Week Three - Day 7
Today's Reading -- Luke 23:1 to Luke 24:53
Our journey with Jesus through the Gospel according to Luke comes to a close, but not to the end. Before I get to that there are a few observations on how Luke has recounted the post resurrection appearances of Jesus. They are more extensive than what we read in Matthew's account, and they all occur on the same day in and around Jerusalem.
In a story unique to Luke, Jesus meets up with two of "them" (apostles? disciples?) as they have let Jerusalem and are walking to a village called Emmaus. The two fail to recognize that it is the resurrected Jesus traveling with them and spill their guts on their disappointment that the mission he headed up had apparently failed. In a wonderful two-fold episode that for us had undertones of the Holy Eucharist, the mystery of his presence becomes known through the exposition of scripture and the breaking of the bread. The two men rush back to tell the others, and in their passion of retelling their experience in Emmaus, the presence of Jesus is alive and once again known to all in that room in Jerusalem. It is then that Jesus commissions them to go to all nations proclaiming "repentance and forgiveness of sins . . . in his name" (24:47). What the apostles and disciples might have thought had ended is only just beginning.
So, the next step of the journey is about to begin, and Luke will be our guide. He knew that the story of Jesus was incomplete without telling what became of Jesus' apostles and disciples. Luke, therefore, has a second volume of his narrative entitled the Acts of the Apostles. First he tells the story of the early community of believers in Jerusalem, and then the Christian mission to Jews and Gentiles alike throughout much of the known world.
And so tomorrow, let's get ready to step out in faith. . .
In a story unique to Luke, Jesus meets up with two of "them" (apostles? disciples?) as they have let Jerusalem and are walking to a village called Emmaus. The two fail to recognize that it is the resurrected Jesus traveling with them and spill their guts on their disappointment that the mission he headed up had apparently failed. In a wonderful two-fold episode that for us had undertones of the Holy Eucharist, the mystery of his presence becomes known through the exposition of scripture and the breaking of the bread. The two men rush back to tell the others, and in their passion of retelling their experience in Emmaus, the presence of Jesus is alive and once again known to all in that room in Jerusalem. It is then that Jesus commissions them to go to all nations proclaiming "repentance and forgiveness of sins . . . in his name" (24:47). What the apostles and disciples might have thought had ended is only just beginning.
So, the next step of the journey is about to begin, and Luke will be our guide. He knew that the story of Jesus was incomplete without telling what became of Jesus' apostles and disciples. Luke, therefore, has a second volume of his narrative entitled the Acts of the Apostles. First he tells the story of the early community of believers in Jerusalem, and then the Christian mission to Jews and Gentiles alike throughout much of the known world.
And so tomorrow, let's get ready to step out in faith. . .
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