EASTER III B

3^rd Sunday of Easter B

Readings: Acts 3:13-15,17-19  1 John 2:1-5   Luke 24:35-48

“In his name, penance for the remission of sins is to be preached to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of this.”  This commission, given by the risen Jesus to the apostles in Luke’s resurrection accounts, provides the focus for this Sunday’s readings.  Our joyful Easter faith in Jesus’ victory over sin and death makes new life possible, even in the face of evil.  Each of us can pray in the words of today’s responsorial psalm: “O Lord, let the light of your face shine upon us,/ You put gladness into my heart” (Ps 4:7-8).

In the first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is testifying to Jesus’ resurrection before a crowd gathered in the Temple area at Solomon’s Portico after he has cured a crippled beggar “in the name of Jesus Christ, the Nazorean.”   The miracle gives him the opportunity to fulfill the mission he and the other apostles were given in our gospel selection: to preach repentance from sins in Jesus’ name.  Peter proclaims that the God of the fathers has glorified his servant Jesus, whom the Jewish leaders in their ignorance had put to death.  Their handing Jesus over to Pilate is not, however, cause for their rejection.  In Luke’s crucifixion account, Jesus himself had forgiven them at the cross in the words, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34).  Now Peter assures the crowd, “Yet I know, my brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did.”  In Luke’s theology, Jesus’ suffering was part of God’s plan, announced long ago through the prophets (see Lk 13:31 ff.).  Because God has glorified his Servant Jesus through the resurrection, Peter now witnesses to the offer of forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name.  He ends by exhorting the crowd to repent.   “Reform your lives!  Turn to God, that your sins may be wiped away!”

The reading from 1 John also assures us that, even if we do sin, we have “in presence of the Father, Jesus Christ, an intercessor who is just.”  John’s community is divided by bitter hostilities, a sign of the presence of darkness and sin (see 1 John 1:5-10).  According to John, the way out of the darkness of division is not through purely intellectual claims of those who insist “I have known Christ.”  True knowledge of God is “keeping his commandments” of love for one another, even in the midst of hostilities.  “This is the way we know we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to live (just) as he lived” (1 John 2:6).

The Gospel is Luke’s version of Jesus’ appearance to the eleven in Jerusalem on Easter night.  In his theology Jesus’ resurrection appearances prepare the apostles for their role in Acts by transforming them from disillusioned and panic-stricken cowards to believing and courageous witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection.  First of all, Jesus overcomes their fear and panic by wishing them “Peace” and offering convincing evidence that he has truly risen.  He invites them to look at his hands and touch him “and see that a ghost does not have flesh and bones as I do.”  He then eats a piece of cooked fish in their presence.  Secondly, Jesus interprets his rejection in Jerusalem and his suffering death on the cross.  After he reminds the eleven that he had repeatedly spoken of this “when I was still with you” (see Lk 13:31-35; 18:31-34), he opens their minds to understand that according to the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms the Messiah’s destiny was to suffer and then rise from the dead.  In Acts the sermons of Peter, Philip and Paul will use these Scriptures to explain the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection (see Acts, 2, 3, 9, 10, 13).  Finally, Jesus commissions the apostles to be witnesses who are to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name “to all the nations beginning in Jerusalem.”  They are to stay in the city until they are “clothed with power from on high” (24:49) in the events of Pentecost (see Acts 2).  In the fifty days of the Easter season, the Church does well to remember that she is called, not to condemn the world, but to witness to the forgiving love of God “to all the nations” in Jesus’ name.