While the disciples in Jerusalem are absorbing Cleopas's report, Jesus himself stands among them: 36"Peace to you!" They answer with terror. They are 37"startled and frightened" and take him for a spirit, a reasonable guess for men who watched him die three days earlier. Jesus meets the fear with a question, 38"Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?" and hands them evidence to examine. The hands and feet identify him, since they are the hands and feet that were nailed to a cross. He invites frightened men to look and touch: 39"a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." A comforting metaphor about his teaching living on would need no hands to touch. The resurrection Luke describes has them.
Then comes a detail startling in its ordinariness: 41"Have you anything here to eat?" They give him a piece of broiled fish, and he eats it before them (verses 42-43). Luke has already told of two people called back from death, the widow's son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17) and Jairus's daughter, of whom Luke says Jesus directed that something should be given her to eat (Luke 8:55). Those were returns to ordinary mortal life, and both would die again. This is different, since earlier that day Jesus spoke of entering his glory (Luke 24:26). The glorified body is the same body, with the same hands, hungry enough for supper. Luke's note catches the moment: they still disbelieved for joy (verse 41), wonder too large to be trusted yet.
Once the body is established, Jesus turns to what it means: everything written about him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled (verse 44). Then 45"he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures." Luke has used this opening verb three times in this chapter. At Emmaus their eyes were opened (verse 31), and the two said he opened to them the Scriptures (verse 32). Now he opens their minds. Eyes, Scriptures, minds: the same act each time, and never one the disciples performed on themselves. Understanding is given.
That matters because of a line Luke recorded earlier. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, Abraham says that if they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead (Luke 16:31). Now someone has risen, and he stands in the room eating fish, and the next thing he does is open Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. The Scriptures were always meant to carry the weight, and he opens them himself.
The problem he had to solve was one of reading. Cleopas had said they hoped he would redeem Israel (Luke 24:21), a way of reading the prophets tuned to deliverance and deaf to the suffering the same prophets describe. So Jesus supplies the pattern: 46"the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead," and repentance for the forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem (verse 47). Even this does not settle in one afternoon. Forty days later they will still ask whether he will restore the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). Opened minds keep growing.
The passage ends with a job and a promise. 48"You are witnesses of these things." Then he supplies what the job requires: he is sending the promise of his Father upon them, and they are to stay in the city until they are clothed with power from on high (verse 49). Their first assignment is to wait, and the courage they need arrives as a gift.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a resurrection solid enough to touch, real enough to eat fish before frightened friends, flesh and bones raised from death. Open our minds to understand the Scriptures as you opened theirs, and keep opening them when our understanding runs slowly. Clothe us also with power from on high, and send us as witnesses to the places you choose. In Jesus' name, amen.