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April 10, 2024. A Devotional Thought from Pastor William Metz

This week’s Gospel, (Luke 24:36-49) the Road to Emmaus, sounds strikingly similar to last Sunday’s Gospel. In both texts Jesus appears to the disciples. They are afraid and unbelieving, and by coming to them he convinces them that he has indeed been raised from the dead and that they are to be his witnesses, continuing his mission into the world. So prepare yourself as we repeat ourselves and once again offer a story of Jesus’s appearances to the disciples.

In order to keep you interested there are contrasts between these seemingly similar post-resurrection stories offered by Luke and John. Before telling of the meeting between Jesus and the disciples the evening of that first day, which Luke tells in similar fashion to John’s account, Luke tells this unique story of an encounter between Jesus and two disheartened disciples on the way to Emmaus.

Different from John’s account, both of Luke’s stories narrate not only an encounter but also a failure to recognize. Both stories feature an explanation in which the resurrection is interpreted in light of the scriptures. And both stories have a meal, of bread in one case and fish in the other. In the process of eating there is enlightenment as the disciples’ eyes are opened and they recognize Jesus. Then Jesus departs.

Significantly, this Sunday’s Gospel has Jesus directly and explicitly tell his disciples that all these events “must be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (24:47-48). In the past Sundays of Easter we have seen every text, in one way or another, speak of Jesus or an angelic representative commissioning Jesus’s followers to witness. This Sunday, that post-resurrection witness seems to be intensified.

John, as we noted last week, has the infusion of the Holy Spirit occur when Jesus breathes on the disciples when he encounters them in the locked room in John 20. Luke delays the gift of the Spirit until Pentecost. Luke’s main concern, in this story, seems to be that the disciples are commissioned and told what to preach: repentance and forgiveness that will come in Jesus’s name.

Here is the linkage with this Sunday’s assigned reading from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 3:11-20). Many times when we come together as a church we have doubts, fears, and misunderstandings. We, like the disciples, encounter the risen Christ through worship. Then the scriptures are read, and the word is preached, and we are given interpretation and explanation. Then we eat with Christ, breaking the bread of the resurrection in the Eucharist, and go forth to tell what we have experienced. “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:26)

Note how, in today’s Gospel, Jesus so quickly moves from appearance among the disciples, to ministry, to the fears and doubts of the disciples, to the commission of the disciples as “witnesses of these things.” As in other accounts of resurrection, there is an vital connection between the recognition, “Christ is risen,” to the commission, “Go, tell!”

Finally, Christ sends us forth into the world as witnesses of his Easter good news. In today’s Gospel, the resurrected Christ again shows up to the gathered community in order to sweep them up into his drama of salvation, in order to make them an integral part of his mission in the world as his Easter witnesses.
-Pastor William Metz