This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter. Our Lectionary does well to include a verse that it is more properly part of the Emmaus road story: “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” (v.35). As Catholics we are often prone to focus only on the “breaking of the bread” and its Eucharistic implications. We should also consider “what had taken place on the way.” As Joel Green [853] remarks, “this” refers to “evidences of the risen Lord, but more profoundly with the coherence between the pattern provided by Moses and all the prophets, the prophetic witness of the Scriptures to the Messiah who suffers and enters into his glory, the ministry of Jesus as this has been focused on table fellowship, and the experience of the resurrected Jesus.” Continue reading →
This coming Sunday is the 3rd Sunday of Easter. The return of the two disciples from Emmaus returns the focus to Jerusalem which is the “center” of the Luke-Acts narrative. In the gospel all roads lead to Jerusalem. In Acts all roads lead from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Upon their return they find “the eleven and those with them. The travelers are greeted with the news abuzz in the room: The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!”Continue reading →
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
Well… not actually “fishing” but I am heading out on vacation to visit family, friends, lakes, oceans, and other places where fish live… but I will leave the fish be. Not to worry, there are a whole bunch of posts queued up and ready to go on a daily basis… might even blog a thought or two while away. God bless!
I think that on our best days, we who profess to be Christian, we are storytellers. Today I have three stories for you. Two of which we know the ending; the third is a work in progress. Continue reading →
This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle B. In response, Jesus told Thomas, Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Thomas came to believe because he saw the risen Lord, but Jesus did not praise Thomas’ pathway to faith; rather, he pronounced a blessing upon those who have not seen the risen Jesus yet have believed in him nevertheless. These are those who hear or read the witness to Jesus borne by the disciples and confirmed by the Spirit (15:26–27). This is the second pronunciation of blessing by Jesus in the form of a beatitude in the Fourth Gospel (cf. 13:17: “If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.”). There are people who refer to this as the 9th beatitude. Continue reading →
This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle B. Although many translations include “doubt” in v. 27 — and thus lead to the phrase “Doubting Thomas,” but there is no Greek word for “doubt” in the verse. The phrase do not be unbelieving, but believe contrasts apistos and pistos — the only occurrence of both these words in John. Simply put, the word does not mean “doubt” and Greek does not lack the equivalent words: diakrinomai, dialogismos, distazō, dipsychos, aporeō, and aporia. Continue reading →
This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle B. The sacred writer had already introduced the giving of the Holy Spirit in John 7 in a scene during the Feast of Tabernacles in which the Spirit is promised at a future time when Jesus was glorified. In the Fourth Gospel it is at the crucifixion that Jesus is glorified in that his willing obedience manifests the nature of God, which is love. It is there on the cross that Jesus delivers the Spirit into the world (19:30), symbolized immediately afterward by the flow of the sacramental symbols of blood and water. Continue reading →
In the gospel reading for today we share the story of the two disciples on that first Easter heading home discouraged by the events that had unfolded with the death of Jesus. By the time that Cleopas and his unnamed companion had walked with Jesus the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus, the evening darkness had descended upon them. When Jesus acted as if he would continue walking, they implored him, “stay with us, for the day is almost over.” And so they had dinner at Emmaus. Continue reading →
This coming weekend we celebrate the 2nd Sunday of Easter in Lectionary Cycle B. Consider this one verse: When Jesus prayed for his disciples he said to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world” (17:18).
Jesus and the disciples were not born into a time of theological vacuum. Jewish theology was robust and with a history of succeeding and competing rabbinic schools. The followers of Jesus and the people of his time were Jews who were raised and lived this theology. It provided the framework for their daily lives and shaped their expectations about the Messiah, the Anointed One, who was to come. Among the gospels, John’s is the writings whose work expresses the fulfillment of those expectations and provides the theology for those that would follow Jesus. The basis of the theology is evident from the opening:
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and Word was God…”
friarmusings 