While they were still speaking about this,
he stood in their midst and said to them,
“Peace be with you.”
The Prince of Peace came among them and wished them peace, just as he had instructed his disciples to wish peace on houses where they would stay on their missionary journeys (see Luke 10:5). Jesus himself was uniquely qualified to offer peace, "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (see Romans 5:1). The peace Jesus proclaimed was able to restore relationships at all levels, with God, with one another, and with ourselves.
But they were startled and terrified
and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
The disciples were, however, still traumatized and immobilized by fear, unable to immediately receive the peace Jesus offered. To be fair, his sudden appearance in their presence must have been jarring. But even having heard that Jesus was raised they were still unable to receive it when they saw him. They chose even the most outlandish alternative theories rather than accept the truth that the had heard. Perhaps they were afraid that Jesus himself would be angry at the way that none had stood by him, that none had waited for his resurrection with firm trust and hope, and that most had been on the way resume their previous ways of life. They may have suspected not only a ghost, but an angry ghost, come to condemn them or even to take revenge. It was just not on their radar that something as horrible as the cross could have been a part of the plan. Since they were only able to recognize the cross as a fluke or a failure the resurrection remained beyond what they could understand or imagine.
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled?
And why do questions arise in your hearts?
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself.
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you can see I have.”
Jesus was patient in the way he delt with his traumatized disciples. Yes, they were slow to believe, but he allowed for a contact that was able to transcend all of the doubt and despair. He demonstrated that he was indeed the same Jesus, whom they could see and touch. The fact that he, while having his wounds, invited them to touch him, made clear that he held no grudge. The wounds themselves were revealed to be not in spite of his plans, but rather because of them, because of his love for his followers.
And as he said this,
he showed them his hands and his feet.
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed,
he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
The disciples were restored to table fellowship with Jesus, proof that their relationship had been fully restored. And it was in the very ordinary nature of a shared meal that the truth of the resurrection finally began to come home to them. He was not a ghost, nor a mere apparition, but he was the same friend whom they had known before.
Jesus had explained already the truth that Moses and the prophets wrote about him. But this was not something that the disciples could understand or fully accept before they saw the resurrection. Their own ways of thinking, of reading Scripture, were too limited, to constrained to the letter and not the Spirit, to interpret them in the way that Jesus did. But it was vital now that the resurrection had occurred for the disciples to learn the true nature of the story of Jesus, for it was to be their story as well.
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.
Only after they understood this grand drama and their own role in it could they become witnesses who would preach in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. We too need to receive the Scriptures, not as mere words, but as the truth of our own story, and a description of our role in the world. This is not something we can do simply by purchasing more commentaries or listening to more teachings or even by receiving impressive degrees. Only Jesus himself, by the power of his Spirit can bring the Word from an external reality to one of which we ourselves are a part. We would not in fact dare to believe it if it was except because Jesus himself is offering to share his own central role in that story with us who can in turn become his hands and feet.
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away,
and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment
and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus,
whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration
of which God spoke through the mouth
of his holy prophets from of old.
Peter and John clearly came to understand this message that Jesus taught in today's Gospel. They began to see their entire lives as defined by the mission of Jesus, based on his interpretation of Scripture. They now read the world according to the Word and not the Word according to the world.
Perhaps we ourselves are still more like the paralytic, unable to move forward on mission; more like the disciples before they saw the risen Lord, still frozen with fear. Jesus himself wants to visit us, to respond to the trauma that he knows all too well that we have faced, and to demonstrate that his offer of peace nevertheless remains available. He himself wants to open our hearts more to the Scriptures, teaching us to read them now more by Spirit than by letter. Our worldview can henceforth look forward to "times of refreshment" knowing with certainty that the final word in the story will be "times of universal restoration". Knowing all of this, how can we not become witnesses?
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