Luke 24:36-41: in context

The risen Jesus appears suddenly among his disciples and says, peace to you, and their reaction is not the joyful embrace you might expect. They are terrified. They think they are seeing a ghost, a spirit, and they are frightened out of their wits. Jesus meets that fear gently, not with rebuke but with evidence. Why are you troubled, he asks, and why do doubts rise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is truly I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And he shows them his hands and his feet, the marks and all, inviting them to put their hands on him and prove he is no phantom.

Then Luke writes one of the most beautiful lines in the resurrection accounts. While they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, Jesus said to them, do you have anything here to eat? Disbelieved for joy. Their unbelief in that moment was not the unbelief of cynics; it was the unbelief of people confronted with something too good to be true, a hope so enormous they could not let themselves trust it. And Jesus is patient with exactly that kind of doubt. He does not scold them for it. He gives them more concrete proof, asking for food and eating a piece of fish in front of them, because a ghost does not get hungry. He insists, through touch and through a shared meal, that the resurrection is bodily and real, not a comforting vapor, something you could put your hand on.

That is a doubt many of us know, the hesitation to believe a thing because it seems too good to be true. The grace of God, the reality of the resurrection, the possibility that the hope is actually solid, can feel too large to trust, and we hold back from a joy we are afraid to believe in. Jesus did not shame that hesitation; he offered his scarred hands and a plate of fish. Where am I disbelieving for joy, keeping a real hope at arm's length because it seems too good, when Jesus is patiently offering me something concrete enough to touch?