Luke' Resurrection Narratives
The Nature of the Resurrection
One of the questions that you may need to address is that of the nature of the Resurrection. Few scholars doubt that Jesus' disciples were convinced that He was, in some sense, alive after the crucifixion. There is much more dispute, however, about the nature of that 'alive-ness', and what the disciples, and the evangelists understood the word 'alive' to mean.
Luke's presentation appears to be unambiguous at first sight. The risen Jesus impacts the physical world. He can walk, talk, enter houses, pick up objects, tear bread, eat. The Risen Christ explicitly denies that he is a ghost, or any form of disembodied spirit, inviting His disciples to touch His flesh and bone, as though to reassure them of His physical reality.
Yet the body with which He is provided has some, shall we say, unusual properties. He walks for several hours beside a married couple, two of His followers, talking to them, without their recognising Him. He can enter locked rooms without using the door, and appears to defy the laws of gravity, ascending into the sky, where his disciples finally lose sight of Him in a cloud.
So is this 'body' physical or spiritual - real or unreal? Caird, in his Pelican Commentary on Luke, suggests that the answer is to be found in Paul's First Letter to the Church at Corinth, Ch 15, where the 'spiritual' body is discussed. Caird suggests that the word 'spiritual' used by Paul does not mean non-corporeal, insubstantial, but instead refers to a changed substance, a reality that requires a physical body for its development as its seed in the way that a plant develops from its seed. The body of the Risen Jesus has qualities that can be identified as real in the sense of being physical (it occupies space, can impact upon its surroundings etc) but with qualities that transcend those normally associated with the physical. The non-recognition of Cleopas and his wife of Jesus is explained by their not expecting to see him, and only recognising Him in the familiar action of giving thanks over the food.
Marcus Borg, however, thinks that ! Corinthians 15 is 'a chapter that strongly suggests that the resurrection body is not a physical body.' He invites the reader to consider whether a video camera would have caught Jesus walking with Cleopas and his wife, talking with them, going into their house. He has already made clear his difficulty believing that they could have spent so much time talking with their beloved Master without recognising Him, the sudden recognition over the blessing, and Jesus' disappearance. The conclusion we are to draw, he suggests, is clear. 'I do not see the Emmaus Road story as reporting a particular event on a particular day, visible to anybody who happened to be there, but as a story about how the risen Christ comes to his followers again and again and again.'
There will be more discussion of the nature of the resurrection in another section.
Jesus' continuing presence in the Eucharist?
Very early on, the Church noted that the resurrection accounts in Luke took place within the context of table fellowship. The resonances of the language used in the account of Jesus taking, blessing and breaking the bread in Emmaus take us to the Paul's words of 1 Corinthians 11, our earliest account of the institution of the Eucharist, and possibly the way it was celebrated, and to the Institution itself in the Synoptic accounts of the Last Supper.
However, the two disciples were not, as far as we are aware present at the Last Supper, so possibly the implications are wider than an evocation of that meal. Here are a few suggestions: Here is the first 'Messianic Banquet', the Christ eating with His People in His new Kingdom; the first token of the extent to which the Kingdom would reach as the Risen Christ is present to His disciples as they share table fellowship - men and women alike.
Just an aside here, dears. This concept of table fellowship is a vital one throughout Jesus' ministry. Even now, observant Jews cannot easily observe table fellowship with non-observant Jews and Gentile. In Jesus' day, who you ate with was often viewed as a measure of your spirituality. Eat with the wrong people, and your whole status before God was in question, certainly your status as a Jew. And it seems that Jesus ate with ALL THE WRONG people - Jews who worked for the Romans, prostitutes, women who were not immediate relatives, etc. In this Resurrection account, it seems to me that table fellowship is placed at the centre of what Christianity is all about. It is a central sign of being 'in Christ', which is why Paul got so hot under the collar when some Jewish Christians tried to limit which Christians could eat with other Christians. So let me here offend the whole of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic world by saying that I think that, for once, the Church of England has got it right, when it invites all who are baptised, communicant members of their churches to the Eucharistic Table, without presuming to judge their spiritual state. To refuse on principle to share this table fellowship with another person who owns the Lordship of Christ because, for example, they don't recognise the Pope as the main representative of Christ on earth, or the Orthodox Church as the only true one, seems to me as disgraceful an act now as Jewish Christians' refusal to share table fellowship with Gentiles because of Kashrut (dietary laws) was in Paul's day. Either we are 'in Christ' or we are not. I agree with Tom Wright who argues that the table fellowship of the Eucharist should be the starting point of our search for unity between churches, and not some 'prize' to be aimed for as the end of unity. OK dears, rant over!
It seems to me that Luke is saying two things to his readership. Firstly that the Risen Christ really is 'in the midst' where 'two or three are gathered together' in His Name. And secondly, the principle gathering is around the table of the Eucharist, and that table is presided over by Christ Himself and not by anyone else. At this table, those called by Him and by His Name are HIS guests. Noone else's.
Teaching the disciples - the meaning of the Resurrection
To me, one of the most interesting aspects of the resurrection appearances in Luke is the teaching given by Jesus over the 40 days between Easter and the Ascension. Of course, the number 'forty' has its significance in biblical terms. It is ALWAYS a period of preparation for some God-given task. God purged the earth of evil with rain for 40 days. Israel was in the desert 40 years being prepared and purged of unbelief before entering the promised Land. Moses received the Torah over 40 days on Sinai. Elijah journeyed to Mt Horeb for 40 days before he met God to receive his next orders. Jesus himself spent 40 days in the desert after his baptism, preparing for the ministry upon which he was about to embark.
Now, Jesus' followers, the twelve and others, apparently, are prepared for the receiving of the Holy Spirit and the expansion of the Community by 40 days' teaching from Jesus. He started off, apparently on the road to Emmaus, expounding the reason for the Messiah to suffer to the two disciples, for whom the crucifixion was a stumbling block to Messiahship. As Caird points out, 'We look in vain for Old Testament predictions that the Messiah must reach his appointed glory through suffering unless we realize that the Old Testament is concerned from start to finish with the call and destiny of Israel, and that the Messiah, as King of Israel, must embody in his own person the character and vocation of the people of which he is leader and representative.' This is the theory that Wright takes, and expands in his work - that Jesus realised, possibly during his time of preparation in the desert, that the kingship of God on earth could come only through the predictions about Israel being fulfilled, and that it was His destiny to submit to the fulfilment of those predictions, including the ones about judgement, in His own body.
Next, Jesus teaches those gathered in Jerusalem, including Cleopas and his wife, on that same evening, expounding from the whole of the Tenakh (the Jewish Bible, which includes the Torah (Law), the Ketuvim (Writings, Psalms, etc) and the Ketuvim (prophets), the way in which his life has fulfilled the conditions and promises made to and about the nation of Israel. In Acts Ch 1, Luke informs his readers that Jesus spoke of the things concerning the kingdom of God to his disciples, instructing them to be witnesses. Interestingly, it is in Acts that scholars believe that we have the earliest kerygma (preached message) of the Christian Church, found in Acts 2 and 10. There is the tantalising possibility that it was the Risen Christ Himself who passed this on to His disciples ...
The Promise of the Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit has played a key role within Luke's Gospel (see the Birth Narratives, Temptation etc), and now, Jesus informs the disciples that the prophecy of John the Baptist that they will be baptised with the Holy Spirit (3:16) is about to come true. They are to remain in the city of Jerusalem, where they will receive the gift of the Spirit from the Father. Compare with John 20 where it is Jesus Himself who imparts the Holy Spirit to the disciples in (a more literal) fulfilment of the Baptists' prophecy.
The Holy Spirit is a pre-requisite for the continuance of Jesus' work by His followers, in exactly the same way as He was a pre-requisite for Jesus' own existence (1:35) and work (4:1-2, 14, 18), and His followers are instructed to wait for the power of the Spirit to come upon them, as Jesus waited.
'Jerusalem, Samaria and the whole world'
For Luke, Jerusalem is the hub of God's plan for the entire world. It has been the centre of It was in the temple that the fulfilment of God's plan for Israel was announced to Zechariah, to Simeon and to Anna. It was from the Temple that Anna first proclaimed the Messiah to the world. It was only in Jerusalem that a prophet could die, and in Jerusalem that the disciples have encountered the Risen Christ. There is no mention of the disciples going to Galilee here, although Galilee is mentioned in the other three Gospels as a place of appearance. We could note that the central place of Jerusalem in Luke's account need not preclude awareness on his part of a Galilee tradition. But for Luke, Jerusalem is the place where the 'pebble has been dropped into the pond', and the ripples will flow out from there to Samaria and the world, and so it is only here that Luke's Gospel can end, where it began, in the courts of the temple.