What Peter Saw

Imagine this is a note you took at a sermon, while listening to a podcast, or anywhere else you encounter scripture. If you use the Capturing Scripture method, this is what your notes might look like. What follows is one fictional example.

Easter morning sermon, the first in a three-part series on Luke 24 (“The Witness of Easter”) preached at Grace Reformed Church by Daniel Renner. The series follows the chapter through three of its quieter scenes: Peter at the empty tomb, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and the upper room where the risen Christ opens the scriptures. This first sermon stays with Peter.

Peter at the Tomb

Luke gives us a sentence and then moves on. The women have come back from the tomb with news no one will believe, and most of the disciples dismiss it. But one of them runs.

g2296. θαυμάζω thaumazō; from 2295; to wonder; by implication, to admire: — admire, have in admiration, marvel, wonder.

The verb is thaumazō. It is not the language of certainty. It is the language of a mind whose categories have just been disturbed. Peter has not yet seen the risen Christ. He has seen folded grave-clothes in an empty tomb, and he leaves wondering. Luke does not tell us what he was wondering, only that he was. The text gives him room.

Most of the resurrection scenes in the Gospels move quickly toward recognition. This one does not. Peter walks home in the early morning light without an answer. He has seen something, and he does not yet know what to do with what he has seen. That, I think, is the posture Easter asks for.

Eyes Opened on the Road

Later in the same chapter, two disciples are walking the seven miles to Emmaus, talking through the events of the weekend with a stranger who turns out to be the risen Christ himself. They do not recognize him. They walk for hours alongside him without recognizing him. And then, at table:

g1272. διανοίγω dianoigō; from 1223 and 455; to open thoroughly, literally (as a first-born) or figuratively (to expound): — open.

Dianoigō is a strong verb. It carries the sense of opening completely, opening through. It is the same verb Luke uses a few verses later when Christ “opens” the scriptures to the disciples in the upper room. The recognition is given, not earned. The eyes do not work themselves open; something opens them.

There is a thread here. Peter is left wondering. The Emmaus disciples walk in confusion until something opens. Both stories tell us that the resurrection is not a thing that one figures out. It is a thing that one is given.

Hearts That Burned

After Christ vanishes from the table, the two disciples turn to each other:

g2545. καίω kaiō; apparently a primary verb; to set on fire, that is, kindle or (by implication) consume: — burn, light.

Kaiō is the verb of kindling. The disciples realize, in retrospect, that something had been catching fire in them as they walked, even while their eyes were still closed. The recognition comes after, but the fire was present before. They name what was already happening to them.

This is the pattern of a great deal of Christian experience. The recognition arrives later than the work. We notice, after the fact, that something has been at work in us all along. The risen Christ has been walking with us for miles. The recognition, when it comes, is the naming of what was already true.

A Closing Word

Three responses to the resurrection: wonder, recognition, retrospective burning. Luke gives us all three, and he gives them to us in that order. He does not give us proof. He gives us postures. The chapter does not ask us to settle our questions before the day is out. It asks us to walk the road, to keep the company, to let the eyes be opened in due time, and to recognize, when we look back, that the heart had been burning all along.

May Christ open your scriptures, and may you find your hearts have been burning.