Third Sunday of Easter – 4 May 2025
Over these Sundays of Easter, we are introduced to the great post- Resurrection accounts, the stories of the way in which the life of Jesus becomes manifest to the first disciples. These stories, of course, cannot be read in the same way that we might read a modern newspaper account of something that happened yesterday. The gospels are not written from a modern sensibility. Rather, the stories are complex theological reflections, in story form, on what the Risen life of Jesus means, and how we experience the reality that Jesus lives. Each of the stories, including the one we have heard today, is an invitation extended to us, to wonder anew, and more deeply, at what this mystery we call Resurrection means.
As today’s gospel indicates to us, Resurrection is centrally about a new way of experiencing life, a new way of experiencing oneself and others. Resurrection is about a new way of living, here, now. The Resurrection of Jesus must lead us into, a new way of entering life. We live life in a new way, because of the Resurrection. And part of living this new way, is to live life with a new kind of hospitality. The Risen Christ shares a meal with his friends. He manifests his presence through such remarkably simple signs of hospitality: a touch, a word, a smile, a simple meal of grilled fish. In so doing, the risen Lord teaches us that our own fellowship with each other, we also will experience Resurrection.
Through Jesus’ dialogue with Peter, we know now that we are not bound by our fears, that there is a way of living that can offer us something more than the isolation of our own fears, We also know, as Jesus’ questioning of Peter indicates, that the Resurrection always opens up for us a new possibility, that we are not entombed in the mistakes of our past. We are given something more than our fears, our shame, our guilt. The Resurrection has broken the chains of all these things. It has therefore given us a new freedom, a new capacity for openness to both ourselves and to others.
How we use that freedom is what most deeply indicates our discipleship of the Risen Lord. That freedom is given to us in order that we might be more open, and less defensive, to the presence of others. Resurrection life, thus, enables us into a deeper exercise of hospitality to each other. In whichever way we might be able to exercise it, in developing hospitality to one another, we open a new possibility for others. According to one theologian, Robert Schreiter, hospitality is one of the marks of living the Resurrection.
Indeed, according to Schreiter, today’s gospel not only relates the hospitality that the Risen Jesus offers the disciples such that they themselves might entertain a new possibility for themselves, but the gospel teaches us how our own Christian community might become a sure witness of Resurrected Life. As he writes in the light of today’s gospel, “resurrection communities, [are communities of reconciliation, they] are communities of safety where people can explore their wounds and experience the safety to rebuild their trust in life. They are communities of memory where memory can be retrieved in a redemptive way. And they are communities of hope from which people can go forth empowered, commissioned to bring forth life in abundance.” This is the message that we glean from the apostle Peter in today’s gospel.
Are we hoping for too much when we talk about our community in this way. Perhaps! But then the Resurrection calls us to dream in a new way, and to constantly look for those ways to make the dream a reality.
