Homily 3Rd Sunday of Easter Year B Luke 24:35-48

Homily 3rd Sunday of Easter Year B Luke 24:35-48

I decided to take a different approach to my homily today, and make it more of a scripture study than anything else, because if you remembered some of the details of last week’s gospel, questions should have come to mind as you listened to the gospel today. More about that in a minute.

In general, reading and reflecting on the scriptures should be a regular part of our lives of faith, and we should take a two pronged approach. On one hand, we should study the scriptures with a good Catholic bible and a good commentary, to learn more of what God has revealed about himself and his will for the world.

One the other hand, we should prayerfully reflect on the scriptures to get to know God more personally through his Word, and to invite him, through the Holy Spirit, to speak to us personally … to inspire, guide and direct us in how best to fulfill his plan for our lives.

In both endeavors, we need to keep in mind the caution given in the second letter of Peter: “Know this first of all, that there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation.”

Just as the Lord opened the minds of his disciples to understand the scriptures, so too, did he give them and to the bishops who succeeded them, the wisdom to interpret the scriptures authoritatively for believers.

So any message we think God might be sending us through our study or prayer with the scriptures should be checked against the teaching of the Church, knowing that the Spirit would never lead us to contradict what he has established as truth over 2000 years of Church Tradition.

Ironically, the more time you spend with the scriptures, the more likely you might be confused, because sometimes the scriptures seem self-contradictory on the surface. A classic example is the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.

There are actually two stories. In chapter one it says God created everything in six days, and he made humans beings after everything else, creating man and woman at the same time in his image and likeness.

Rev. Michael G. Cambi 1 4/22/2012 In chapter two it says God created the earth with a stream welling up out of the ground before he made anything else. Then he formed man out of the clay of the ground, and blew his breath into man’s nostrils to make him a living being.

Next he made plants for the man to cultivate and eat. Then he wanted to make a suitable partner for the man so he created all kinds of animals, but none of them was good enough, so finally he made a woman out of the man’s rib.

Obviously, God didn’t create the universe twice, so both of these stories can’t be historically true in the literal sense, but they’re both the inspired word of God, and both contain truths about the relationships between God and Man and the world.

The authors of sacred scripture were very much interested in the truth, but their method of conveying the truth was not the same as the method we might use today, i.e. that of a court stenographer who records the details of a murder trial, or of cameramen who record the Olympic Games.

It’s important to understand this older methodology even with respect to the gospels. The classic example is the story of Christ’s birth. There is no story of his birth in either Mark or John, and the stories in Luke and Matthew are quite different.

That brings me back to today’s gospel. It describes the same event that we heard last week … the first appearance of Jesus to a large gathering of his disciples after his resurrection. Last week we heard John’s version of the event, and this week we heard Luke’s version.

John said the disciples were meeting in a locked room when Jesus appeared to them, said “Peace be with you,” and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Though they locked the doors for fear of the Jews, they were not afraid when they saw Jesus.

Luke doesn’t say specifically where the disciples are gathered, only that the two who recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread, found the rest of the disciples gathered in Jerusalem. Whose house or what room wasn’t important to Luke.

Luke says the disciples reacted quite differently to the Lord’s offer of peace. They didn’t rejoice at first, but were startled, terrified, troubled, filled with doubt and fear. Only in response to the questions arising in their hearts, does Jesus

Rev. Michael G. Cambi 2 4/22/2012 show them his hands and feet to reassure them it’s really him. He then eats in front of them to give them even more assurance.

In John’s gospel, only doubting Thomas needs the reassurance to believe. Maybe John thought it would be more effective to convey how crucial it is to believe by laying all the doubt on Thomas, or maybe Luke didn’t want to single Thomas out for fear of embarrassing him, or dishonoring his memory.

From Luke’s gospel there’s no reason to think Thomas wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus appeared – Luke doesn’t say that Jesus appears again after this. In fact, there are only four more verses in Luke’s gospel after today’s passage. Jesus tells the disciples he’s going to send them the Holy Spirit and he wants them to sit tight until he does. Then he ascends into heaven before their eyes.

John’s gospel has no record of the ascension, but includes a third appearance of Jesus to his disciples, after he returns that second time to address Thomas’s unbelief. Remember, too, that according to John, Jesus gave the disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit during his first appearance, to empower them for their mission to forgive sins.

Jesus does not explicitly commission his disciples in Luke’s account, but he does so implicitly when he tells them, “You are witnesses of these things.” Luke then wrote the Acts of the Apostles to describe in detail how they go about witnessing those things to all the nations.

So how can we resolve what seem like discrepancies in the two versions of this post resurrection appearance? First, we have to remember that the gospels were composed decades after Jesus died … the story of his life, death and resurrection was handed down orally for two generations before anything was written down.

You know from your own experience how the retelling of stories can change through the years … sometimes this or that detail is emphasized, sometimes others are, sometimes details are left out altogether. It often depends on to whom the story is being told.

Similarly, each of the evangelists wrote his gospel for a specific community of believers who had specific issues, concerns, and struggles with their faith and the Christian life. So it makes sense that some gospels would highlight part of Jesus’ life and teaching more than others to address the needs of their local church.

Rev. Michael G. Cambi 3 4/22/2012 Third, just because one gospel does not include a detail or even a whole event that is found in another gospel, doesn’t mean that writer wasn’t aware of it, or didn’t believe it to be true. Recall the end of last week’s gospel, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.”

And the very last line of John’s gospel states, “There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written.”

The Vatican II document called the “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation” gives a clear summary on the nature of the gospels. “Holy Mother Church has firmly maintained that the four Gospels, whose historicity she affirms without hesitation, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, really did and taught for man’s eternal salvation.”

“After the ascension of the Lord, the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done, with that fuller understanding they enjoyed from having been instructed by the glorious events of Christ and enlightened by the Spirit of truth.”

“The sacred authors, in writing the four gospels selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus.”

The truth from these last two weeks? Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples. There was doubt and fear among them to some degree, but Jesus gave them all the proof they needed to remove their reservations.

He enlightened their understanding and empowered them with the Holy Spirit to be faithful witnesses to his truth. We have inherited that mission, and since we believe in him, even without seeing him, we are blessed to have life in his name.

We sustain that life in part through our study, reading, reflecting on, and praying over God’s Word, always against the horizon of Church teaching. By doing so, we grow in our knowledge and love of God, and become more effective witnesses of these things … above all that Jesus is the Christ … the Son of God.

Rev. Michael G. Cambi 4 4/22/2012