"YOU ARE WITNESSES OF THESE THINGS."

3^rd Sunday of Easter, Year B. Acts 3:13-15, 17-19; 1 John 1:1-5a; Luke 24:35-48.

AIM: To inspire the hearers to be witnesses of Jesus Christ in daily life.

 

          “The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread.” This opening sentence in our gospel reading concludes the account of the best loved of all Jesus’ resurrection appearances. Two of his friends, you’ll recall, were walking late on Easter afternoon “to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus” (Lk 24:13). Seven miles would have been a brisk two-hour walk. Only one of the two is named: Cleopas.  Bible scholars speculate that his unnamed companion may well have been his wife. 

          As they walk along the road, Jesus joins them. Like almost all those to whom he appeared after his resurrection, they do not recognize him. It’s easy to understand why. Jesus had not been brought back to his old life. That had ended on Calvary. Jesus had been raised to an entirely new mode of life. Like a friend whom we have not seen for decades, Jesus was changed in appearance. Only gradually did those to whom he appeared after the resurrection come to realize that it was the same Lord they had known and loved, alive again in flesh and blood.

          For Cleopas and his companion that first Easter evening the moment of recognition came at the supper Jesus shared with them. Listen again to Luke’s account: “And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.” (Lk 24:30f).

          How thrilled and excited they must have been! Forgetting their weariness and the late hour, they immediately return to Jerusalem to impart their momentous news to their friends. No sooner have they done so, today’s gospel reading tells us, than Jesus is there in their midst, with his characteristic greeting: “Peace be with you.” But they are “startled and terrified,” the gospel says, thinking “that they were seeing a ghost.” To banish their fear and doubts, Jesus invites them to touch him. He calls for food and eats it in their presence to demonstrate that he is no ghost but fully human, fully alive.

          “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,” Luke tells us. What Scriptures? The Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old Testament. Remember: none of the New Testament books had yet been written. The Old Testament proclaims the resurrection by showing us, many times over, a God whose characteristic work, from Abraham to Moses, is to bring life out of death. We have time to consider just two examples: the stories of Abraham and of Moses.

          Abraham and Sarah were old and childless. From the deadness of Sarah’s womb God brings forth new life: the child Isaac. If we had more time, I could show you how this pattern of life-out-of-death is repeated in every generation right up to the deliverance of God’s whole people, under Moses. That deliverance is the second example of God bringing life out of death. Trapped between the impassable waters ahead of them, and the pursuing armies of Pharaoh behind, Moses and his people are delivered from death to begin a new life in a distant land which God will give them after forty years of desert wanderings. Failure to perceive this pattern of life-out-of-death was why Jesus reproached Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus for being “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke” (Lk 24:25). 

          Toward the close of today’s gospel Jesus reaffirms this central message of the Old Testament: “Thus is it written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” And those who will preach this message, Jesus says in the next sentence, are those he is addressing: “You are witnesses of these things.” 

          Those words are more than a statement. They are a commission, a sending. Nor is that sending just long ago and far away. Jesus repeats this sending today. He comes to us in the Eucharist: in his holy word, in the sacrament of his body and blood. He does for us at every Mass what he did for those first friends of his: he takes away our doubts and strengthens our faith. Through his Holy Spirit, who guides the teaching of his Church, he opens the Scriptures to us. He gives us his peace: a peace which the world cannot give since it comes from God. And he says to us, as he said to those friends on that first Sunday after the resurrection: “You are witnesses of these things.”

          How do we bear witness to Jesus Christ? There are as many ways as there are witnesses. A few years back the St Louis Post-Dispatch had an article about one such witness: Sister Irene Marie of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who take a special vow of “hospitality to the aged poor.” As “collector” for her community, she hits the street daily to collect supplies for their 100-bed home for the elderly. One of her regular stops is the wholesale food market, Produce Row. A man who sees her there often says: “I guess a polite way to describe Produce Row is ‘tough.’ But Sister Irene just goes right in there and tells those guys what she needs. They’re like little puppies around her.” What’s her secret? She is careful not to push too hard, the article says. “You can’t expect people to give what they can’t afford,” Sister Irene told the reporter who wrote the article. “If we pushed like that, then God wouldn’t bless our work.”

          She wasn’t always in this line of work. “I was a seamstress in our Cleveland house,” she told the reporter. “One day Mother Superior told me I was going to be the collector.” Wasn’t she worried about taking on something for which she had no experience?  “Not really,” Sister Irene replied. “I’d never sewn before either.” That’s amusing, of course. But the deep and simple faith reflected in that Sister’s reaction to her new assignment is also uplifting. She is a shining witness to the power, and love, of the risen Lord Jesus. Her witness impressed me when I read it. The article showed that she impressed a secular journalist as well. 

          Friends, you don’t have to be a religious Sister to be a witness to Jesus Christ. You don’t have to be a priest either. There are people here in this church right now who, like that Sister, are bearing witness to the risen Lord by the inner quality of their lives: women and men of deep faith, steadfast hope even when all looks dark, and active, generous love for God and others.

          Here in the Eucharist we encounter the One who sends us out to be his witnesses in daily life. Here, in word and sacrament, we receive once again all his power, all his goodness, all his purity, all his love. And when we have Him, we have everything.