While they were still speaking about this, Jesus stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?” And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them. He said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” (Luke 24.36-45)
On this Third Sunday of Easter, we move from John’s presentation of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to Luke’s version as found in his gospel. He will provide more details in his second volume that we know as Acts of the Apostles. Obviously, there are differences between John’s account and Luke’s account, but we only have to remember that both writers are writing theology first and foremost, utilizing history in its service.
Understood in this way, we approach the appearance story not so much from a literalist point of view, which only looks at the surface meaning, but from a theological perspective, which requires looking beneath the surface. If and when we do that, we find a richness of meaning that may be overlooked when we stay on the surface of the text.
So what is Luke wanting to convey to us here? His overall message is that the Risen Lord is present to his disciples, not absent. However, his presence is not the same as it was when he walked the roads of Galilee with them. It is different. That was made clear in the fact that the two disciples on the way to Emmaus failed to recognize Jesus when he joined them on the road. They failed to really “see” him until he sat at the table and broke bread with them. Only then were their eyes opened.
Of course, the question that begs to be answered is why such a simple gesture as a shared meal opened their eyes to who their companion really was. Clearly, Luke is saying that the Lord Jesus is found now in a meal fellowship where his followers sit at a table with one another and break bread together, speaking of him and remembering the words that he spoke while with them.
It is important to see that the Emmaus story is followed immediately by the appearance story that we hear today. It explains why the passage begins with the verse, “The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” Although it is a short verse, it is a loaded one, containing the essentials of the story. The Lord Jesus was made known or his presence was made clear at a table where bread was shared.
We can expect, then, that the particular passage that follows the first one is going to carry much the same point. And it does. When the Lord appears to the disciples in the Upper Room, they are “startled and terrified.” The reason is simple. They are unsure of what to make of the appearance, assuming that they are seeing a ghost, not a real person.
So, the Lord has to make them see that he is not some ghost, but is really present to and with them. He invites them to look at his hands and his feet, probably more properly understood as “from head to toe” since Luke makes no reference to his nail marks. In fact, Luke never says Jesus was nailed to the cross, only that he was crucified.
However, apparently looking him over from head to toe isn’t enough to convince the disciples who hold onto their misgivings, or as Luke says, “were still incredulous.” So Jesus asks them, “Have you anything here to eat?” Their answer comes in the way of a baked fish which, we are told, Jesus takes and eats in front of them.
If you’re beginning to feel like there are echoes of the Emmaus story here in the Upper Room, you would be right. Especially when the next thing he does is begin to tell them how the promises of Moses and the prophets have been fulfilled. Luke tells us that “then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” It is the same that Jesus had done when he was with the Emmaus pair, Luke describing it in this way, “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.”
So, the long and short of it is these two stories are more than similar. They are built on the same structure, starting with a lack of clear-sightedness on the part of the disciples about what they are seeing, moving to food that is shared, followed by an explanation of the Hebrew scriptures that had spoken of his suffering, death, and resurrection. At the end of both encounters, the disciples are ready to witness to the newfound presence of the Risen Lord, telling others how “he was made known to them.”
And how was he made known to them? In a shared meal where the scriptures were explained and interpreted in light of Easter events. In this way the eyes of the Emmaus disciples were opened and in this way the minds of the eleven were opened. They have found the presence of the Risen Lord in the same way and that presence will continue to be found when they sit at table together, break bread, and expound on the scriptures.
If it carries Eucharistic overtones, that seems to be the intention of Luke. And, as the history of the early believers shows, it is the way that the small band of followers found the continued presence of the Lord among them after he ascended to heaven. And, by extension, if we want to know the presence of the same Lord, then we have the roadmap right before us.
For my part, I find no real purpose in getting sidetracked on the physicality of the stories, namely that the Risen Lord ate with his disciples, suggesting that he had a physical body the same as ours. That simplistic interpretation is shot down by the fact that he is not immediately recognized and by his seeming ability to appear and disappear at will, even walking through locked doors.
I think Luke is trying as best he can to tell us that the Risen Lord was truly present to his disciples, but also not with them in the very same way that he had been before his death. His “real presence,” if we want to borrow the phrase from eucharistic theology, is found in a new and in a different way, one centered on the community at table, its eyes and mind opened by the fellowship and by the scriptures.
I don’t want to leave these stories without directing our attention to another important point, at least in my reading of the appearance of the Lord in the Upper Room. I find it in the simple question that the Lord asks the eleven. “Have you anything here to eat?” On the surface, it is simple enough to explain. He is attempting to prove his real presence to them by the ordinary means of eating food.
But, as we have seen, there is more to see, especially when understood in light of the early believers’ subsequent celebration of the Eucharist on the first day of the week, finding his continued presence among them at table and with the scriptures. All that is fine and good and rightly understood. But there may be even more to see if we open our eyes and open our minds.
And what is that? Let’s listen closely again to the question that the Lord directs to the eleven. “Have you anything here to eat?” Now think about that question for a moment. Who is it that typically asks that question of us? Someone who is hungry. People with a full stomach typically do not ask for something to eat, only those with empty stomachs.
Isn’t it, then, just a small step for us to see that the Risen Lord wants his followers to come to know him in those who are hungry? We only need to remember what he told his disciples when the crowds followed him, listening to him speak about the kingdom of God until it grew late in the day and they had nothing to eat. The disciples come to Jesus, asking him to dismiss the crowd so they can find food for themselves. Luke tells us that Jesus said to them, “Give them some food yourselves.”
Perhaps this is the first test of their ability to open their eyes and to open their minds, realizing that his command is still the same. Give them some food yourselves. And in this instance, it is the Lord who is the one asking for food, informing his followers in a not-so-subtle way that their task is still the same–to give food to those who are hungry and, in doing it, to come to know his presence again.
Of course, Matthew connects the dots even more strongly for us. We find at the end of his gospel the Lord Jesus tells his followers “whenever you fed the hungry and gave drink to the thirsty, you did it to me.” In other words, the real presence of the Risen Lord is found not only when we gather around a table on Sunday morning, but also whenever and wherever we provide food for the hungry, in this way forming a table fellowship whether it is in a food pantry, or in a soup kitchen, or even on a busy city sidewalk.
I believe we would be blind and our hearts would be closed if we failed to find the real presence of the Risen Lord in the face of those who hunger and those who thirst. I would go so far to say that if we cannot find it in their faces, we will not find it on an altar in an air-controlled church where everybody tends–or pretends–to play nice.
The Lutheran pastor and Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged during the last days of the Third Reich, but his words have never died. In his small but powerful book, “Life Together,” Bonhoeffer penned these memorable words. He wrote, “The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ, for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.”
As we might expect from someone who was willing to put his life on the line in the service of the message of the Risen Lord, Bonhoeffer made something simple that we like to make complicated. It is the same thing that Luke is telling us in his gospel. Until and unless we can find the real presence of the Risen Lord in the hungry person who says to us, “Have you anything here to eat?” we will never find it because, in the end, they are one and the same.
Or, put more bluntly by Mike Yankoski who lived for five months with homeless and hungry people and later wrote about it in his book, “Under the Overpass” when he asked this question, “Why do we reject the loving, self-sacrificing, giving, encouraging, Jesus-pursuing drug addict but recruit the clean, self-interested, gossiping, loveless churchgoer? Which one,” he asked, “do you suppose Jesus would rather share a burrito with under a bridge?”
I think we know the answer. The real presence of the Risen Lord is found when the guy shares his burrito with the hungry man under the bridge, the same man everybody else turns a blind eye to and closes their heart to, and, in so doing, misses out on the opportunity to sit at table with the Lord Jesus.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 