Jesus’s last words, in 𝘓𝘶𝘬𝘦.

Luke 24.44-53.

After Jesus demonstrated to his students he’s alive—actually alive; he’s not a ghost, nor did he switch places with someone at the last second and get him killed (which is actually what Muslims believe). He showed ’em his hands and feet; he had ’em, unlike middle eastern ghosts, and clearly he’d been a victim of crucifixion, but was fine now. He ate fish. He breathed on them, in another gospel. He’s real. Solid. Alive.

This being the case, it’s time to have yet another little talk about what’s meant to happen to Messiah. The Pharisee beliefs which were still tangling up Jesus’s students, in which Messiah descends on Jerusalem, conquers it, conquers the Romans, and conquers the world? Yeah, he’s not conquering the world that way. Jesus’s initial victory had to be over death, not the government. He had to defeat sin, not some political party. Still true, no matter what Christian nationalists might claim.

Luke 24.44-53 KWL

44 Jesus tells the students, “These are my words,

which I speak to you while I’m with you:

All which was written about me

in Moses’s Law, the prophets, and the psalms,

has to be fulfilled.”

45 Then Jesus opens the students’ minds

so they can understand the scriptures.

46 Jesus tells them this: “This is what was written:

Messiah is to suffer,

and to rise from the dead on the third day,

47 and to preach of repentance in his name,

of forgiveness of sins,

to every people-group,

starting in Jerusalem.

48 You are witnesses of these things.

49 Look, I send out my Father’s promise with you!

Stay in the city till you’re clothed

with power from on high.”

 

50 Jesus leads the students as far as Bethany.

Lifting his hands, he blesses them.

51 This happens as Jesus is blessing the students:

He’s removed from them, and is carried into heaven.

52 The students, falling down to worship Jesus,

return to Jerusalem with great joy.

53 They’re always in the temple,

praising God.

I should point out these last four verses seem to conflict with what Luke later wrote in his Acts of the Apostles. In Luke Jesus took ’em way out to Bethany and was raptured from there; in Acts it was Olivet, less than 2,000 cubits away. Ac 1.12 In Luke it looks like Jesus was raptured really soon after Easter, but in Acts Jesus hung out with them for more than a month. Ac 1.3 Certain people who hate the idea of any discrepancies in the bible will try to explain these bible difficulties away: “Well Jesus only led them in the direction of Bethany, but stopped at Olivet; and it only looks like it was really soon after Easter, but doesn’t say it was.” Yeah yeah, whatever. I don’t think minor discrepancies matter. The important thing is Jesus is alive, but the reason we don’t see him still walking the earth is Jesus was raptured.

On to the last words.

When Jesus had to prove he’s alive.

Luke 24.35-43.

To western thinking, this happened the very same day Jesus was resurrected, but late at night. To middle eastern thinking, days are from sundown to sundown, so it’s the next day. But John remembered it as being the same day, Jn 20.19 maybe right before sundown. I’ll discuss John’s point of view another time.

It happens right after two students had just got back from Emmaus after a Jesus-sighting. They show up, they tell everyone what they just experienced… and then this happens.

Luke 24.35-43 KWL

35 The students are telling the other students

what happened on the road,

and when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.

36 While the students were talking about these things,

Jesus stands in the middle of them,

and tells them, “Peace to you all.”

37 Becoming startled and afraid,

the students are thinking they see Jesus’s ghost,

38 and Jesus tells them, “Why were you freaked out?

Why do objections rise up in your minds?

39 Look at my hands and my feet, because I am myself.

Touch me and see!—for a ghost doesn’t have flesh and bone,

as you see I have.”

40 Saying this, Jesus shows them his hands and feet,

41 yet they don’t believe Jesus, wondering in joy.

Jesus tells the students, “Does anyone have food here?”

42 They give Jesus a piece of roasted fish,

43 and taking it, Jesus eats it in front of them.

Jesus just appears. John says he just appeared in the middle of a locked room; Jn 20.19 there was no way for him to get in except through the windows, and he didn’t go in through the windows. He was just… there.

There are a billion different guesses as to how he just appears, but let me remind you none of them are bible. Neither Luke nor John says how he appears. So don’t go insisting you know exactly how he did it, and everyone else’s theory is wrong. You don’t know. I don’t know. And it might blow your mind for me to say this, but maybe even Jesus doesn’t know. Must we know? Nah.

Obviously when a man just appears in front of everybody, people tend to freak out, and the suddenly-appearing person has to tell them “Fear not!” Lk 1.13, 1.30, 2.10 lest they soil themselves in terror. I suspect that’s a lot of the reason Jesus doesn’t blink into a room like this with just anyone. But it certainly didn’t help his argument that he’s not a ghost; sudden appearances are the sort of things we expect ghosts to do, right?

A very short dinner with Jesus in Emmaus.

Luke 24.28-35.

Last week I wrote about Jesus meeting two of his followers enroute to Emmaus; most likely Emmaus Nicopolis, and most likely the followers were Jesus’s uncle Cleopas and cousin Simon. They didn’t recognize him, partly ’cause they were almost certain he was dead, partly ’cause he was unrecognizable; either veiled, or resurrection had changed what he looked like. If he now had white hair Rv 1.14 instead of the more common black, he might look very different.

They told him they expected Jesus the Nazarene to be Israel’s redeemer, but he was arrested and crucified. Lk 24.19-21 He told them Messiah was supposed to go through these things, and explained how the scriptures said so. Lk 24.26-27 They had a nice long walk ahead of them, so he had a few hours to go into great detail, although Luke doesn’t get into that. But after they reached Emmaus, this happened.

Luke 24.28-35 KWL

28 They come near the village where they’re going,

and Jesus makes like he’s going to go on further.

29 The students force Jesus to come with them, saying,

“Stay with us, for it’s near evening and the day’s already over.”

So he goes into the village and stays with them.

30 It happens while Jesus reclines with the students at dinner:

Taking the bread, he blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.

31 The students’ eyes are opened, and they recognize Jesus

—and he becomes invisible to them.

32 The students tell one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us

when he was speaking to us on the road?

when he was opening up the scriptures to us?”

33 Rising up that same hour, the students return to Jerusalem.

They find the Eleven and those with them, having gathered together,

34 and are saying this: “The Master is risen indeed,

and appeared to Simon!”

35 The students are telling the other students

what happened on the road,

and when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.

Every once in a while, some Christian balks at when Jesus προσεποιήσατο πορρώτερον πορεύεσθαι/prosepiísato porróteron porévesthe, “makes like he’s going to go on further,” which also gets translated as “acted” or “pretended” or “gave the impression.” They don’t like the idea Jesus behaved as if he was gonna do one thing, when really he was gonna do another. It strikes them as deceptive.

First of all, why wasn’t Jesus gonna go further? You recall in Matthew the angels, and soon after Jesus himself, told the women, “Tell the boys I’ll see them in the Galilee”? Mt 28.7, 10 He might’ve been headed for the Galilee right then for all we know.

But circumstances change. The students παρεβιάσαντο αὐτὸν/pareviásanto aftón, “force him” (or “urge him,” or “compel him”) to come home with them, and he changed his mind. You do realize Jesus can change his mind, right? He doesn’t have a foreordained cosmic plan which he’s obligated to rigidly, deterministically follow. If he did… then yeah, making like he’s going on without them when he really predestined they’d invite him to stay with them, is pure deception on his part. And every single other instance in the bible in which God changes his mind—in which Moses, David, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and dozens of other folks talk him out of doing what he totally just said he was gonna do—is playacting. Pretense. Or to use the ancient Greek word for it, ὑπόκρισις/ypókrisis, from which we get our word hypocrisy.

I should also add Jesus has every right to test his followers; to tell them he’s gonna do one thing, but what he’s hoping is they’ll talk him out of it so he doesn’t have to do that. Just like when the LORD told the Hebrews that if they didn’t follow his Law, they’d be cursed. He didn’t wanna curse them! He didn’t wanna do any of that stuff to them. He wanted ’em to repent! But they failed his test. And if Jesus was just testing his students, to see whether they’d invite him into town, they passed—but he wasn’t kidding about going onwards. If they didn’t invite him into town, he’d just go somewhere else. (In fact, when he vanishes on them in verse 31, that might be where he vanished to; either way, that’s where he was going.)

Meeting Jesus on the Emmaus road.

Luke 24.13-27.

Jesus’s resurrection happened the day after Passover. The Law required every able-bodied Israeli to go to Jerusalem for Passover and celebrate it there. Dt 16.16 That done, they could all go home, and that seems to be what two of Jesus’s students were doing in the Emmaus Road story: Going home. Passover was over, Jesus was (as far as they knew) dead, and while they heard from the women he was alive, they didn’t know what to do with this information… and it didn’t matter; they had stuff to do at home. So they were going home.

Emmaus is probably Emmaus Nicopolis. A number of Christians insist it can’t be, because Luke says Emmaus was 60 stadia from Jerusalem (i.e. 7 miles, 11km), and Emmaus Nicopolis is 161 stadia (15½ miles, 25km) away. Never mind Luke describes Emmaus as ἀπέχουσαν/apéhusan, “far off,” and 7 miles is not far off; you could run that in an hour.

Me, I think it’s far more likely some overzealous bible copyist incorrectly wrote ἑξήκοντα/exíkonta, “sixty,” instead of ἑκατὸν ἑξήκοντα/ekatón exíkonta, “hundred sixty,” and that error snuck into all our bibles. None of the other archaeological discoveries 60 stadia away from Jerusalem have been satisfactory. Meanwhile Christians for centuries have been claiming Emmaus Nicopolis is the place. Ancient Christians even built a church there over St. Cleopas’s house, which was still standing in Eusebius Pamphili’s time. (He was the bishop of Caesarea, Judea, from 314 to 339. He knew the area.) It’s not unreasonable to figure these guys could cover 161 stadia (i.e. 15½ miles, 25km) in a spring afternoon. That’s a five-hour walk… and, as it’ll come up later, a two-hour run.

I mentioned Cleopas ’cause Luke identifies Cleopas as one of the students in this story. Κλεόπας/Kleópas is a Greek name, the male equivalent of Cleopatra, meaning “glory to the father,” or in a Jew’s case “glory to the Father.” Eusebius identifies him as Jesus’s uncle, the brother of Joseph, and the father of Jesus’s cousin Simon, who later became the head of the Jerusalem church after Jesus’s brother James was killed. Since the Emmaus Road story ends with the statement, “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon,” Lk 24.34 KJV it may very well be that the other student in this story is this Simon—namely Jesus’s cousin Simon. Hey, they both lived in Emmaus.

So it’s kinda cool that Jesus’s uncle and cousin were both following him, and it makes sense that they’d be among the first people he appeared to. Let’s get to the first part of the story.

Luke 24.13-27 KWL

13 Look, two of the students, on the same day,

are going to a far-off village whose name is Emmaús,

60 stadia [7 miles, 11 km] from Jerusalem.

14 The students are talking with one another

about all the things which just happened.

15 It happens, during their animated conversation,

Jesus himself comes near, going with them.

16 The students’ eyesight isn’t strong;

they don’t know it’s Jesus.

17 Jesus tells them, “What are these words

you throw to one another as you’re walking?”

The students stand still, gloomy-looking.

18 In reply, one of the students, named Cleopas,

tells Jesus, “You alone visit Jerusalem,

and don’t know what happens in it these days?”

19 Jesus tells them, “What happened?”

The students tell him the events about Jesus the Nazarene.

How he’s a man—a prophet—

of mighty work and word before God and all the people.

20 How Jesus is betrayed to our head priests and rulers,

is sentenced to death, and they crucify him.

21 “And we were expecting that he’s Israel’s coming redeemer…

but regardless, it’s the third day after these things happened.

22 But certain women among us are confusing us:

Going to the sepulcher in the morning

23 and not finding Jesus’s body,

they come back speaking of seeing an angelic vision;

they say he’s alive.

24 Some who are with us, go to the sepulcher,

and find it’s just as the women say,

but we don’t see him.”

25 Jesus tells them, “Oh, you dummies.

Slow in your heart to trust all the prophets who speak.

26 Don’t these things have to be suffered by Messiah

to enter into his glory?”

27 And beginning with Moses and all the prophets,

Jesus expounds for them everything written about himself.

The resurrection in 𝘓𝘶𝘬𝘦.

Luke 24.1-12.

As I’ve pointed out more than once, Jesus himself pointed out more than once Mk 8.31, 9.31, 10.33-34 that when he went to Jerusalem this time, he’d get arrested and crucified—but rise again. This wasn’t a secret plan.

Oh, it mighta felt like a secret plan to his dense followers, who promptly forgot all about the “and risen on the third day” part after Jesus got killed. Trauma will do that to you. Fresh trauma—’cause it was early Sunday morning, probably before most of them had even had their morning wine, and Jesus had died only Friday afternoon.

(Yes, morning wine. Tea wasn’t invented till the 200s, and coffee till the 1400s, so people back then typically drank beer in the morning. No, I’m not kidding! But beer wasn’t an option during the Feast of Unleavened Bread—they had to get all the yeast out of the house, which means no beer, even in Passover observances today. So, wine. No, not watered-down wine; that’s a pagan Greek practice, and it’s a myth invented by American teetotalers that Judeans did it too. They drank regular kosher wine. Kids too. But ordinarily, beer… until God blessed the Chinese with tea, and the Yemenis with coffee. Okay, digression over.)

So the Eleven and the other students really weren’t expecting resurrection. They were still mourning Jesus’s death. That’s why they were gathered together: Mourning. Wearing torn clothes, pouring ash from the fireplace onto their heads, weeping, remembering Jesus, wondering what might come next.

Movies tend to depict these followers as in hiding—panicked in case the authorities were coming for them next. Which isn’t at all how the gospels describe things. Yes, they were anxious about the Judeans, Jn 20.19 but in the same gospel of John which says this, you also see the apostle John moving freely about the city, temple, and even into the head priest’s house to witness Jesus’s trial. This is hardly the behavior of someone who fears arrest! Nope; the authorities got the guy they wanted, and didn’t care about the followers until they themselves started doing as Jesus did—namely curing people and proclaiming God’s kingdom. Ac 4.1 Just in case, they kept their heads down—but the men were free to go home, and the women were free to even take spices to Jesus’s sepulcher.

Except when they did, the corpse wasn’t there. Because it was no longer a corpse.

Luke 24.1-12.

1 At early dawn on the first day of the week,

women, bringing prepared spices, come to the sepulcher.

2 These women find the stone

had been rolled away from the sepulcher.

3 On entering, the women do not find

the body of Master Jesus.

4 It happens while the women are dumbfounded about this:

Look, two men in brilliant clothing, sitting by them.

5 As this frightened the women,

who fall over on their faces to the ground,

the men tell them,

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?

6 He’s not here. He’s risen!

Remember what he tells you when you are still in the Galilee,

7 saying this of the Son of Man:

He has to be delivered into the hands of sinful people,

and crucified,

and risen on the third day.”

8 And the women remember Jesus’s words,

9 and, returning from the sepulcher,

the women tell all these things to the Eleven

and all the other students.

10 It was Mary the Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary of James,

and all the other women with them:

They were saying these things to the apostles.

11 The events appeared to the apostles

as if these words were a fairy tale,

and they don’t believe it.

12 Simon Peter rises and runs to the sepulcher,

and leans in to see only the linen strips,

and leaves, wondering to himself what had happened.

Not believing the women when Jesus arose.

Mark 16.9-11, Luke 24.8-11.

When Jesus undid his own death before dawn on 5 April 33, and his women followers discovered an empty sepulcher and angels informing them their Lord is alive, the first thing they rightly did was go tell the men. And the men didn’t believe them.

There’s this common modern belief that the people of the past were ignorant, and would therefore believe in any old thing. They’d believe in miracles and magic, because science hadn’t been invented yet, and they grew up hearing tales about gods and sorcerers, and crazy myths which were told to them straight-faced as if they were history. And they believed in all that stuff… so they’d believe any fanciful tale you told ’em. “Oh, a wizard did it!” or “Oh, Zeus did it!” and they’d easily swallow the story, because they lived in a dark age where this sort of thing was commonplace.

Clearly these moderns have never read myths. I did; my parents gave me children’s books which retold those old myths. (Edited for children, of course, ’cause there’s way more sex and violence in those stories than people realize. Some of ’em are worse than Judges.) One of the ancient pagan Greeks’ very favorite themes was ὕβρις/ývris, “hubris,” the kind of excessive narcissistic overconfidence which only the gods figured they were allowed to have, and regularly punished mortals for having it. Hubris shows up in a lot of Greek myths, and the most common way is by some character in a story refusing to believe. Doesn’t believe the god; doesn’t believe the magician; doesn’t believe the prophecy, or thinks he can outwit it; in general just says “no” when the gods really want him to say “yes.” So the gods smite him. Because universally, people recognize a lack of humility is a serious character flaw… that is, unless they themselves are overconfident.

The One True God isn’t a fan of hubris either: “God resists the proud, / But gives grace to the humble.” Jm 4.6, 1Pe 5.5 NKJV He’s not a fan of unteachable know-it-alls, or people who figure they know what they know, and can’t bother to hear out anyone else.

But unfortunately that’s kinda what Jesus’s students were doing when they refused to accept what Jesus’s women followers were telling them about their Lord being alive.

Mark 16.9-11 KWL

9 [Rising early on the first day of the week,

Jesus first appeared to Mary the Magdalene;

he’d previously thrown seven demons out of her.

10 Leaving, this Mary brings the news

to those who’d come to be with Jesus,

who are mourning and crying.

11 And these people, on hearing Jesus is alive,

that he was personally seen by Mary

don’t believe it.]

Luke 24.8-11 KWL

8 And the women remember Jesus’s words,

9 and, returning from the sepulcher,

the women tell all these things to the Eleven

and all the other students.

10 It was Mary the Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary of James,

and all the other women with them:

They were saying these things to the apostles.

11 The events appeared to the apostles

as if these words were a fairy tale,

and they don’t believe it.

Still, it’s kinda understandable. Dead people don’t just return from death! Yeah, Pharisees believed in resurrection, but they claimed the resurrection isn’t supposed to happen till the end of history, when God judges the world. Not now. Not yet. Dead people stay dead. Especially people suffocated by crucifixion and stabbed in the heart. You don’t recover in only three days from that; I don’t care what the conspiracy theorists claim.

True, Jesus’s students were immature teenagers, and pretty dense sometimes. But they weren’t gullible. They knew dead people stay dead. They didn’t yet know Jesus had substantially changed everything. They’d learn. But still, that’s what we have in the resurrection stories: Apostles who totally didn’t believe Jesus is alive. No matter what the women claimed.

Ghosts: The human spirit.

Technically “ghost“ means the very same thing as “spirit.” It’s why “Holy Spirit” and “Holy Ghost” refer to the very same person.

But over the last century English-speakers have grown to think of “ghosts” as the spirits of the dead. Humans usually. Sometimes animals. Whereas “spirit” can refer to an incorporeal being of any sort. But it wasn’t so long ago the words were fully interchangeable—as y’might notice in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The “ghosts” of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come, were not dead humans; the ghost of Jacob Marley was, though.

So. Since everybody nowadays equates “ghost” with dead humans, in this article so do I.

Humans are part spirit. In our makeup, we have a spirit; a non-material, incorporeal part of ourselves. When we die, the soul ceases to exist, but this spirit continues on. When we get resurrected, it goes back into our new body, and we once again become a living soul. This spirit is what I mean when I say “ghost.”

Yeah, there are Christians who squirm at this word: “I’m a Christian. We don’t believe in ghosts.” Yeah we do. They’re in the bible.

John 19.30 KJV

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Seems Jesus had a ghost, and when he died it left his body. And when he appeared alive to his students the next week, he wanted it to be clear he wasn’t still a ghost.

Luke 24.36-43 KWL

36 As the students said this, Jesus stood in their midst and told them, “Peace to you.” 37 The students were freaked out and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost. 38 Jesus told the students, “Why are you agitated, and why do disputes arise in your minds? 39 See my hands and my feet!—for I am him. Touch me and see!—for a ghost doesn’t have a body and bones like you see I have.” 40 Saying this, Jesus showed the students his hands and feet. 41 Yet in the students’ joy and wonder they still distrusted him. Jesus told them, “Does anyone here have food?” 42 They gave Jesus a piece of roast fish, 43 and Jesus took and ate it before the students.

Ghosts, said Jesus, don‘t have a body. Don’t have bones. Don’t eat. He wasn’t just accommodating their myths; he’d just been dead, and knew what dead people are and aren’t, can and can’t do. Whereas Jesus can do what ghosts can’t, ’cause he’s alive.

Of course the ability to appear and disappear makes people wonder about Jesus. But Philip did that later in Acts, Ac 8.39 so it’s not wholly outside the realm of God-empowered ability. Getting resurrected didn’t necessarily grant Jesus superpowers. But that’s a pretty big digression, so let’s go back to ghosts.