This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter In Lectionary Cycle B, in which Mark in the primary gospel. The reading for the 2nd Sunday of Easter was taken from the Gospel of John and recounts the Upper Room scenes of Jesus’ appearances and the story of Thomas. On this the 3rd Sunday of Easter, the lectionary again looks to another gospel account to tell the story of the appearance in the Upper Room. This pericope is taken from the Gospel of Luke.

In the Lucan recounting of the events of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, our story occurs on the evening of Easter Sunday. The women have found the tomb empty, there have been encounters with the Resurrected Jesus, and the news is spreading among the small group of faithful. But not all have heard – not the two disciples on the “Road to Emmaus” (24:17)

The first verse of our reading more traditionally belongs to the Emmaus road story when two disciples encounter the Risen Jesus(Lk 24:13-35). That reading is from the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle C. Let us pick up the ending of that story:

30 And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. 31 With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. 32 Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning (within us) while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” 33 So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them 34 who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. 

Brian Stoffregen provides good reason to review the “Road to Emmaus” account as he points out the parallels between the back-to-back Lucan accounts. Each in its own way is a story of the growth in faith as the disciples experience:

Now the two have made the long trek back to Jerusalem, found the community gathered in the upper room, and shared their encounter. While they were still speaking about this, [Jesus] stood in their midst.”

One of the emphases of the “Road to Emmaus” account was to emphasize the reality of Jesus’ spiritual presence in the church in the Word proclaimed and in the “breaking of the bread.” Now Luke moves the emphasis to the physical reality of Jesus’ resurrection body. Jerome Kodell [Luke, 979] notes: “From the earliest times in the church, there was a danger of docetism, the heretical belief that Jesus was God behind a thin veneer of humanity: thus his suffering was only playacting, and his resurrection was simply a return to a completely spiritual existence with no bodily effect. The Letters of John combated this error (1 John 4:2–3; 2 John 7).” And so Luke stresses that Jesus’ resurrection body is real and not simply a resuscitated corpse. The disciples touch him; the marks of the passion are visible in his hands and feet; he eats with the disciples – far more than simply appearing among them. 

It is good to remember that Luke’s primary audience are people raised in Hellenistic thought. The evangelist is offering a whole new category of thought, beyond any previous perspective.

Image credit: Maesta altar piece, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 1308, Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena | Public Domain