Readings of the day: Acts 3:11-26; Psalm 8:2ab, 5, 6-7, 8-9; Luke 24:35-48
We hear from Luke’s Gospel today of
Jesus’ first appearance to his disciples after he had risen from the dead.
Jesus stands “in their midst” and greets them, “Peace be with you.”
And what are among the first responses
of the risen Jesus’ disciples to his presence and greeting? We hear that the
disciples “were startled and terrified”; “troubled.” They “thought they were
seeing a ghost” until Jesus “showed them his hands and his feet” and ate “a
piece of baked fish… in front of them.” And then they were “incredulous for joy
and… amazed.” Would we have responded any differently if the risen Christ had
stood among us in this way?
The disciples do not encounter a spirit.
No, they encounter the risen Christ in “flesh and bones”; every bit as human as
they are; as we are. I think it is natural (and not necessarily bad) for us to
downplay, to distance ourselves even, from the full humanity of Christ, before
and especially after his resurrection, and what this means for us.
Today we hear what may be my favorite
Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 8. We respond, “O LORD, our God, how wonderful your
name in all the earth.” We pray to God, “What [are we] that you should be
mindful of [us]”? What is “the son of man that you should care for him”? We
give praise to God for giving us “rule over the works of [God’s] hands”; having
put “all things under [our] feet.” I find these words deeply consoling and
beautiful. And yet is there perhaps some distance between us and God inherent
in this Psalm?
We are grateful to God for having made
us almost like gods ourselves, with dominion over God’s creation like no other
creature of which we know. But when God is so “mindful of” us; cares for us so
deeply as to become one like us, we are, I think naturally, somewhat “startled
and terrified.”
God took on our “flesh and bones” in the
person of Jesus Christ, who suffered and died to redeem us from our sins. The
risen Christ shows himself to his disciples, again in “flesh and bones” but
also bearing the wounds of his passion and death.
We get a sense of what this means for us
in our penitential rite at the beginning of this Mass. We pray: “Lord Jesus,
you came to reconcile us to one another and to the Father. Lord, have mercy.
Christ Jesus, you heal the wounds of sin and division. Christ, have mercy. Lord
Jesus, you intercede for us with your Father. Lord, have mercy.”
Jesus reconciles us “to one another and
to the Father”; heals our “wounds of sin and division” by taking our wounds;
our sin upon himself and showing them to us in his risen fully human body.
Jesus is able to “intercede for us with [our] Father” because he, God, has made
himself human like us. There is no sanitizing this; making this “clean” and
easy; keeping God at a distance from us. But, if and when the risen Christ’s
full humanity scares us, he is there to calm us, too: “Peace be with you”!
“O LORD, our God, how wonderful your
name in all the earth.”
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