Word to the Wise
Thursday, April 12, 2007 - Thursday in the Octave of Easter
[Acts 3:11-26 and Luke 24:35-48][Jesus] said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things."
The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus continues in today's gospel scripture. No sooner do they return and report their encounter with Jesus on the road than Jesus himself appears! He shows them his hands and feet and eats fish in front of them! Then he gets down to business. The disciples must make sense of his life and mission from the scriptures that they were familiar with: the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms! So, Jesus "opens their minds to understand the Scriptures." He also gives them the message in a brief form: he has died and is risen and they are witnesses to it and must preach repentance to the whole world. Having heard this message ourselves, do we consider ourselves to be witnesses to it? Does the topic of the Resurrection make us a bit (or more than a bit) uncomfortable? Do we have the courage to tell someone (or even ourselves) to repent and be a witness too? Or do we settle for a kind of "Christian" ethics of niceness with no reference to the complete truth about Jesus or any need to change our way of living? Hmmmmm..... Why does St. Paul say that if Christ is not risen, we are still in our sins and our faith is in vain? Do our minds need to be opened to the scriptures? Are our minds open at all about our faith and its contents? All of these questions can be "inconvenient" but we have the Lord's commission here in front of us and it wasn't just for the folks who were "there" at the time. AMEN
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