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas. Learn more about it and find him on Facebook at Quinn G. Caldwell.