May I speak in the name of the living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
One of the hardest things in life is to accept my limitations, my finiteness. I would like to be able to play the guitar like Pat Metheny my favourite Jazz musician. But this just isn't realistic, since my guitar playing is only good enough for campfire songs. I would also love to be able to score a goal with my favourite football team, but it's not going to happen. Too late for that. More importantly, I would love to be in two places at the same time, with my family in the States and with my family here. But this is physically impossible. Whether it's about know-how, strength, or spatial movement, we are simply limited. We can't do everything we want, be wherever we want, and so on. We might have lofty goals, and some of them may be attainable, but many are just out of reach. We are forced to face up to our finiteness.
What does this have to do with today's readings? Well, in the passages from the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, one thing that stands out is that the disciples are going to discover something even more remarkable about their teacher. After his resurrection, he is the same but also somehow different. He can do things that we cannot do. In both passages, Jesus is actively meeting the needs of people, and this, after his death and resurrection. In short, according to the Scriptures, Jesus is not finite.
In these two passages, there is much to explore and there are many parallels, but we will only look at a few. You might want to put the passages side by side and see how rich these texts are, and how they mirror each other. We will first consider the passage in Luke and then briefly the one in Acts. The passage in Luke (24:36b-48) comes at the very end of this gospel. It follows right after the famous passage in which Jesus meets two disciples on the way to Emmaus. All this happens after his death and resurrection. He appears to them on the road, suddenly and quite casually. In fact, they can't recognize him until he allows them to recognize him. He explains to them why things happened the way they did in Jerusalem, and then he disappears as quickly as he appeared to them. The disciples from Emmaus are so excited about that that they rush back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples how Jesus had met them and helped them to understand God's plan. While they are still sharing these things, Jesus shows up again! He just appears, suddenly, and he doesn't come through the door like everybody else. Luke the evangelist is showing us once again that Jesus, after his resurrection, is not limited by space and time like the rest of us. Right, this might not be entirely astonishing, if we think of the time when he was transfigured in a glorious, heavenly light, or when he walked on water. That's already a good start. These were like previews of his now glorified nature.
So, let's imagine what it was like for the disciples to experience this sudden appearance of Jesus to them. This will help us to better understand their emotions when Jesus stands in their midst and speaks to them: 'Peace be with you!' What an appropriate and beautiful greeting! But this still doesn't prepare them for this unexpected arrival. Luke describes the disciples as being 'startled and terrified'. Quite understandably too. Jesus then speaks to them, I imagine, with a calm, reassuring voice: 'Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?' Their first thought was that they were seeing a ghost (pneuma). This might have been the most rational thing to think of. What else could this be? How could it be Jesus? How could the testimony of the disciples from Emmaus be true? As well as the testimony of Peter?
Jesus knows that they are greatly in need of encouragement after he had been treated like the worst of criminals. Jesus wants to meet their needs. They need to know that it really is him. So, what does he do to help them? He helps them to understand that he is even greater than how they had known him before. At that time, he was able to do so many different types of miracles, but now they would discover something even greater about Jesus. He is not finite. He is not limited to normal physical constraints. To do this, he wants them to perceive his continued physical existence. He was standing there in bodily form, and he was speaking to them with his mouth and in human language. Then he invites them to use their sense of sight: to look at his hands and his feet where he had been crucified. Then he asks them to use their sense of touch. 'Touch me, it's really me. I'm not a ghost!' We can image them drawing closer to him, perhaps hesitantly, and beginning to touch him and feel his wounds.
Then Luke tells us more about the way they were feeling. Now some joy has come back to their souls! But this is the kind of joy that is so great that they still were 'unbelieving and wondering'! So, Jesus meets their needs again. To prove that it really is him, he asks for some food. Why this gesture? It's the same logic as before. A ghost or a spirit cannot do this. He takes something very tangible that they knew very well: broiled fish. He then ingests it. It's as if he were saying to them: 'There you have it. It's me. I ate with you many, many times. I can still do this kind of thing. I am able to stand with you, talk with you, and move in and out of the room without going through the door. I'm in another dimension. I am not finite. It's not quite like before.'
But this is only the physical part. Jesus also meets their needs by giving them further proofs about what happened during those terrible days in Jerusalem. Now he works on their sense of memory. He reminds them of what he had taught them before his suffering, and that these events happened according to the Scriptures. As he says, 'that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.' (v. 44). Then, something spiritual happens. Luke says that Jesus opened their minds to understand. This is what they desperately needed, because they just couldn't grasp this tragedy of his death and their disappointment. Now they were able to understand the Scriptures, and how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies about him. Now they were better equipped as witnesses of what they had seen and heard, from Galilee all the way to Jerusalem.
They are going to be a part of the mission that Jesus told them: '...repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things' (v. 48). Now they are witnesses who understand; witnesses who are convinced; witnesses who will proclaim what they have seen. This leads us to the second passage in the Acts of the Apostles where we notice a distinct transformation in the disciples.
In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles (3:12-19), Luke recounts one of the earliest attested miracles in the early church. Just as Jesus met the needs of his disciples in the previous passages, here also Jesus meets the needs of a very needy person. The highlight here is the healing of a man who was lame from birth. For years he was placed at the entrance of the temple asking for alms. Although the text does not mention it, we can imagine that he had hoped and prayed for healing. Finally, this occurs through Peter and John. But they refuse to receive the glory for this miracle. It is not because of their own power or piety, they say, but because of Jesus' power working through them. Peter says, "And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you." Jesus is somehow present, and he meets the needs of this disadvantaged person. How appropriate then that Peter calls Jesus 'the Author of life' (v. 15). Peter also reminds the astonished crowd that Jesus' death and resurrection happened according to the prophets. Jesus asked them to become his witnesses. Now they are witnesses of all that they had learned and seen in him and again in the healing of this man. They knew that Jesus was alive and not limited by space or time. This is the testimony of the early church.
If you have some trouble grasping the resurrection, you are not alone. It has been a problem from the earliest days of the church. Things like this normally don't happen, so why would it have happened back then? But the disciples were convinced of it; otherwise, they would not have preached the gospel so quickly and in so many places, often in the face of opposition and persecution. How can we fathom this miracle? It places us and our finiteness before his immenseness and infiniteness. Research in various sciences continue to show us how incredibly vast and complex our universe is. If we can accept that there might be an intelligent, benevolent creator behind it, well then, the resurrection of the body seems pretty small.
Yet, the resurrection is one thing. There is also this question about Jesus still being alive, present, and available, to whom we can even pray. Many passages attest to this. For example, while Saint Stephen was being executed for his faith in Jesus, he saw his glorified Lord and prays to him: 'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!' and again, 'Lord, do not impute this sin to them!' (Acts 7:59). Similarly, many statements in the New Testament underscore Jesus' exalted status, for example, 'Jesus is Lord' (cf. Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3) and 'Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever' (Heb. 13:8). These expressions of faith underline the link between the continued presence of Jesus and the spirituality of the Church.
Like his disciples, we also want to be sure about our faith. We also might have doubts, and some people need more proof than others. Like the disciples, we also might feel 'startled and terrified' either for ourselves or for others. We might feel helpless in the face of certain situations. These passages encourage us to consider afresh who Jesus was and still is and how he can meet our needs today according to his wisdom. We might not be able to meet all the needs of those around us, but we can tell them that we know someone who can help. And if we cannot tell them, we can pray for them, as Peter and John did, in Jesus' name. Indeed, some of our prayers begin with 'Lord Jesus', while others begin with 'Almighty and everlasting God'. Our prayers also often end with 'to your son Jesus Christ who lives and reigns with the Holy Spirit'. There it is: the conviction of the early church that Christ was in them (Col 1:27) and they in him (Rom 8:1). And what about us today? When we recognize our limitations and his limitlessness, we can hear afresh the reassuring words of Jesus: 'Peace be with you'. May we be witnesses of that truth in our needy world. Amen.
James Morgan