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By Root 2099 0

a physical revulsion to the idea that Jesus could ordain his actual flesh and blood for consumption. But it is a symbolic statement. The evangelist’s language is straining to express the physicality of the savior’s resurrection, and his literal presence in the Lord’s Supper, not the literalness of the believer’s consumption. The resurrection of believers is linked to the physical ingestion of Jesus’ body in the Eucharist. A further scriptural proof-text is brought through the mention of “bread from heaven,” a typological reference to the Pentateuchal tradition of God’s saving provision of manna to the children of Israel in the wilderness. The comparison provokes a contrast: God will preserve those who eat of His mass, as opposed to the children of Israel who had no such dispensation and died. This argument evinces a clear type/antitype form. But the main subject is the ritual effectiveness of the Lord’s Supper. Verse 56 links the presence of Jesus in his resurrected state with the ritual itself. That is where and how he is physically present to the church of his believers, and not in visions.

The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles

IT FALLS TO Luke to settle one important ambiguity left in John. Luke puts together an anthology of postresurrection appearances in chapter 24. In one of his postresurrection appearance stories the resurrected Jesus actually ate a meal:

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost [or spirit]. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. (Luke 24:36-43)

This is certainly another version of the “Doubting Thomas” story. Now the resurrected Jesus actually came in flesh and blood. He was not merely a ghost (pneuma) nor a “spirit,” which Luke explicitly denies, although it is precisely the word that Paul used for the kind of body that the Christ had in 1 Corinthians 14:44, a “spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon). The Gospel of Luke explicitly denies the very terms which Paul used to describe the resurrected presence of Christ.

Jesus not only showed his wounds and manipulated physical objects, as John portrays it, but he also ate. Jesus likely showed the apostles his hands and feet (Luke 24:40) because that is where he was wounded, as in the “Doubting Thomas” passage (John 24:20-29). Whatever traditions Luke may know, he certainly is the most articulate on the issue of the risen Jesus’ physical presence. He adumbrates the story of the empty tomb and must, in fact, provide us with forty days between the resurrection and the ascension in order to fit in all the appearances of the postresurrection Jesus. The other Gospels seem, rather, to assume that the resurrection and the ascension happened coterminously. Thus, the resurrection appearances of Jesus are post-ascension appearances as well.

In Luke, we see other important and revealing variants of the empty tomb tradition. But none are more fascinating than the Emmaus story, that Jesus physically came to teach that the empty tomb was not an idle story:

But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened. Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And