Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
The Third Sunday of Easter, 14th of April 2024
This may be sad news for those of you who are, like me, massive introverts, but following Jesus is always a communal activity. No Christian is a Christian in isolation; even those who are imprisoned in solitary confinement, hermits in the desert or the mountains, or living in a single room walled into the side of a church as an anchorite, participate in the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Even if you prefer walking alone, like Fox in the picture book I just read,[1] by seeking to follow Jesus you have become part of the community of all the people throughout time and space who have also sought to follow him. In today’s story from the Gospel according to Luke we see why. It is only as each of us brings our experiences of God to share with others that the good news of Jesus Christ can be fully seen and understood. And it is only as a community, the church, that we can share that good news with the world.
For the church, Easter is a season of great joy. When we remember Jesus’ crucifixion, we are already looking forward to his resurrection. We know that after death comes new life. But Jesus’ disciples had not understood his predictions of his death and rising. For the disciples Jesus’ death was tragic and his resurrection terrifying. On Easter Sunday this year we heard Mark’s version of what happened at Jesus’ tomb, which ended with the women fleeing in terror and amazement and telling no one what they’d seen because they were afraid. Today we hear one of the three times that disciples experience the resurrection in the Gospel according to Luke, and again the immediate emotion is terror, not joy.
The Gospel according to Luke tells of three encounters that take place on the day we now celebrate as Easter Sunday, and each of the encounters begins in sorrow and fear. We might ask why it takes so long for the disciples to move from desolation to joy, even after finding the tomb empty. Jesus has died and been buried, yes. But he warned his followers that this would happen. More than that, what happened to Jesus was the fulfilment of the law and the prophets. And yet, it is only after the two men in dazzling clothes remind the women of what Jesus told them; it is only after the disciples meet Jesus again, that they remember what he said, and believe. The journey to faith is not instantaneous and it is not simply a matter of reading and understanding the Scriptures. Faith only comes after the disciples’ encounters with the risen Jesus, in which everything they have heard and learned is integrated with what they have experienced. This has remained the mission of the church down the centuries: helping people to integrate their reading of the Scriptures and their experiences of God with the rest of their lives.
In Luke’s telling of the gospel, unlike in Mark’s, the women who find the tomb empty do tell the others what they have seen and heard, but to the other disciples ‘these words seemed an idle tale, and they did not believe them’. (Luke 24:11) We then see the results of this dismissal in the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. (Luke 24:13-35) Two ordinary disciples, not members of the Eleven, Cleopas and another, are walking away from Jerusalem, devastated by Jesus’ death, when Jesus joins them on the road. He walks with them, listening to their story of the crucifixion and their sorrow. They explain to him that ‘it is now the third day since [the crucifixion] took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ They have heard from the women, they know that male disciples have confirmed the emptiness of the tomb, but the mere report of these facts has left them in confusion. They need a personal encounter with Jesus for their faith to be renewed.
Jesus encounters these two in the very same way that Christians continue to meet him today, in the expounding of the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread. He puts his own story into the context of all of Scripture – Moses and the prophets. As they listen to him, the disciples’ hearts burn within them, because rather than contradicting each other, the Bible and their own experience of Jesus now support each other. Hope is kindled. Rejoicing in this hope, they insist that Jesus stay with them. They offer hospitality, and through that hospitality, their eyes are opened, and they see Christ in the stranger they’ve welcomed. The author of the Gospel according to Luke is offering a hint on appropriate behaviour to the church, which is invited to see God in the face of every stranger welcomed, housed, and fed.
After Jesus vanishes, the two race back to Jerusalem to share their news with the others, and find that Jesus has appeared to Peter as well. It is as individuals come together to share their previously separate stories that the community collectively begins to understand that the good news of the resurrection is not an idle tale. And so we come to today’s story. When all the disciples are gathered, Jesus appears among them. They are initially terrified, afraid that he is a ghost. But by eating fish, and allowing them to look at his wounds and touch him, Jesus proves both that he is alive, flesh and blood rather than other-worldly, and that he is the same person who was crucified. It is now that Jesus opens the minds of the disciples to understand the Scriptures, an element of the story that I love because it reminds us that faith is not divorced from our intellect. We do not turn off our minds when we open the Bible or walk into church. With their minds opened the disciples are given their mission: a universal proclamation to be made to all nations.
At the beginning of Luke’s gospel the prophet Simeon rejoiced that in Jesus God’s salvation would become accessible to all nations: ‘a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel’. (Luke 2:32) The disciples are appointed to share that revelation and glory with the world, to call people to repent, to turn around and face God, to change their hearts and their lives. Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit will give the disciples the power to do this, but it is here that they are commissioned to be Jesus’ witnesses.
The Gospel according to Luke tells us of the experience of the resurrection of three groups of people: the women; the two disciples walking to Emmaus; the Eleven and their companions. It is only when all of them have shared and pooled their experience that Jesus tells them that they are his witnesses, and a new community is born. Individual stories have become part of the community experience, and we begin to see the church. On Easter Sunday I said that Mark’s telling of the gospel has no end because neither Jesus’ crucifixion nor his resurrection ended his story. Jesus’ story continued down until our day, and continues with us, as we carry it into the future. In the same way, Luke’s story of Jesus continues in our own lives. Luke will turn from telling the gospel of Jesus Christ to telling of the Acts of the Apostles, and it is those acts that created the one holy catholic and apostolic church into which all of us are baptised, to which we now belong.
No Christian is a Christian in isolation, and we have been united in one body with the women, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Eleven and their companions, the Apostle Matthias and the Apostle Paul, and every other Christian throughout time and space. Like all of them, we share our experiences of the risen Christ and integrate what we have learned through our lives with what we read in the Scriptures. Like all of them, we then join in the proclamation of repentance and forgiveness to all nations. We are called to play our own parts in the two-thousand-year-old story of love and light and life. When Jesus says to the disciples, ‘You are witnesses of these things’ he is saying that to us, too. We are all part of the community created by following Christ. Let us share our experiences of the risen Christ with each other, so that we can collectively witness to the joy of the resurrection.
‘The Upper Room’ by Lisa Debney, from Fire and Bread: Resources for Easter Day to Trinity Sunday, Wild Goose Publications, Iona Community.
Joy intruded,
disregarded locks and bolts,
trespassed on the solemn circle.Joy interrupted,
waving fear aside
to bring fresh challenge
of fire and flame.Joy burst in
with no apology.
It did not shuffle,
stand aside with
downcast eyes,
or wait for
a convenient break
in the conversation.Joy gatecrashed,
too eager for
the celebration
to stand on ceremony.There never was, there never will be,
a more disruptive intruder than the bringer of Good News.
[1] Barbara Reid, Fox Walked Alone (Toronto: Scholastic Canada, 2006).
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