He's not a ghost! He is present!

Luke’s gospel today tells of the importance of the Word of God.  The gospel opens as the disciples of Emmaus are recounting what had taken place on the walk with Jesus and had set their hearts on fire; how He interpreted for them every passage of Scripture that referred to Him (Luke 24:35-48).  Recently there was a series on TV by National Geographic about Jesus.  The approach the show took to talk about Jesus was very different than the approach of the gospels.  They went to the Old Testament, much like what Jesus said to the disciples of Emmaus; “everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and psalms had to be fulfilled”.  Then Jesus opens their minds to the understanding of the Scriptures.  Today’s reading from Acts (3:11-26), also written by Luke, bears this same importance of Scripture as Peter preaches in Solomon’s Portico.

When the risen Lord appeared to the Apostles, according to the gospel we read today, they displayed terror and shock, despite the words of greeting, ’Peace’.  They feared a ghost.  The presence of Jesus after the traumatic events a few days earlier were a bit confusing.  If you ‘read between the lines’, He is not back with his friends in the same ‘relaxed’ way that we can imagine earlier in the gospels.  He eats fish to show that He is not a ghost, but still, Our Lord just appears, omitting doors!  The most ordinary gathering may be the breakfast at the lakeside in John (John 21:1-14), but as they join Jesus no one dares to ask, ‘who are you?’ because they know it’s Jesus.  There is the important conversation with Peter, but we hear of nothing with his other friends (John 21:15-19).  When Mary Magdalene cannot hold Jesus, it is often interpreted as a way of saying that the old ways of being with Jesus are gone (John 20:11-18).  It will be the Risen Lord that they (and we) will come to enjoy.  The good days of Nazareth would never be again although Jesus had risen.

With the Scriptures, we can sit and talk and listen to Jesus.  He is risen, we are not.  But our Lord is present to us in the Word of God.  May this be the gift that keeps on giving: joy, life, hope, and the presence of Jesus to us during an Easter season wrought with loneliness, sadness, death, and despair because of this viral pandemic.