One of the remarkable aspects of the resurrection story in the gospel of Luke has to do with the sheer number of ways the risen Jesus appears to the disciples. First the resurrection is revealed to women. On the first day of the week at dawn, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “the other women with them” go to the tomb and find that the stone is rolled away, the body is gone, and “two men in dazzling clothes” stand beside them. The women believe, and they tell the eleven and the rest of the disciples. But no one believes them: “these words seemed to them an idle tale.” Then Peter runs to the tomb, willing I guess to give their story some credence. He sees the linen cloths in which the body had been wrapped, and he returns home amazed.
On that same day, Luke tells us, two dejected disciples walk to Emmaus, about seven miles away. They are joined by Jesus in the guise of a stranger, and they tell him all about the great tragedy of the crucifixion and the strange news that the women had brought from the tomb. On their long walk Jesus, still unknown to them, teaches them how to read the scriptures. He teaches them that Moses and the prophets say the Messiah has to suffer and die. Then he breaks bread with them, and in that eucharistic moment they recognize him. And at that moment he vanishes, and they acknowledge that all along that earlier walk they had felt their hearts burning as he spoke. They return to Jerusalem, where they learn—it seems almost incidental in the story—that Jesus has appeared to Simon.
It’s then, while the disciples are speaking together about all that they have experienced and learned, that Jesus suddenly appears among them as a group. That’s the gospel passage from Luke that we hear this morning. Jesus appears to them, after so much else has already happened and they have begun to learn that he is risen from the dead. But even then they are terrified and uncertain, and the best they can do is to imagine that they have seen a ghost. But Jesus teaches them again, showing them his hands and feet so that they will know he is flesh and blood, though he can appear and disappear at will so we know his body is somehow transformed. And then, apparently to help them grasp that he is really standing among them, he asks them for something to eat. And then, in this second eucharistic moment, this shared meal with the risen Lord, Jesus again teaches the disciples that Moses and the prophets and the psalms had predicted his suffering and death and resurrection. And he tells them that they are witnesses, and that “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” are to be preached in his name to all nations, presumably by them.
So yes, the sheer sprawl of this story is remarkable, and we have to try to take it all in if we are going to understand how Luke is shaping us to be the place where the resurrection happens and keeps happening, that is, to be the church.
If we are the church, if we are the ones who live with and in this risen Jesus, if we are the ones who proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to the whole world in his name, Luke wants us to know how our lives are to be ordered. And this resurrection story with all its moving parts is all by itself a short sermon about that very thing. It doesn’t only tell us that Jesus rose from the dead, though crucially it does that. It also tells us how we are going to live together as witnesses to the resurrection, how we are going to make room for that mystery to grow and deepen in us and in the world.
Now I can’t speak for you but I’m guessing that you want that for yourselves as badly as I want that for myself. We want to be real witnesses to the real resurrection and real members of the real body of Christ.
So here is a beginning list of some of the instructions we are being given in this resurrection narrative.
First: Jesus rose from the dead. This isn’t a poetic description of a spiritual experience. He is eating fish with them. Whatever we don’t understand, whatever we doubt, whatever we are afraid to believe because it makes us seem so foolish, Luke’s Jesus goes out of his way not to be some tricky apparition or purely spiritual manifestation. He says he is flesh and bone. If we are the church we are going to have to work to answer to that. It’s not going to be easy for us but we have to answer to the reality of an empty tomb.
That said, the next instruction Luke gives us for being the church is that the resurrected Lord is not just going to appear and make us believers in an instant. The women believed but were not heard, Peter had the wisdom to go see the tomb but that sounds like it left him with many questions. The disciples on the road to Emmaus walked about seven miles with Jesus and still didn’t know him. When they did recognize him he vanished from their sight. Simon saw Jesus but that’s all we know about him. When Jesus appeared to all the disciples together they thought he was a ghost. If we are the church we are a community of people who love each other and bear with each other and pray together to be able to bear the presence of Jesus in our lives. The story may be a mess—Luke’s is—but we will want to live every complicated bit of it.
Which brings us to the next instruction: listen to the people nobody listens to. That’s women, in Luke’s telling. Two thousand years later the church has made some progress on that front but we know we aren’t done. We can officially get women on the resurrection committee but that isn’t the end of the process. We need to be drawn magnetically toward the people on the outside, over and over. Toward the people with no access to vaccines. Toward the people who are routinely subjected to excessive force by the police. Toward the people whose deaths at the hands of a stranger with a gun have begun to seem normal to us. To people whose spiritual journeys don’t interest us. A church that witnesses to the resurrection is transformed inside and out because we know that when we meet our risen Lord he will be with those people first. That’s who we’ll find him with early in the morning on the first day of the week. If we are the church we will keep learning that and it will sink in more and more for us.
More instructions are waiting for us: we’ll learn what repentance and forgiveness are. We’ll actually practice repentance and forgiveness so that they are not just abstract ideas or sentiments for us. We’ll be able to point to examples in our own lives.
We’ll also learn from Luke, if we are the church, that deep down at the core of all this new life, Jesus is playful. Look at him tricking those disciples on the road to Emmaus. Look at him appearing among them all of a sudden. Look, he’s hungry. He is not just teaching them about some new reality. He is charming them into the heart of a mystery. Could he charm us too? Has he already? Don’t we want to know more about this?
Finally, though this list could go on for a long time, it seems clear that the church has already been given the gift of the presence of the risen Lord in the eucharist at the time Luke’s story is written. Not once but twice Jesus appears among them to share a meal and interpret the scriptures with them. In Emmaus he takes the bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them. And then their eyes are opened.
What we say about Easter and what we do about Easter are at the core of who we are as the church. That’s why Easter is secretly the hardest feast to celebrate. That’s why we, and Luke’s disciples, have to keep celebrating it, keep hearing it, keep studying it. That’s why on the Third Sunday of Easter we are still listening to the echoes of what happened on that morning.
Is that difficult? Is it fascinating? Do we have questions? Peace be with you. That means we are the church.
Preached by Mother Nora Johnson
April 18, 2021
Saint Mark’s Church, Philadelphia