Third Sunday of Easter, April 18th, 2021

Insights with Seitz: Symphony of Scripture

As discussed last week, a pattern can be observed in the selection of readings during the Easter season. Instead of a first, OT reading we have selections from the Acts of the Apostles. The second lesson is a semi-continuous reading: from 1 Peter in Year A, Revelation in Year C, and this year, from First John. This makes for a different kind of symphonic effect than what we have come to expect. Especially the usual OT-Gospel linkages and associations we have come to identify and appreciate, as bringing into focus the Gospel of OT and NT in coordination. In symphonic harmony.

There is a certain irony in this pattern during Easter season given that in the resurrection accounts, which predominate on the first three Sundays, we can see the emphasis on the disclosing role of the scriptures of Israel. We see it today in Luke’s “that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” In view for Luke is not just the way the suffering, death and raising of Jesus are in accordance with the scriptures, the Old Testament, but also the message of repentance and forgiveness of sins he charges the disciples to carry forth. He opens their minds so that this according significance might be grasped and conveyed both. Acts picks up where Luke leaves off. Paul will happily set aside three whole weeks for OT Bible study, seeking to establish from the scriptures the Gospel, Acts 17 tells us. What a lively encounter that will have been.

This is helpful to note because what Luke is referring to here is the global hearing of the Old Testament as this will transpire in the church, from beginning to end, and not a search for proof texts or isolated passages. In the preceding Emmaus Road story, which we hear in Year A, we are not to imagine a burning within the hearts of the disciples as the scriptures are opened, a roster of favorite proof texts, capable of being reeled off during a 7 mile trip from Jerusalem. Rather, what Luke is getting at with the phrase “and beginning with Moses and the Prophets he interpreted in all the scriptures the things concerning himself’ is the inexhaustible and indispensible role of the scriptures from beginning to end, in conveying the significance of Christ, now to be grasped in the life of the church.

John has his own version of this idea, as we have seen. During Jesus’ life, the scriptures spoke of him, but the disciples failed to grasp this. But later, John tells us, they would yield up their riches. The beloved disciple at the cross is the lone exception and serves as a model for future Christian apprehension. He who saw it has born witness—his testimony is true and he knows that he tells the truth. For these things took place that the scriptures might be fulfilled, “Not a bone of him shall be broken.” And again another scripture says, “They shall look on him whom they have pierced.” And another and another and another.

I say irony because at this very same season the Old Testament is replaced by Acts. But perhaps the significance remains all the same. The truth of the Passion and Resurrection to which the scriptures point, and which they disclose, does not amount to selections of OT passages. Luke is rather pointing to a new kind of mindset about the scriptures, a mindset the church remembers is set in motion by Christ himself. During his life: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words” (5:46-47). And especially focused in his Risen Life.

As noted, our Gospel reading for the day is the conclusion of Luke’s resurrection appearances. Luke’s initial visit to the tomb, like that of Mark, has the women see that a tomb is empty and nothing more. It is angelic testimony that he is not dead but risen, a report that is taken to be nonsense by the eleven. The Emmaus Road story which immediately precedes tells of appearances to two unnamed disciples. Yet we need to be careful in describing that character of what we mean by appearance. On later reflection the two speak of their hearts burning when on the road a stranger opened the scriptures earlier that day. The eyes that were kept from seeing earlier are not opened to him due to better lighting, or a decision by Jesus to bring himself into frame in some new bodily risen way. It is in the breaking of the bread that he is recognized, after which he vanishes from human sight. At this moment the scriptures disclosing power is also grasped by them as having burned on the road, now having been themselves grasped.

It has been a busy Easter day, it is evening, and the day is not over. Back they go to Jerusalem. Here they learn that Peter has been gifted by an appearance, a fact otherwise not narrated. As the two tell of their heady day to eleven and others, Jesus appears in his Risen Body. This risen body, brokered not by bread braking or the retrospective comprehension of a scripture lesson like no other, but standing before them as a death-defied flesh and bone body terrifies them. As perhaps also with Mary, the voice carries them to a less terrified, less confounded, recognition. The phrase is a Lukan winner. They are in a current, tumbling in waters of disbelieving for joy. The body which is a risen and different one—surely that has been established well enough—is all the same a body of continuation and identity, voice, form, function.

But none of this is for its own sake alone but pours into a second more obvious immersion in scripture, and especially the creation of a new mindset for a new risen reality.

Luke’s concern for repentance and forgiveness as a message bringing the scriptures and Risen Lord into conjunction plays itself out in Acts. And in the first instance the nations to be addressed with this scope of this message are God’s people Israel.

The tone is sharp. Harsh. Peter rebukes his fellow Israelites for their failure properly to understand the agent of the healing as the Risen Christ. ‘You preferred the murderer to the Author of Life.’ But a better word than harsh or sharp is urgent and concerned. You did not know what you did, as Luke might have put it, imitating Jesus on the Cross. You acted in ignorance. Yet in all this God was unrolling his plan from long ago. The scriptures were fulfilled, the very ones Israel has been graced to carry in her life with God. The oracles of God entrusted to the Jews, as Paul puts it in Romans. Repentance is to be preached by the Lord’s command as consistent with these oracles, not to condemn but to bring new life.

The psalm gives the words. Know that the Lord does wonders for the faithful, when I call upon him he will hear. The call of Israel then, of Israel before Peter, and for the Israel the Church today.

All who have this hope purify themselves, just as he is pure. Sin can break in, but it cannot have an abiding place. For who we are will be revealed in him, and those who abide in him will see themselves in him when we meet him face to face.