March 31, 2013
Luke 24: 1-12
Acts 10: 34, 37-43
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Harrison, N.Y.
“Peter went home amazed at what had
happened” (Luke 24:12).
What amazed Peter? At this point in the story, he doesn’t
know! The women who went to the tomb and
found it empty don’t know “what had happened,” and when they report their
discovery and the angels’ message “to the eleven and to all the others” (24:9),
“their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them” (24:11).
The Women at the Tomb, by Fra Angelico |
A note:
the gospels at this point refer to “the eleven” because the 12 apostles
have been reduced to 11 by Judas’s betrayal.
“All the others”—wouldn’t we like to know who they were! St. Luke tells us in the 1st chapter of the
Acts of the Apostles that about 120 disciples came together in the upper room
in the days between Jesus’ ascension and Pentecost, but he identifies only a
few of those 120 besides the 11: “Mary
the mother of Jesus, and his brothers” (1:14), and Matthias and Joseph
Barsabbas, who are put forward as candidates for the place among the 12 vacated
by Judas (1:23); Luke also mentions an anonymous group of women (1:14), who
would have included those who went to the tomb this Sunday morning, and
probably others—maybe Jesus’ friends Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42). Maybe their brother Lazarus also was there.
So if Peter and all the others “did not
believe” what Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James” (Luke 24:10)
come and tell them about the tomb and what they saw and what they heard, why is
Peter “amazed at what had happened”?
What does he think could have happened?
It is amazing that the large stone was
rolled away from the tomb (24:2), and no one seems to know how that
happened. It is amazing that Jesus’ body
is gone. No one expected that; the
women, after all, were going there to finish the hasty rites of burial that
there had been no time to complete on Friday evening.
The
“two men in dazzling garments” (24:4) remind the women of Jesus’ predictions of
his passion, death, and resurrection:
“the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and
rise on the third day” (24:7). Since
these women “had come from Galilee with Jesus” (24:1), they had heard those
predictions—directly from Jesus, or at least from the apostles. But the predictions evidently were so
puzzling, and the events of Thursday nite and Friday so traumatic, that they
completely forgot about the predictions until the 2 angels reminded them: “And they remembered his words” (24:8). Many of the disciples had heard the
predictions, but no one knew “what rising
from the dead meant” (cf. Mark 9:10).
After the 3d time that Jesus advised the 12 that he would be handed over
to the Romans, maltreated, scourged, and killed, and rise on the 3d day (Luke
18:31-33), “they understood nothing of this; the word remained hidden from them
and they failed to comprehend what he said” (18:34).
So Peter is amazed. He is completely
baffled. He has no explanation for the
empty tomb or the angels or the message of the angels.
Those reactions on the part of the women,
of the 11, and of all the others are precisely what makes credible to us their
later proclamation of the Good News:
“This man God raised on the 3d day and granted that he be visible…to
us…who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead” (Acts
10:40-41). They came to believe that the
one who had been crucified had also been raised up because they saw him, spoke
with him, ate and drank with him in the days following. This is what convinced them that something
more than amazing had really happened, and they were witnesses to it.
Then they were able to look back at the
predictions Jesus had made, and at the words of Moses and the prophets, and
interpret them in the light of Jesus’ resurrection. Then they were able to understand that God
“appointed [Jesus] as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness, and
everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins thru his name”
(Acts 10:42-43). As Jesus went about on
earth healing people—physically and spiritually, “healing all those oppressed
by the devil” (10:38)—God had ratified all his doings and his words by raising
him from the dead so that he might be the vehicle for the complete healing of
the human race: “Christ indeed from
death is risen, our new life obtaining” (Sequence).
Is it not amazing that God should forgive
us? Is it not amazing that God should
offer us “new life,” eternal life? Is it
not amazing that God should heal us completely from all the ways in which the
devil oppresses us—our sins, and the death penalty? That’s why we shout out, “This is the day the
Lord had made; let us rejoice and be glad!” (Ps 118:24).
No comments:
Post a Comment