Word to the Wise
Friday, April 13, 2007 - Friday in the Octave of Easter
[Acts 4:1-12 and John 21:1-14]When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.....
One of the problems with the post-resurrection accounts is that it does not address many of the inevitable questions that we would have centuries later! Certainly one of those questions has to do with the fact that people who had known Jesus in person did not recognize him (at first) when he appeared to them after the resurrection. If he makes a point of showing them his hands and feet and eating with them, why is it that they cannot recognize him until a certain point in the encounter? Even St. Paul had to deal with the problem in responding to the question about what kind of body does a person have at the final resurrection? The only response that makes sense to me, absent some enterprising theologian/scientist who comes up with a plausible empirical explanation, is that the story is the story. The gospel writer is not interested in the "scientific" questions. What he has is a tradition handed on about folks not immediately recognizing Jesus at first when he appeared to them after the resurrection. This inability may be explained by surprise or not expecting to see a dead man alive - the text does express the amazement and terror of the disciples! We do know that the appearances did not go on indefinitely. Eventually the community had to see Jesus with the eyes of faith and this lead to the writing of the gospels! The story has to be put down in some lasting form while eye witnesses were still around or those who knew eye witnesses were still around. We in our day are in pretty much the same position as third and fourth generation Christians who had to encounter Jesus through faith and in the person of our neighbor and realize that his return would not be right away. This recognition may come to us with difficulty as did the fact of the resurrection to the original disciples! But their faith is shown in the story handed down to us which draws us into their own experience and leads us to share the story with others. This is not "Once upon a time..!" This is going on now. AMEN
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