Easter 3B Sunday, April 14, 2024, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church
It’s the third Sunday after Easter. The joy of Easter Day is still in our hearts, but we now have 50 days of the Easter Season to reflect on its significance.
The resurrection was not Jesus’ private miracle. It was life-changing for all of us.
“Seeing things as they actually are, usually takes time. No one notices the resurrected Jesus at first sight. Resurrection requires a second look, another glance. It takes time for our eyes to adjust to how life is radically different. Seeing God’s “new thing” is seeing an old thing in a new way/ through a new lens. The miracle of Gospel sight is seeing what has always been there in such a radically new way/ that it becomes a new thing. This is always the work of grace, and we can only handle so much grace at once.” 1
Our best guides to understand this miracle are the gospel resurrection stories. Today, we hear Luke’s story of Jesus’ sudden appearance to the disciples the night of Easter Sunday. He greets them, saying, “Peace be with you.” The disciples are terrified, frightened as if they have seen a ghost. Jesus tells the disciples he is not a ghost. “Look at the scars on my hands and feet. Touch me. Give me something to eat.” He next eats broiled fish. He tells them repentance and forgiveness must now be proclaimed in his name to all nations, reminding the disciples that they are now his witnesses to these things.
Are there similar occurrences in other resurrection stories?
The disciples on the road to Emmaus,/ Mary Magdalene at the tomb,/ the disciples out fishing also do not recognize Jesus. In today’s story, the disciples do not recognize him until they see the scars on his hands and feet, and he eats something. //
There are at least eight resurrection stories. The resurrected Jesus comes and goes through locked doors, but also does ordinary things like giving fishing tips, cooking meals, eating dinner with his friends. This Easter Season is an excellent time to practice Ignatian meditative practices, putting ourselves into each scene.
John’s gospel tells us Jesus appears to the disciples the night of Easter Sunday (John 20:24-29), where he breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit. Jesus returns the next week when Thomas is present to show him his scars and put his finger in his side. John writes about Jesus’ appearing to seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee, asking Peter to feed His sheep (John 21). Matthew and Paul both describe Jesus’ appearance on a hillside in Galilee (Matthew 28:16-20), possibly to over 500 people (1 Corinthians 15:6). Jesus is later seen by his brother James (1 Corinthians 15:7). And Luke tells us about Jesus’ final appearance giving the Great Commission. (Luke 24:50-52, Acts 1:9-11, Matt 28:18-20). Then Paul encounters Jesus a few years later on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:5, 1 Corinthians 15:8).2 //
How do theologians interpret these resurrection stories?
Henri Nouwen writes, “Through the resurrection, God says to us, ‘You are my beloved children, and my love is everlasting.’ Resurrection is God’s way to reveal that nothing belonging to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God is never lost — not even our mortal bodies.
The resurrection doesn’t answer any of our curious questions about life after death, such as: How will it be or look like? But it does reveal to us that love is stronger than death.” God loved us before we were born, and God will love us after we die. This is a very fundamental truth of our identity. God offers love now in our brief lifetime, where we receive God’s love,/ deepen it,/ grow love,/ and give love away. When we die, our love stays with those we leave behind, but also continues in full communion with God.”3///
How do the resurrection stories tell us how we might also meet the resurrected Jesus?
Each visit by Jesus is a surprise. He speaks love and peace. He calls people by name. He visits ordinary people who are frightened. Jesus is initially not recognized. The scars on his hands and feet are now how the new Christ is known.
The scars symbolize immense pain and suffering. But Jesus uses the scars to comfort his disciples,/ confirm his identity,/ and empower his story as a wounded healer to the disciples/ and us. Jesus’ scars tell a story of refusing violence in favor of peacemaking and returning love in the face of hatred. “If we do not let Christ transform our pain and suffering,/ we most assuredly will spread it,” says Richard Rohr. The transformation of the risen Christ’s pain spreads healing and hope to flow from his wounds to the disciples and now us,/ healing us when we are in pain.4 We can respond to hurt with forgiveness and healing,/ or we can respond to hurt with hurt, spreading the pain. //
The difficulty people have in recognizing Jesus tells us that the presence of the resurrected Jesus is so overwhelming that it is almost impossible initially to believe. Jesus looks different. He looks like an ordinary person, but does extraordinary things. He still has his scars. He still cooks and eats food, but sometimes walks through walls and suddenly appears and disappears.
“We learn from this that risen Christ is apt to come into the very midst of life at its most real and ordinary times. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon,/ not in the throes of a religious daydream,/ but at supper time,/ or walking along a road/ or when we are working,/ or hungry,/ when we are frightened,/ or repeatedly/ if we miss seeing him the first time like Thomas. These are the basics that the stories about Christ’s return have in common: Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see someone she thought was the gardener who calls her by name; all the disciples except Thomas hiding out in a locked house, and then Jesus’ coming and standing in the midst; and later, when Thomas returns, his coming again and standing in the midst; Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea, and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, “Children, have you any fish?;” the two followers at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of the bread. /He never approaches from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.5
But eventually, we realize that the resurrection is too unknowable in the way we want to know things; the journalistic who-what-when-where/ how we grandchildren of the Enlightenment think truth is discovered. The gospel writers are our guides. They are willing to have their lives changed before they fully understand what is changing them.
Actually, this is the only way life changes. We won’t understand marriage until we’ve been there for a while—maybe not even then. We will not know what having a baby is like until we have one. We don’t even know our profession until we’ve been in it for a while. Nothing in life is obvious immediately. It all grows on us.
This may also be a way to approach resurrection and the presence of the resurrected Jesus in our lives. No, we don’t understand it. We let it grow on us,6 or as we have repeatedly heard from this pulpit, “Resurrection and the presence of Christ is a daily, lived experience.”
1 Kris Rocke and Joel Van Dyke in Geography of Grace, Doing Theology from Below from Daily Quote, InwardOutward/ Church of the Saviour, InwardOutward.org, April 30, 2019.
2Msgr. Charles Pope, Blog, April 9, 2012, blog.adw.org
3 Henri Nouwen in You Are the Beloved (Convergent Books 2017)
4 Josh Scott in “Third Sunday of Easter, April 14, Christian Century, April 2024 p. 25.
5 Frederick Buechner in The Magnificent Defeat
6 Barbara Crafton in Christian Century Website 2012.
Joanna Seibert joannaseibert.com