From the Daily Lectionary for Thursday in Easter Week
Luke 24:36b-48
Jesus stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 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.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
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.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 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, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
This resurrection appearance in Luke follows the one on the road to Emmaus. In both of these appearances Jesus opens the minds of the disciples regarding scripture; and both appearances are followed by a meal. Again, Luke is describing the liturgical pattern of the church: Word and Table… that is to say that the practice of the faith involves mindfulness as to the Word, and attention to the ‘body’ as well. He is describing a community of sustenance that feeds both our bodies and our souls; nurture for Word made flesh, as it were.
The “fulfillment of scripture” is a prominent theme in Luke. You remember God’s promise to Abraham, the patriarch of the faith: That if you are faithful, your descendants will become a great nation, and they will be a light to the nations of the world. Thus a tension arises in the biblical history of Israel between self-interest, and servanthood. Many of the rulers of Israel in its ambiguous history tended to opt for the “great nation” part of the promise, and forgot the directive to be a light of justice and mutuality, the servanthood part of the equation. Such self-interest compromised almost unto death the fortunes of the people of Israel.
Here, Jesus is reminding the disciples that the works of the faith begin with repentance, a mindful reorientation towards the world, and that the church’s chief function is the forgiveness of sins. And of course Luke is speaking of sin as structural, that is, self-interest embedded in the status quo. To forgive sin is to challenge the self-interested and oppressive power structures of our world, to see to the just treatment of the powerless. When Jesus tells his followers, “a new commandment I give you: love your neighbor as you love yourself,” he is in fact saying nothing new. He is reiterating what the faith has always held to be true, that the practice of the faith is to serve the well-being and dignity of our neighbor, their salvation, in short. The fulfillment of scripture is to bring about the salvation of our neighbor, the just distribution of empowerment.
It is the ‘pattern’ that we are about: raising the dead of the world into new life and a shared abundance. Resurrection then is not a once upon a time thing; it is a way of life, a practice… seeing to it that the pattern holds, that suffering and death are not the final word, but always give way to new life, a meaningful and just way ahead. Our vocation, good people, is to be about fulfilling the scriptures, bearing light to the dark corners of our world. The world seems so desperate for such light in our day and age. May Love grant us the courage to be what God calls us to be.
A Prayer for Social Service (BCP p. 260)
Heavenly Father, whose blessed Son came not to be served but to serve: Bless all who, following in his steps, give themselves to the service of others; that with wisdom, patience, and courage, they may minister in his name to the suffering, the friendless, and the needy; for the love of him who laid down his life for us, your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
