Witnessing the Good News – Luke 24

A text – Luke 24:36b-48

24:36b While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
24:37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
24:38 He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?
24:39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
24:40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
24:41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
24:42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish,
24:43 and he took it and ate in their presence.
24:44 Then 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, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
24:45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,
24:46 and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,
24:47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
24:48 You are witnesses of these things.

A reflection:

Jesus had lived and traveled with his students for about three years. He had taught them much about the Kingdom of God and about his own relationship with his father in heaven (also their father in heaven). They had witnessed healings that they might never have believed, except that they had come to know Jesus. And then he was killed, executed by Romans, but convicted and sentenced by their own Jewish leaders. He died. He was buried. And on the third day, he was raised by God from his ugly death to a new life in which he could appear to many people. Which he did.

This appearance, recorded in Luke’s Gospel, happened on Easter evening, just moments after the two followers who had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus had told the 11 disciples their story of a “Jesus sighting”. Those disciples had met a “stranger” on their way home from Jerusalem, stopped to have dinner, and the stranger blessed the bread and broke it. Suddenly they recognized him as Jesus, and he vanished from the. They ran all the way back to the city to tell the 11, and Jesus then appeared there in the closed room with the two from Emmaus and the 11 disciples. These stories are back-to-back perhaps to underscore that Jesus was indeed alive and still teaching and blessing and instructing his followers. He reminded the 13 people in the closed room that he had fulfilled all the scriptural predictions about the Messiah’s death and resurrection. Still teaching. And preparing them for their own ministry. Jesus then gave these new apostles what would become their commission: “That repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

We too are the witnesses of these things. The Holy One of God, killed by his own people within an imperial power, rose from death on the third day to proclaim yet again forgiveness of sins to all nations. He broke through the wall of death, came back to his loved ones, and commissioned them to share the good news of forgiveness and new life to everyone everywhere. There are no limits to his generosity and love. What limits of our own might we break in order to share this good news with our dear ones?

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for helping us to see what you want your believers to do: Proclaim in the name of the risen-from-the-dead Jesus the forgiveness of sins. Help us to DO, in our own small circles, what you sent your disciples/apostles to do, so that everyone can know your salvation.   Amen.