Third Sunday of Easter

The Gospel reading appointed for this week is Luke’s account of Jesus’ appearance to his disciples in the upper room.  Luke includes the detail of the disciples actually touching Jesus and then Jesus eating with them.  What is the significance of this?  Perhaps there was a heresy circulating in the early church that Jesus had not fully risen in bodily form and was just a vision.  The Gospel writers are emphatic about there being a physical, bodily resurrection.  Today many people, including some Christians, still dispute the reality of a physical resurrection.  Perhaps their thinking is that corpses do not come back to life and not even God can do this.  This is a curious view to hold of the God who created a universe 100 billion light years in diameter and formed humanity from dust.  Surely, the author and sustainer of all life could easily accomplish new life from death.  The wonderful reality is that just as God did this with Jesus, He can accomplish the same with all of us who are in union with Jesus.  However, for me, the real wonder is even more profound.  The real wonder is that God bothered with us in the first place.  Why, when we had rejected Him, did God do this for us?  That is the real miracle.  Let us continue to ponder that, this week.