Easter and Evangelization in Luke: Experience of Christ Demands Understanding (2) by Steve Mueller
As Luke's resurrection accounts show, the experience of the risen Christ as alive and active in our lives demands an interpretation. The fact of the resurrection needs to be understood in order for the meaning or significance of it to become influential for us. Unless we discover its meaning, the resurrection remains simply a fact without any relevance for our lives.
Luke shows how hard the first disciples had to struggle to figure out what was happening. Their first experience was of the empty tomb. But notice that the empty tomb proved nothing to them. The “what” was clear, the “why” was the real problem. It was just a fact until they could grasp its significance.
The women who discover the empty tomb are completely puzzled. They receive guidance for their interpretation from two men in brilliant clothes who announce that their quest for Jesus in the tomb is misguided. They should look for Him among the living. These angels then recount Jesus' statements about His crucifixion and resurrection. With this clue to the meaning of the empty tomb, the women remember Jesus' words and rush off to announce their good news to the eleven disciples.
Luke hints that the empty tomb continued to be more a puzzle than a clue. When the women tell Peter and the other disciples about finding it empty, they run to the tomb. Peter experiences the tomb, but does not understand what it means. There are no angels for him and the testimony of the women is not enough. He is utterly baffled. The empty tomb does not immediately lead Peter to faith. He does not yet have the eyes of faith to see beyond the signs. There is nothing to the empty tomb except emptiness. Only with an experience of the risen Christ will he understand and see more than what meets the eye.
The two despondent disciples traveling to Emmaus also have a problem understanding the meaning of all the events that they had witnessed. They tried to use their Scriptures to supply some context to make sense out of the nonsense of Jesus' death. Like so many others, they have the words of Scripture, but they fail to understand their meaning.
So Jesus, the mysterious stranger who accompanies them on their journey, gives them a lesson in how to read and interpret the Scriptures. He goes back through the whole Old Testament and explains the meaning of all the passages about the Messiah. They show that he had to suffer, i.e., that this was God's own plan for bringing about salvation.
We also must learn to read and interpret the meaning of the Scripture so that we can discover and recognize the plan of God working in our lives. Reading and studying the Scriptures does not simply give us an experience of the risen Christ. Scripture reading gives us clues about how God has broken into our world in the past and how we might expect God to do it again. Without the guidance of Scripture, it can be extremely difficult to detect the presence and activity of God at work in our world.
© 2022 Steve Mueller
Steve Mueller is the author of the five books in the Catechist's Guide to Reading the Bible Series.
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