Reader’s Guide: “The Word for Today” Sunday, April 14, 2013 Read – Luke 24:36-43 We really should read the last verses of Luke’s gospel as one unit – Luke 24:36-53 – but we are going to take this passage in three parts. One thing that we should make note of is that Luke’s resurrection stories all happen on one day. That is different from both Matthew and John who also tell us resurrection stories. A second thing that we should notice is that all of Luke’s resurrection stories take place in or very near to Jerusalem. That too differs from Matthew and John who tell stories in both Jerusalem and in Galilee. We noticed that Luke drops out Mark’s words of the messenger at the empty tomb that Jesus will go ahead of his disciples to Galilee where they will meet him. In Luke’s gospel neither Jesus nor his disciples ever go to Galilee! Luke has been editing his source again. One might ask why Luke sets all of the resurrection stories in and near Jerusalem. Luke does that, not because he is attempting at historical accuracy, but because Jerusalem and the Temple are crucial to his understanding of the mission of Jesus and of the people of God who will be featured in his second volume, the book of Acts. Luke began his gospel story in the Temple with faithful Zechariah and so he ends his gospel with the followers of Jesus in the Temple daily. And it is from Jerusalem that the message will go out to the ends of the earth. We have noticed throughout Luke’s gospel that he has a far more positive view of the Temple than any other gospel writer and that he is insistent on telling his readers that there were faithful Jews who did receive the Messiah! As we turn to the story before us today, we recognize that it is very similar to the story John tells about Jesus coming to the disciples in the Upper Room on the evening of the first day of the week – resurrection day. It is unlikely that Luke and John were directly aware of one another or that either Luke was dependent upon John or the other way around. But, the more likely idea is that Luke and John are dipping into a shared piece of the story of Jesus. I have tried to talk about how all of the gospel writers took bits of the story and put them into their own “storyline” and I think this shared story between Luke and John is gives credibility to that concept. The story Luke tells us has similarities to the Emmaus road story – the disciples do not recognize Jesus who has to demonstrate the reality of his presence by showing them his hands and feet, and most significantly by eating with them. While the connections to worship and Holy Communion are more subtle than in the Emmaus road story we should still recognize them in this story. They recognize Jesus in the eating of the bread and fish. There is something about Word and Sacrament that rings forth in these stories. That’s probably good reason why we ought to continue to experience Word and Sacrament even today – we see Jesus today in the hearing of the Word and in the participation in the Sacrament! We’re going to leave the rest of this story until next week, but it is important here to notice that Jesus does the same thing in this story as he did in the Emmaus road story – Luke tells us that Jesus points his followers to the words of scripture – the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms – more “Messianic Exegesis!”