Gospel (Luke 24.35-48). The two disciples told the eleven and their companions what had happened on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them 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.
You and I live in the space between the open tomb and the closed mind.
In the Gospel today, Cleopas and his companion are telling the other disciples how Jesus appeared to them on the road to Emmaus when Jesus, again, shows up out of nowhere, interrupting their conversation. “Peace be with you,” he says. They see him, they hear his voice, but in their minds they are confused. They know Jesus was crucified, he died, and he was buried. They know dead people don’t come back to life. And so they “thought that they were seeing a ghost.” They were trying to rationalize what they were seeing within their all too human ways of thinking. For the Disciples, the tomb was open but their minds were closed.
You and I live in that space between the open tomb and the closed mind.
Resurrected life can never be comprehended or contained by human thought or understanding. Jesus’ resurrection compels us to step outside our usual human understandings of reality and enter into the spiritual reality. The divine reality. With Jesus’ resurrection God shatters human categories of who God is, where God’s life and energy are to be found, and how God works in this world.
Now, our Gospel today talks about touching and seeing, flesh and bones, hands and feet. All of these things are part of what we would call the Natural Order, following the Laws of Nature. Yet, this very same flesh and bones, these very same hands and feet, appeared to Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus and then “vanished from their sight”. And in last weeks gospel, Jesus’ hands and feet, his flesh and bones, passed through walls and locked doors. And now these flesh and bones show up unannounced and unexpected in the midst of the Disciple’s conversation with others. And eats some fish with them.
The resurrected life of Christ, it seems, is revealed in and through the created order. However, it is not bound by the created order. Rather, the resurrected body and life of Christ Unites the visible and invisible, Unites matter and spirit, Unites humanity and divinity. On the one hand Jesus has a real body. On the other hand it is not subject to the natural laws of time and space. It’s not one or the other. It’s both. It is a new and different reality.
The degree to which we have allowed ourselves to be bound by the created order and old paradigms of vision is the degree to which are unable to see God’s presence in this world. In binding ourselves to the created order, to preconceived ways of thinking, we lose the ability to recognize the sacred. We lose the ability to live in the sacred, we lose the ability to live in the resurrected life. The resurrected life of Christ reveals that all creation and every one of us live our lives, surrounded by, immersed in God. This is not a rejection of the natural order. Rather, it is allowing the natural order to open to and reveal something more. To reveal a divine reality into which we are invited, not at some future time and place but here and now. To reveal the Resurrection.
And like the Disciples, you and I are called to be witnesses to the resurrected Jesus. Called to be witnesses based not on what we know, or understand but on who we are, how we live, our relations with others, our relationship with the risen Christ. For in as much as we live our lives they way Jesus did, as beings of tender compassion, in as much as we love the way Jesus loved, serve the way Jesus served, had compassion the way Jesus did, are caring of others the way Jesus was, then we witness to the very essence of who Jesus was. We witness to the very essence of who our Risen Lord is.
Through these acts of love we become witnesses of the Open tomb, the Resurrection. And through the opening of our eyes and spirit to see God’s presence in this world in a bigger way, an unlimited way, then we can begin to recognize holiness, to recognize God’s presence in our world, in one another, and in ourselves.
So, you can either expand your mind, heart and spirit to see in the open tomb a bigger view of creation, a broader view of reality, a grander vision of God. Or you can continue to live in that space between the open tomb and the closed mind. The choice is yours.