The Risen, Eating Jesus

Easter 3 2024; Luke 24:36b-48

This rare excursion into Luke’s Gospel in Year B¹ rounds out the Easter appearances with the story of Jesus appearing to the twelve, of which a version was also told in the preamble to last week’s reading about Thomas, from the Gospel of John.

While there are clearly different traditions or reminiscences being drawn on by the three Gospel authors represented in the lectionary this Easter, they also have specific theological purposes which in all cases have worked to shape their resurrection narratives. Luke has prior to this told an empty tomb story (like Mark) with the women witnesses, along with the addition of a brief nod to the tradition of Peter as an early witness (cf. 1 Cor 15:5).² Intervening here, between the tomb scene and appearance to the twelve, was the unique story of the road to Emmaus, where Jesus is not recognized (a common motif; cf. John 20:14) until the “breaking of the bread” at a shared meal.

Food will continue to play a part in what follows, in keeping with a distinctive Lukan emphasis on meals throughout that Gospel. The empty tomb and Emmaus stories, important and dramatic as they are, have had elements of a whodunnit that required a more definitive “reveal.”

Now we have an appearance that draws the threads together, demonstrates the reality of Jesus’ risen body, looks back at the fulfillment of scripture in these events, and then offers a “so what”: as in Matthew’s Gospel with its “Great Commission,” Luke’s risen Jesus foreshadows a mission, as well as the gift of the Spirit. This is the climax not only of the resurrection narratives but of the Gospel; only five verses remain beyond this reading with the Ascension as a sort of resolution. Yet this takes place in Jerusalem, not Galilee.

Luke alone has no appearance in Galilee. Jesus meeting a group of disciples is the most widely reported of all the resurrection stories after an empty tomb narrative, and Galilee tends to be the venue for these reunions. This is implied by the incomplete Mark (16:7), and spelled out in Matthew, who records no Jerusalem appearance. John’s story of meeting the twelve was in Jerusalem, but seven of the the disciples then meet Jesus in Galilee (John 21).

Given the apparent dependence of Luke on Mark at least, Luke’s exclusive focus on Jerusalem seems to be a theological decision related to the scheme of a mission that radiates out “beginning from Jerusalem” as we read in this passage or, in the more developed form in Acts (1:8), “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

William Blake, Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection. Yale University Art Gallery

Yet there is more to Luke’s choices than an omission. Luke (like John, last week) is concerned with establishing the reality of the resurrection event, but here eating plays a unique part. At Emmaus, the stranger on the road had been known to them “in the breaking of the bread,” a term which in Luke’s sequel, the Acts of the Apostles, functions to indicate not just this ritual action or a meal generally, but community eucharistic meals (Acts 2:42, 46). And now the risen Jesus asks his companions for something to eat.

His initial appearance among them does not bring immediate confidence or satisfaction of doubt, but instead (in common with other accounts) fear (v. 37) and even disbelief (v. 41). Again we need to recall that the scepticism implied here is not quite that of a modern empiricist or rationalist. They do wonder if they have seen something or someone merely ethereal, a ghost (pneuma—a spirit), but more generally may be understood to have lost all that they had hoped for. The request by Jesus for something to eat—literally “something edible”—is here presented as the means of addressing these forms of disbelief.

This act of eating is a demonstration of the corporeal nature of the one who has joined them, but not just that. What they bring is “broiled” (or roasted, or baked) fish.³ This is not necessarily strange, even in the inland city Jerusalem, given trade and food preservation techniques, but of course the fish is reminiscent of other Gospel scenes, both the earlier miraculous feedings (Luke 9:13 etc.) and then over in John 21 where another resurrection story focusses on fish (21:9ff). And these other stories take us to Galilee.

Commentators will often identify these eating motifs as in some sense “eucharistic,” which may be true enough, but the point is not merely underlining the sacramental or other significance of the common meal Luke’s readers were doubtless celebrating. Rather they evoke the nature of the Gospel exemplified by the eating Jesus, who was welcomed to feast by tax collectors and sinners, and who set a “table” with bread and fish for thousands; so the eucharistic connection is that the ongoing meals of the readers could also be extensions of this remembered practice, now restored.

There may therefore have been a persistent tradition about the risen Christ eating fish to demonstrate his resurrection, but for Luke proof of the identity of the risen one meant more than his being capable of digestion; it is the renewal of gracious and festive meal practice that had characterized the work of the Galilean prophet. It was not just that someone had genuinely risen from death, but that this man, who as Robert Karris once put it was “killed for the way he ate,”⁴ had overcome the forces that killed him, and ate again.

So this act, and the Emmaus episode, capture some of the “Galilean” resurrection tradition, even when Luke’s geographical interest—which will be a universal one encompassing the gentiles—does not favor emphasizing Galilee. The risen Jesus now calls his disciples to proclaim “repentance and forgiveness of sins” to the nations, and in his eating as well as in his speaking has shown them that this proclamation will echo the practice of his festive Galilean table fellowship.

1. The Second Sunday of Advent, when the Annunciation story is read, is the only other Sunday.

2. Assuming we include 24:12 as NRSV does; some ancient witnesses and modern editors omit it. Only John provides a full story (in ch. 21) like that Paul seems to imply of an encounter between Peter and Jesus, and clearly not in the order Paul records.

3. Curiously some manuscripts add “and a piece of honeycomb”—this was in the KJV, based on the textus receptus that had enshrined this fairly rare variant.

4. Robert J. Karris, Luke, Artist and Theologian: Luke’s Passion Account as Literature. Theological Inquiries. New York: Paulist Press, 1985, p.70.