How long has it been now since we “passed the peace” as we did in these pictures? The “Peace Be With You” mosaic captures the motion and commotion that follows Jesus’s “Peace be with you.” This post-resurrection appearance in Luke emphasizes the bodily substance of the risen Christ. He is not a ghost! Most of the details in this passage are physical, reminding us that we are an incarnational people, meant to be present in the Body together, to touch each other, and to eat together. How is our time apart during social distancing changing your understanding of what it means to be “in the Body of Christ?” How is your understanding of “peace” being transformed?
The Holy Gospel Luke 24:36b-48
Jesus stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 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. Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”
Peace Be With You
Mosaic
Rowan and Irene LeCompte
Resurrection Chapel, National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.
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