Third Sunday of Easter (Year B)
Luke 24:35-48
35
[The two disciples] told what had happened on the road
[to Emmaus], and how he had been made known to them
in the breaking of the bread. 36 While they were talking
about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to
them, “Peace be with you.” 37 They were startled and
terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He
said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts
arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see
that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not
have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40 And when
he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41
While in their joy they were disbelieving and still
wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a
piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence. 44 Then he said to
them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that
everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must
be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he
said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the
dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be
proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses
of these things.
COMMENTARY:
❉ “The term used for ‘stands’ or ‘stood’ can imply a normal human action. But it is also the
term Luke uses to describe a visitation by a heavenly messenger, like the angel
‘standing’ before the Virgin Mary. This is the ‘normal-divine messenger’ Jesus! His
resurrection is neither completely corporeal nor completely ethereal, and by striking
this balance, Luke presents Jesus’ Resurrection in a way that rejects the main theories
about the afterlife prevalent in the Hellenistic world at that time. Today, when so many
‘Christian’ societies appear to favor various versions of reincarnation over resurrection
faith, Luke’s refusal to conform or reinterpret this key Christian belief is salutary.” (The
Lectionary Commentary, Vol.3, p. 467)
❉ Note how, in so many of Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances, His first words (like those
to Thomas last weekend) are: “Peace be with you!” In His risen body, He comes to offer
to His followers a gift of forgiveness and renewal, that deep shalom which is one of the
most inclusive of greetings and blessings in Hebrew. The most fundamental fruit of the
Resurrection is a cosmic (and personal) peace. “He speaks ‘peace’ to them; always a
metonym for salvation in Luke, it here hints at ‘Don’t be afraid, it is I.’” (The Lectionary
Commentary, Vol. 3, p. 465)
❉ Throughout Luke’s Gospel, terror, shock and surprise have been the usual response to
God’s interventions through Jesus; as such, the reaction of the apostles in today’s
pericope follows this same pattern. “They thought they were seeing a ghost”: under the
circumstances (knowing about Jesus’ death), this is a reasonable, logical conclusion.
❉ As in last Sunday’s Gospel about “doubting Thomas,” there seems to be a strong
emphasis on the physicality of Jesus’ resurrection (eating the broiled fish1, “Look at my
hands and feet … touch me and see,” etc.), in which the Oxford Bible Commentary calls
“the most unashamedly materialistic of all the resurrection narratives” (p. 958). This is
perhaps in response to some early Docetic tendencies in the Church, which denied the
fact of Jesus’ real crucifixion and suffering2, choosing to posit some type of separation
between Jesus as God and Jesus as human being, a division that the Church was
concerned to correct in the Gospels. Jesus’ resurrection is not simply something
“spiritual,” with no consequences for His body (or ours); on the contrary, because it
involves both soul and body, we can look to it as the “template” of what God will one day
offer to all of us who are united to Jesus’ rising through baptism, faith and a worthy life.
❉ Verses 44-47 outline the Church’s basic “hermeneutical [interpretive] approach” from the
beginning: the entire Jewish Bible (“the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms”) is a
unified testimony to what God has done in and through and to Jesus. Although
obviously not every chapter and verse is a literal prophecy or testimony, there was a very
clear understanding that God had oriented the entire Old Testament to point forward to
the time of Jesus, and to the events of His life. “He maintains that all three of the major
parts of the Bible … contain traditions that he fulfills … Jesus shows them how his own
story fulfills the story found in the Scriptures.” (Preaching the New Lectionary, p. 182).
“For Luke, it is fundamental that Jesus’ whole career fulfilled the Scriptures—but it
needed the risen Jesus to make the real connection, for they do not obviously find their
fulfillment in his life.” (Oxford Bible Commentary, p. 959)
Today, many people believe that this approach to the Scriptures, while valuable, is
somewhat oversimplified and naïve, and does not take into consideration the decades of
Christian reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that occurred
before the final writing of the Gospels. The question of the “messianic predictions” in
Scripture is both a complex and delicate question, since it can tend toward the kind of
fundamentalist reading of the Bible that automatically coordinates Old and New
Testament details without first asking questions about their literary and historical
context. It also challenges us to study to what degree some of these same Old Testament
texts were or were not considered messianic in the earliest layers of Jewish
interpretation to which we have access today (Qumran, targums, etc.). It is an important
and controversial subject that is today at the heart of much Jewish-Christian discussion.
In verse 45, Luke says that “Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures”:
this understanding is not the result of simply human interpretation or deduction, but is
1
“Although this is not the official ritual meal of the community, it may have Eucharistic overtones (cf.
9:16)” (Preaching the New Lectionary, p. 181)
2
It is reported of the Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana that he also encouraged some of his disciples
to touch his body, to ascertain that he was not dead, as they believed. (Philostratus, De vita Apollonii, IV)
a spiritual insight granted by Christ himself. It is accessible only through faith, and
cannot be argued simply on the basis of human reason or logic. “Understanding comes
through revelation, through having the mind opened. This is a gift of the risen Jesus,
which leads to the realization that Scripture is centered and focused in him. The
repeated use of the first-person singular, ‘my words … I spoke … while I was still with
you … about me …,’ emphasizes this point.” (The Lectionary Commentary, Vol. 3, p. 467)
❉ “Despite the efforts of countless commentators and interpreters over the centuries to
reduce these narratives to something neither quite so strange nor nearly so wonderful,
one fact remains: The resurrection community that had experienced Jesus' dying now
experienced his risen presence. And it was, quite insistently, an embodied one.
This is a Jesus of sight and sound, of memories and relationships, of love and
tenderness. He would take food and allow himself to be touched. Even his wounds could
be examined. It was a recognizable and identifiable Jesus, a realization of his bodied
existence. And yet he seemed to transcend the conditions of sheer organic materiality.
He would appear out of nowhere, supposedly pass through walls and closed doors, walk
on water, and reveal wounds startlingly different from the open sores of earthly trauma.”
(Father John Kavanaugh; Center for Liturgy at St. Louis University; online)
❉ St. Augustine:
What, then can it have been that they were still incapable of seeing? It was his body, the
Church.
Him they could see well enough, but the Church not at all. The bridegroom they could
see, but the bride was still hidden from them. Nevertheless, he promised her to them.
Thus it is written: Christ must suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. So much for
the bridegroom, but what of the bride? In his name repentance must be preached to every
nation on earth for the forgiveness of sins, beginning at Jerusalem.
This is what the disciples had not yet seen: they had no vision yet of the Church
spreading from Jerusalem over the whole world. But they could see the head before
them, and when he spoke to them of the body, they believed him.
Now we too find ourselves in a situation not unlike theirs: we can see something which
was not visible to them, while they could see something not visible to us. We can see the
Church extending throughout the world today, something that was withheld from them,
but Christ, who in his human body was perceptible to them, cannot be seen by us.
And just as they, seeing his human flesh, were enabled to believe in his mystical body, so
now we, seeing his mystical body, should be able to believe in the head. Just as the sight
of the risen Christ helped the disciples to believe in the Church that was to follow, so the
spectacle of that same Church helps to confirm our faith in the resurrection of Christ.
1.Christ has risen while earth slumbers, Christ has risen where hope died,
As he said and as he promised, as we doubted and denied.
Let the moon embrace the blessing; let the sun sustain the cheer;
Let the world confirm the rumour: Christ is risen, God is here!
2.Christ has risen for the people whom he died to love and save;
Christ has risen for the women bringing flowers to grace his grave
Christ has risen for disciples huddled in an upstairs room.
He whose word inspired creation can’t be silenced by the tomb.
3.Christ has risen to companion former friends who fear the night,
Sensing loss and limitation where their faith had once burned bright.
They bemoan what is no longer, they expect no hopeful sign
Till Christ ends their conversation, breaking bread and sharing wine.
4.Christ has risen and forever lives to challenge and to change
All whose lives are messed or mangled, all who find religion strange.
Christ is risen. Christ is present, making us what he has been –
Evidence of transformation in which God is known and seen.