The
Preacher’s Study
Third
Sunday of Easter, Year B
John W.B.
Hill
Acts 3:12-19;
Psalm 4;
1 John 3:1-7;
Luke 24:36b-48.
What an excellent word for new disciples this Sunday’s second reading
provides: “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called
children of God...Beloved, we are God’s children now...”
‘But were we not always God’s children?’ we might ask. Yes, certainly, as creatures of the world God made, but not as bearers of the divine character and image. How could
we be God’s ‘children’ in that sense if we “did not know him”? Now, however, we are a new creation, living
in the hope of one day being like him in
his resurrected being, when we “see him as he is”. That is why children of God (disciples of the
Lord) purify themselves, for they live in this hope. (An excellent word for old disciples, too.)
Then follow some stark words about this new creation: “No one who abides
in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.” How shall we reconcile this with the author’s
earlier teaching (which we heard last Sunday): “If we say we have no sin, we
deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our
sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9)?
The clue is provided in the stark truth that now “the world does not
know us” because “it did not know him.”
Yet how anxious we are to be known, understood, and affirmed by “the
world”, and to fit in with the norms of our culture. Can we be content instead with being
understood and affirmed by “the Father”?
If Jesus himself was ridiculed and rejected, are we willing to endure
some of the same ourselves for the sake of our loyalty to him? When he appears, will we indeed recognize in
him our true selves? We must not
misunderstand last Sunday’s assurance of forgiveness, thinking of it as grounds
for acquiescing in an endless cycle of yielding to sin and receiving
forgiveness. We are ‘children of God’:
yielding to sin is a denial of this truth.
But thanks be to God, we have been given this prolonged season of Easter
as the time we need get past our initial astonishment and disbelief. Last Sunday we heard John’s account of Jesus’
appearance to his disciples, risen from the dead; this Sunday we hear Luke’s
version — similar in so many ways! For
we need to hear it again so that it
can really sink in. Again we hear Jesus’
words: “Peace be with you.” Again we are
invited to behold the marks of his Passion.
Again he charges us to continue his mission.
However, there are two elements of this story that are unique to Luke’s
version. The first is Luke’s distinctive
recognition of the essential role of scripture — “the law of Moses, the
prophets, and the psalms” — for recognizing what God has been doing in the life
and death and resurrection of Jesus. It
is as the unanticipated fulfilment of
these scriptures that Jesus has been given to the world. Unhinged from that, the story of Jesus can
mean just about anything we want it to mean!
The second unique element in Luke’s version of this story is his characterization
of disciples as witnesses. When Jesus forewarned his disciples about how
they would be arrested and brought before the judicial authorities, he added,
“This will give you an opportunity to testify!”
(Luke 21:13). And in this Sunday’s first reading, we heard
Peter saying, “you...asked to have a murderer given to you and you killed the
author of life, whom God raised from the dead.
To this we are witnesses.” Luke describes the role of disciples as witnessing or testifying at least seventeen times.
It is worth remembering, therefore, that there is no account of the
risen Christ appearing to anyone except to
disciples (or disciples-to-be). If they
had failed to bear witness, we would
never have heard of Jesus of Nazareth!
Disciples are the living evidence of the power and wisdom of the
gospel. The job of any witness is to
share what you know (through your own experience, not by hearsay). A witness in a courtroom does this and
nothing more. It is for the hearers to
make of it what they will.
And anyone hearing this witness for the first time is likely to react
with astonishment and disbelief, as did the good people in Solomon’s Portico of
the Temple (Acts 3), because they
“did not know him”. Even his disciples
didn’t truly know him (either before or after his Passion!) until he showed
them his wounds, and “opened their minds to understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45).
Why such difficulty in believing?
Because we only understand things that we can fit into the plausibility
structures we use to make sense of anything.
As Lesslie Newbigin pointed out, “the story of the empty tomb cannot be
fitted into our contemporary worldview, or indeed into any worldview except one
of which it is the starting point.”[1]
So our initial astonishment and disbelief when meeting the risen Christ
is only to be expected, for he is reconstructing our worldview into one that
takes his empty tomb as its starting point.
That is what this Easter season is for.
John W. B. Hill is an Anglican presbyter
living in Toronto, Canada. He is a Council member of APLM, chair of Liturgy
Canada, and author of one of the first Anglican sources for catechumenal
practice.
“We Are One in Jesus the Lord,” by Soichi
Watanabe. http://www.artway.eu/content.php?id=1017&lang=en&action=show
“Jesus Appears to the Disciples After the
Resurrection” (2009), by Imre Morocz. http://iconsandimagery.blogspot.ca/2010/04/jesus-appears-to-disciples-after.html
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