This week we get to Luke’s account of events after the resurrection. It is similarly brief as was John’s that we heard last week, and completely different in content. Like John, Luke has two endings for his gospel story – the second is in the book we call the Acts of the Apostles. That one has the idealized description of the coming of the Holy Spirit in fire, the speaking in tongues, and an early church launched into the world at large. We’ll come back to that at Pentecost.
Luke’s other ending (in this week’s gospel) starts with the meeting of the two anonymous disciples with Jesus as they are returning home, despondent, after the crucifixion. In this account Luke wants to illustrate the central importance of the Eucharist in tying Jesus’ followers to him, regardless of who or where they are. Although this emphasis is quite different from John’s, both accounts show a gradual process of understanding what had happened to Jesus and what it meant.
In today’s reading (Lk 24:35-48) the two disciples get back to Jerusalem and hear that Jesus had appeared also to Simon Peter. Despite this, when Jesus appears again to the whole group they are “startled and terrified” – so they clearly hadn’t taken on board what had happened to Jesus. Jesus then has to demonstrate his physical reality to them by eating in front of them.
Luke concludes at this point by having Jesus explain (yet again) to them what was going on, what God’s plan was for his people, and the crucial role they had in it.
We can hardly be surprised that the disciples had a hard time getting their heads around what had happened. In many ways the church worked for centuries to understand this, and in some ways is still continuing to do so. Our understanding of Jesus’s death and resurrection can never be complete.
We should also, each of us, take comfort from these accounts – whether it is John pointing out that those coming later, in some ways, had it even harder in coming to terms with the reality of Jesus’ resurrection, or Luke pointing out that we meet Jesus in person in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. It’s sometimes easy to get the impression that once you say “I believe” that everything should just fall into place – all fears, doubts, and problems vanish – and if they don’t, then there is something wrong with you or your faith. That wasn’t true for those closest to Jesus in his lifetime. We shouldn’t expect it to be true for us.