Rev. Fr. (Dr.) Osmond Anike

Readings:

First Reading: Acts 3:13-15,17-19 – You killed the prince of life; God, however, raised him from the dead.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 4:2,4,7,9 – Lift up the light of your face on us, O Lord.

Second Reading: 1 John 2:1-5 – Jesus Christ is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and the world’s.

Gospel: Luke 24:35-48 – It is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.

“You are witnesses”. This statement occurred both in the first reading and in the gospel of today. A witness is somebody who testifies to the veracity of what he/she is witnessing to. In order therefore to qualify as a witness, one must have, in one way or the other, experienced what one is witnessing to. This experiencing takes the form of either seeing the action take place or hearing when a thing was being discussed. Witnessing can also take the form of any other sensory perception. If this sensory perception is lacking in one’s testament, the person is regarded as a false witness. And as we all know, even in civil law, perjury is a serious offence, i.e., swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth. When one swears to what is untrue, or when one omits to do what has been promised under oath, it is regarded as perjury.

In the Old Testament, the witness (or evidence) of two or more people suffice for a case to be regarded as true. And the more elderly those witnesses are, the more credible it renders their testimony (cf. the case of Susanna and the two elders in Daniel chapter 13, before the young Daniel intervened to convict them of perjury). In the New Testament however, the term “witness” goes much deeper than just witness of the senses. When you hear the term “witness” in the NT, it generally means “witness of life”. That is to say that to witness means to re-live the life of the one being witnessed namely, Jesus Christ. In this sense, mere sensory perceptions like seeing or hearing is not regarded as witness until one begins to live the life of the person one is claiming to be a witness to. The apostles were not just called witnesses because they saw and heard Jesus Christ. No. It was when they started living the life of Christ that they were first called “Christians”, i.e. witnesses. Stephen was a witness not because he ate and drank with Jesus (he didn’t) but because, faced with the same situation that Jesus faced on the cross, he acted exactly as Jesus did by forgiving his killers. Saul of Tarsus, with his vision on the way to Damascus, could not on the strength of that alone, establish himself as a witness until he began to actually live the life Christ.

And now, what about you and I? Are we witnesses or are we just merely claiming to be witnesses? If we claim to be witnesses without actually witnessing, then we are false witnesses and might as well be guilty of perjury of some sort because we swore by the oath of our baptism to be witnesses without actually witnessing with our lives. How do we witness with our lives? We do that by getting real. To explain what we mean here, let us go back to the readings. After the resurrection of Jesus, he continued to appear to his disciples. But there is one subtle constant in each of these appearances: he goes to great length to explain to his disciples that he is real and not a mere ghost. In other words, the risen Christ has a non-ghost status. He is not a ghost but, in fact, absolutely real and present. In today’s gospel, he again appeared to his disciples who were trying to make sense of the report two of them gave about what happened to them on their way to Emmaus and how they had recognized Jesus at the breaking of bread. When Jesus appeared to them in their little assembly and greeted them again with peace, the reading says that they were frightened because they thought they saw a ghost. But Jesus went to a great length to prove to them that he was not a ghost but in fact real. First he showed them his hands and feet and invited them to tough him and see for themselves that a ghost has no flesh and bones as they very much see that he has. Going further, he requested something from them to eat. When they offered him some piece of grilled fish, he took and ate before their eyes, proving further that he was real and not a ghost. It was after that, and after explaining the Law and Prophets as having been fulfilled in his passion and resurrection that he told them that they are witnesses to this. The disciples were witnesses not only to the events of the passion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also witnesses to the fact that the risen Christ is real and not a ghost.

Unfortunately, in our practice of Christianity, we often tend to be content with having the risen Christ somewhere in Heaven far away from us. As long as Jesus stays there in heaven with his Father, we are happy to shout ‘Alleluia!’ and ‘Praise the Lord!’ We don’t want to encounter the real Jesus who lives among us – the poor, the sick, the so-called enemy, etc. Because these people are real and confront us realistically on daily basis, we close our eyes to them. We’d rather prefer a ‘ghost-like Jesus’ without flesh and bones who will intermittently appear and disappear, and then we go on with our normal business. And we are quick to condemn others for not shouting ‘alleluia’ with us, or for not quoting the bible like we do. But take a look at the people we condemn. Most of them are good and decent human beings whereas many of us are not. It is impossible to be a good Christian if you are a bad human being. Christianity begins with humanity. That was why the Word (which is spirit) was made flesh (humanity). It was only when that Word-made-flesh dwelt among us that Christianity began. More often than not, we talk of life in the spirit. But what does that mean? It doesn’t mean to transform the risen Christ back into a ghost by conceptualizing how he appears and disappears in a ghost-like form to those who shout ‘alleluia’. To live in the spirit means to bring one’s humanity to perfection. Jesus will be happier with us if we are just simple decent human beings than if we are terrible human beings who neglect our basic duties to families and society, who lack basic decency in the way we talk and act, and yet still claim with insistence that we are Christians because we read and quote the bible. If reading and quoting the bible is what makes one a Christian, the devil would have been the number one Christian because no one does this better than he. We must start our Christianity by becoming real and decent human beings first. We often condemn the Islamic terrorists who bomb and kill people at will while at the same time shout “Allah ahu akbar”. But we fail to notice that many of us kill people with their tongues through gossip and character assassination while at the same time shout “Praise the Lord, Alleluia”. Is there really any difference between killing people with bomb and shouting ‘Allah ahu akbar’ and killing people with tongue and shouting ‘Praise the Lord, Alleluia’? The commandment, “Thou shall not kill” did not specify which tool to use in order to be guilty of murder. Therefore, whether one kills with bomb or with one’s tongue, they are all killing. And Jesus was explicit on this when he said, “You have heard how it was said, thou shall not kill… But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother or calls him renegade, has already committed murder…” Does this statement make any sense to us at all?

Brothers and sister, we need to get real and concrete. We must look into the eyes of people we deride and cajole and see the real risen Christ in them. We must look into the eyes of the poor and the needy and see the real risen Christ in them. It is only when we clean up our humanity that our Christianity can shine; and then we become true witnesses. Anything other than this, we are false witnesses.