THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER, YEAR B

April 14, 2024

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Acts 3:12-19

Luke 24:36b-48

 

During this season of Eastertide, the Sunday readings look at Christ’s resurrection from different angles so that over the course of six weeks we build up a cumulative picture of the Paschal mystery in its many dimensions. And today’s readings focus our attention on the relationships among the Resurrection, the Holy Scriptures, and living out our faith in the world today.

 

In today’s Gospel, the Risen Jesus appears in the Upper Room on the evening of the first Easter Day. Initially the disciples have no idea what to make of what they’re witnessing. As Luke puts it, “they were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” So, first of all, Jesus needs to correct that misapprehension by showing them his hands and feet, and reassuring them that it’s really him in the flesh: “Touch me, and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

 

In the ancient world, the appearance of spirits of the dead, especially the recently dead, were not at all uncommon. The point being made here is that Christ’s Resurrection belongs to a totally different category. The Risen Jesus is neither a ghost nor a resuscitated corpse. His risen body is glorious, with the supernatural ability to appear out of nowhere, even behind closed doors. The new life into which he’s entered is not the stuff of zombie horror movies but the precise opposite: in his wonderful new existence he’s more gloriously and fully alive than ever before. Nonetheless, between his former earthly life and his risen life there’s continuity as well as discontinuity. His body can still be touched; his hands and feet still bear the marks of his wounds; he’s even able to eat a piece of broiled fish! Biological human life in all its wonderful materiality and physicality is caught up into the eternal realm of the spirit.

 

Then, having cleared up the disciples’ misconceptions about what they’re seeing, Jesus goes a major step further. He opens their minds to understand the scriptures, showing how the Law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms all foretold that the Messiah should suffer, die, and on the third day rise again.

Let’s dwell for a moment on that remarkable statement: “He opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” The Resurrection is not self-explanatory. The disciples can only understand the events that they’ve been experiencing in the wider narrative context of the scriptures, but, at the same time, their understanding of that scriptural narrative is utterly transformed by their experience of those events. So, it’s a reciprocal process: the scriptures interpret the Resurrection, and the Resurrection interprets the scriptures. And then, having opened the disciples’ minds to this new understanding of the scriptures, Jesus sends the disciples into the world as witnesses to his Resurrection.

 

Our reading from the Acts of the Apostles takes up the story of the apostles’ preaching the good news to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. Peter and John have just healed a cripple in the precincts of the Jerusalem Temple. Amazed and filled with awe, the crowds have gathered around to see these wonderworkers.

 

So, just as in the Gospel reading, a misconception first needs to be cleared up. Just as Jesus had to explain that, no, he wasn’t a ghost, so Peter has to explain that, no, he and John didn’t perform this healing themselves: “You Israelites, why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Outward appearances to the contrary, Peter and John are not the stars of this show.

 

Peter proceeds to explain the miracle’s meaning by proclaiming the Lord’s resurrection. To borrow Luke’s phrase from the Gospel, Peter opens their minds to understand the scriptures. He shows that God foretold by the prophets that the Christ should suffer, and he calls on the people gathered round to repent and turn to God so that their sins may be blotted out. So here, again, we see the same pattern of mutual interpretation as in the Gospel. The miracle is not self-explanatory.  Its meaning can only be fully understood in light of the Lord’s death and resurrection in fulfillment of the scriptures. And in turn, those same scriptures can only be fully understood in and through their fulfillment in the Lord’s resurrection, and by extension in such wondrous deeds as this miraculous healing of a cripple.

 

Now, I would propose that this process works in a similar way for us today. God continues to be present and active in our midst, although we don’t always recognize that presence and activity for what it is. In today’s Collect, we pray God to “open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold [Christ] in all his redeeming work.” That’s a wonderful prayer! And a key component of this beholding of Christ’s redeeming work is the opening of our minds to understand the scriptures, which sensitizes us to the many ways in which God is present and active in our world today. And conversely, our recognition of God’s presence and activity then helps us to understand more fully what the scriptures were talking about in the first place.

Such recognition presupposes systematic, disciplined, and prayerful reading of God’s Word. Before the disciples could have their minds opened to understand the scriptures, they needed to know the scriptures; and we can be confident that as devout Jews they’d been raised in the synagogue to know the scriptures inside out! For this reason, the Church encourages us to make use of such liturgical practices as the Daily Office, or devotional aids such as Forward Day by Day, that systematically immerse us in the scriptures and psalms over time. And that’s what we’re about here today. As we come to church Sunday by Sunday, the lectionary takes us through much of the Bible every three years.

 

The promise of today’s readings is that as we read and reflect prayerfully on the Scriptures, we shall develop the ability to recognize the risen Christ present and working among us today. During this time of transition, you’ve been asked to reflect on your parish history, and identify how God has been leading and guiding you along the way. That parish story fits in turn into the much larger story of God’s gracious dealings with his people throughout history. And I’m confident that God’s gift to you during this transition period will be not only opening of your minds to understand the scriptures, where that story is definitively set forth, but also opening the eyes of your faith to perceive Christ’s redeeming work in your midst. For those are but two sides of the same coin.