Homily for April 15th, 2018: 3rd 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.
