Easter III
More post-Resurrection appearances today, shifting to Luke's Gospel.
Unlike Mark's Gospel - which we read on Easter - which has no body, and only a frightened cadre of followers told to go home to Galilee, and unlike John's Gospel - which we read last Sunday - where the Resurrected Body has strange powers, it seems, Luke's Resurrected Christ is both evanescent (disappearing from their view in that room on the way to Emmaus once they realize whose presence it is) and, actually, strangely earthly and human, as in today's reading.
See my hands and my feet? I am not a ghost. I'll even eat, to reassure and convince you, for your own purposes -- do you have anything to eat? A piece of broiled fish? Sounds good. I'll eat it right here -- see, a ghost does not have hands and feet, and a ghost certainly does not eat. Must be real.
But, real to what end? John's Jesus needs to be perceived and understood in order to be seen, and that is the point of the community gathered around this Resurrected Body. Luke's Jesus - at least here - tells the disciples to go and be about the healing of the world, in his name.
Just as (in last week's reading) the Body of the Risen Christ still retained its wounds, proclaiming the power of the resurrection is not only a joyous outburst of Alleluia. The Resurrection and its power is proclaimed in the work of repentance, healing, and forgiveness.
This healing work - done in the name of the Anointed One - takes a form familiar to the disciples, but with a renewed power, freed from the works of fear and the grip of the fear of death. They are to call all people to turn from what does not give life and turn to that which does. They are to tell one another and all people that there is power in forgiveness, and that all people are to join in that power, in the name of the One who has shown the way of this power.
In this way are we to be like the Resurrected One -- as we read in one of John's letters -- and in this way are we to become like him -- to participate in these works in his name and to participate thus in his power: we are to repent and forgive. We are to speak of the power of turning, repenting, toward the way of life; we are to demonstrate and experience the power that exists in forgiving one another. We are to be 'witnesses of these things' in our days and years, in our living and our following him together as the Body of Christ.
This power flows from the power demonstrated by and in the Resurrection, but Jesus tells his disciples that it doesn't end there. It is not finite. It flows to all the earth -- to all the cosmos.
Like John wrote, let us see him as he is -- eating fish! with hands and feet in the world today! -- and learn to be like him, and follow where he leads, without fear. Repent, turn toward that which gives life, and learn to forgive. In this is the power of resurrection. We are to tell of this power, this truth, this life with our voices and in our lives.