THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER B

[cappie]

The Gospel for this Sunday (Luke 24:36–48) relates an appearance of the risen Jesus to the disciples, one that will help transform their startled incredulity into worship and evangelism, and so. we encounter Jesus with his disciples. This is the last time Jesus will share his peace with the disciples; this is the last time the disciples will be able to see and touch Jesus’ body; and this is the last time Jesus and the disciples will share a meal.   Jesus addresses his disciples  he tells his disciples that everything written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms has been fulfilled by his passion, death, and resurrection. And now that God’s word has been fulfilled, true repentance and forgiveness can finally be proclaimed to all people. 

Jesus’ legacy is his passion, death, and resurrection, and it has fulfilled everything promised in Holy Scripture. Through these acts, God in Christ has opened salvation to all nations, expanding God’s word through the Word made flesh beyond the people of Israel. But Jesus does not simply leave behind a legacy – a long list of accomplishments and accolades – but a covenant – an eternal and limitless promise.

Through Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection, God’s promise is made attainable to all people regardless of status, class, race, or all other categories designed to separate and fracture the human family of God. This new covenant fulfills and expands God’s covenant to Abraham and renews the hope and promise of the prophets and psalmist. God’s covenant, God’s word, has been completed by the Word of God, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. 

So, what does this covenant demand of us?

We receive some wisdom if we look closely at what the risen Jesus does when he appears to his disciples.   The risen Jesus ingrains into the hearts and minds of his disciples a sacred rite, a holy pattern to encounter him. From the empty tomb to the angelic vision to the encounter at Emmaus to Saint Peter’s experience, the risen Jesus over and over again opens the minds and hearts of the disciples. He does this not by force or even by displaying the greatness of his resurrection – remember that the disciples do not recognize the risen Jesus at first glance – but instead opens their minds and hearts by continuing to share all of himself: his peace, his body, and flesh.

Jesus opens the minds of his disciples not only so that they can understand the scriptures and grasp who Jesus really is, but also so that they may continue to follow in his way of love once he departs this earth. 

We hear a lot about mission and mission strategies, usually requiring us to change what we do together in church and trying to convince us that we need training in marketing and PR, without which the church is, apparently, useless. Most of this is bunk. Mission is clearly  the proclamation of something, repentance and forgiveness of sins, to which we are witnesses. But ‘witness’ means what it says: a witness has experience of what he or she proclaims. 

If we want to fulfill our end of Jesus’ eternal covenant, we need to partake in that which the risen Jesus did himself: offer his peace, make his body known, and share in the sacred meal.

The primary way the Church is invited to emulate the risen Jesus and join, share, and proclaim Jesus’ covenant is in the celebration of the sacred mysteries, the holy sacrifice of the mass. That which, in the words of Dom Gregory Dix, “Week by week and month by month, on a hundred thousand successive Sundays, faithfully, unfailingly, across all the parishes of Christendom, the [people] have done.”

In the act of taking bread and wine, blessing, breaking, and sharing, we participate in Jesus’ covenant. It is through this act that we encounter over and over again the risen Jesus. It is through this act that we receive his peace, touch and behold his body, and share a meal with him. The good news is that this sacred pattern did not come to an end when Jesus ascended into heaven – instead, it spread to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

This is not doctrine to be taught or learned, but a joyous example to be shared.