Is this the time without Thomas the one with the display-case Thomas or another Easter event? Luke (24. 33) indicates that the Emmaus Road two-some returned to Jerusalem to where "the eleven and the ones with them" were gathered. Last week we had a single doubter to deal with the risen Lord and now we eleven plus others, scared and fearful, who are, as if to emphasize the Lord says they are of a "divided-mind" _dialogismoi_, being filled both with doubt-division and agitation.
If these are three incidents, certainly two, Jesus has this thing of showing his scarred wounds and inviting them to touch them for certainty. And yet Luke concludes that they were in their joy still disbelieving in a kind wonderment. When something happens in a shocking fashion people glaze over and we can talk to them all we want and it does not seem to register much.
A question that is practical and needs an obvious answer, do you have any food? This breaks the fast of the senses or the overload of receiving the resurrection.
How and what do you feed Jesus? Broiled fish sounds Mediterranean but where do we meet mid earth and heaven with the Crucified and Risen? In the Eucharist many Christians know and believe the presence of Christ in and among the assembly. At this moment it is even more real for him to eat "in their presence."
Perhaps the Eucharistic moment is more than only Christ's presence but also a question of whether he is trusted, true as broiled fish eaten among us.
Jesus standing among them in this account is a kind of end to beginning form of worship. First he blesses, shares his presence by eating with them and then opens the scriptures beginning with Law, Prophets, and Psalms, then into the suffering and rising of the Gospel's as yet unwritten promise for repentance and forgiveness, for the nations. He comes from where we go to give us entrance through the resurrection. We go to where he desires our witness in the power of the Third Day.
Sermons with illustrations and object lessons are popular and command attention. There is even a legitimate fear that the object can be so compelling that it takes over the sermon. The center of Peter's preaching is this lame man now leaping and praising in the portico of God's temple.
He clasps Peter and John and the people cram around astonished and staring as if the disciples themselves had done something. Peter tells them that it is not their own personal piety or power that has let this cripple man now walk a new way.
The central object is not an illustration of power and healing but the Author of Life, the _arxhagon tan zoes_. In the beginning, John wrote, was the light that was life, a light that leaped to create beyond the grasp of darkness. The unwritten is now authored in the Christ, preached by John and Peter for repentance and the wiping out of sin.
"Oh, that we might see better times," is something of a perpetual human hope, times when peace is spread less thinly, jobs more secure, children less endangered, money worth more and healthy time on the increase. The better times are only known in the light when God faces us in Christ, our only peace the security of dwelling in the Lord.
Just what is it that we see in each other in the light of the resurrection? It is a love that calls us children of God.
That is not what the unbelieving world sees. It sees no relationship beyond the human, no link of love to heaven in the revealed Christ. The small showings of his side, hands and feet that the Gospel celebrates makes no sense to eyes that cannot trust but only their own limbs and lessons.
Little children trust even that which is not seen, understood and that beyond your ability to yet achieve. You will walk, you will talk, you will do great deeds and enjoy great goodness are words that make little sense to the infant, much less to us so little in the childhood yet of faith. But Christ invites us beyond, to grow into his purity and righteousness in eternity's full stature.
Lord, crucified and risen, give us a new kind of childhood in the resurrection lived before the Father's throne. AMEN.
Lord whose face is the fullness of light, in this quieting of the day put gladness in our hearts that we may "lie down in peace and at once… fall asleep," dwelling in you safely, in Jesus. AMEN.
(Comments to Harvey at Harvey.Mozolak@ecunet.org.)