Third Sunday of Easter; 14 April 2024; Easter 3B (RCL); Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b-48.
On the Third Sunday of Easter, we hear the collect which speaks of Christ being made know in the breaking of the bread. This is a direct reference to the story of Jesus and the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, which comes immediately before the passage we hear this Sunday. The two disciples run back to Jerusalem, and this scene takes place in which Jesus eats a piece of broiled fish.
This passage, along with the breakfast on the seashore at the end of John’s Gospel, and the five occurrences of the feeding of the multitude with bread and fish, suggest that the early church (or at least some portions of it) knew of a eucharist of bread and fish (Jesus takes bread, blesses it, (breaks it) and gives it in almost all scenes involving bread and fish). Luke fills in the outlines of such a eucharist. As Jesus walks with the two disciples along the road to Emmaus, he opens scripture to them, so that they understand what it says about the Messiah. We have the liturgy of the word, and the liturgy of the bread, and after a short delay, fish.
Interestingly, fish cannot be sacrificed, as they cannot be domesticated. We know from the apocalyptic acts of various apostles, that there were Christians who celebrated eucharists with water in the cup, and the eucharistic prayers make no mention of Jesus’ death. I suspect the bread and fish eucharist, since it could not be seen as a sacrifice, also made no reference to Jesus’ death. And its association with the resurrection in both Luke and John suggest a resurrection eucharist, rather than a passion eucharist.
In the ancient world, sacrifice accomplished several things, perhaps most importantly kinship; those who ate a sacrifice together were kin by virtue of the sacrifice. Perhaps a resurrection eucharist was seen as a meal in the new kingdom inaugurated by Jesus. It would have been a way of opting out of the structure of the empire conditioned on sacrifice.