Peace be with you. Friends, last week we looked
at the twentieth chapter of Saint John’s Gospel, one of the great
Resurrection appearances. And this week, on the Third
Sunday of Easter, we have a passage from that magnificent twenty-fourth
chapter of Luke. That includes the
road to Emmaus story. It’s been called the sort of
masterpiece within the masterpiece. Chapter 24 is just
incomparably rich. And the story for today opens
up with the two disciples, having encountered the Lord and come to know him in
the breaking of the bread, they’ve now made their
way back to Jerusalem, and they’ve found the Eleven, and they tell them
the great news. And then, listen: “While they were still
speaking about this, he” —Jesus— “stood in their midst
and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’” So, we saw this last week,
didn’t we? The risen Christ appears
always on his own terms in his own way. We have to avoid the
Thomas temptation: “Unless I see,
unless I verify, unless things
happen on my terms.” Well, that’s not the
right attitude of faith. That’s trying to
manipulate the experience. No, no. The risen Christ always comes
as a grace on his terms. “They were startled and terrified and they thought they
were seeing a ghost. But he said to them,
‘Why are you troubled? Why do questions
arise in your heart? Look at my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself.’” There’s again that
motif we saw last week. Jesus says, “Shalom.” But he also shows his wounds. Don’t forget what the sin
of the world has done. Don’t forget
resistance to Christ. But that resistance
is overcome by the ever greater
shalom of the Lord. Then listen now
as he presses on: “Touch me and see, because a ghost does
not have flesh and bones as you can see that I have.” Now what I want to do,
everybody, is pause here because as I mentioned
last week when we’re talking
about the Resurrection, we’re talking about the
central point of Christian faith, the hinge upon which the
whole of Christianity turns. So to understand what
we’re dealing with here is exceptionally important. Go back to this
time and place. Go back to the eastern
Mediterranean, first century. There were a lot of
views floating around about what happens
to us when we die. So stay first in
a Jewish context. There are lots and lots of
texts in the Old Testament, and this became a standard
view for many Jews, that when we die, we die. We simply go back into
the dust of the earth. Dust and to dust
you shall return. Think of the Psalmist,
who says, “Lord, can the dust
give you praise?” He’s saying, “Look,
keep me alive. Now that I’m alive,
I can praise you, but once I’m dead,
I just return to dust.” So one view is that
this life is it. That’s all there is. We die and we die
like any other animal. Another view within
a Jewish context, you can see it in a lot
of texts in the Old Testament, is that the dead go to
a shadowy place called Sheol. No one wants to go to Sheol. No one is looking
forward to it. It’s not some place of
fulfillment and peace. It’s a kind of
shadowy half-life. A bit here,
if you look in the ancient Greek stories and myths, read the “Iliad”
and the “Odyssey.” When the great heroes are
doing their work here on earth, well, that’s when they’re
in the bright light of the sun and people can
see what they do and can praise them. When they die,
they go into a similar kind of shadowy underworld. They’re around,
but they’re not in the bright light of fame. They’re not living
life in the full sense. So that idea was also floating
around in Jesus’ time. A third view,
and you could see it for example,
in the Pharisees. The Sadducees were
the ones who said, “No, no, when you die,
that’s it. You just go into the
ground and that’s it.” But the Pharisees said, “No, no, we believe in
the resurrection of the righteous at
the end of time.” The idea here is that
people die and then eventually
at the close of the age, at the end of time,
the righteous dead will come back to life. That view was also around
at the time of Jesus. And then broaden
the perspective out. Look in the Greek
and Roman world. You read the texts of Plato and you find a view that, it’s very interesting to me,
is very common today. In fact, I think even
a lot of Christians, if you scratch the
surface of their belief, they’re going to come up
with kind of a Greek idea. Which is this: that the soul,
the spirit, is kind of buried
inside the body. Plato says it’s
imprisoned there. And the whole point
of the philosophical life and the spiritual life is to effect a kind
of prison break. The soul can finally escape from the restrictions
of the body and then it can live on
in this purely spiritual realm. As I say, I think a lot of
even Bible-believing people think of heaven that way, that I’ve somehow just
left the body behind and now my soul goes on. You see that in
Roman mythology, and even in Roman
public life, there was a view that
some great heroes, like the generals
and the emperors, after they die,
would go up to the heavenly realm, live with the gods
on Mount Olympus. There’s a famous story about
the Emperor Vespasian on his deathbed, and
he senses death coming. And he says to
one of the people, “Well, I think I’m
becoming a god.” So that was a Roman view, not unlike the Greek view, that after we die, the soul
escapes from the body. Now here’s the interesting
thing, everybody, and I want you
to listen carefully because this is
the hinge idea. If Christ has
not been raised, we’re still in our sins. If Christ has
not been raised, we’re the most
pitiable of people. So this is the hinge
idea of Christianity. Notice, please, how
none of these things that I’ve described
is on offer here. So clearly not saying
that Jesus died and then just went back
into the dust of the earth. No, I mean, clearly not. They’re talking about
Jesus risen from the dead. They’re not talking
about Sheol at all. They’re not saying, “Oh yeah, Jesus died
and he went to Sheol. And maybe his ghost kind
of came up from Sheol.” Remember that story,
it’s in 2 Samuel, about the witch of Endor
who calls forth the shade of the
prophet Samuel, calls him up from Sheol. This is exactly why in the story
they think they’re seeing a ghost. So they’re operating out
of that perspective like, “Oh, maybe this is a
ghost come up from Sheol.” But that’s not what’s
being described. Nor are we talking about, “Oh yeah, when all
the righteous dead come to life at
the end of time.” Now this isn’t
the end of time, this is in the
middle of time. This happened to them
around the year 30 AD. It happened in this
identifiable place. They’re clearly not talking about
Jesus’ soul escaping from his body
and going up to heaven. They’re not talking about
Jesus becoming a god like Vespasian the
Roman emperor. You see the point? None of the typical ways
of understanding life after death
is on offer here. What are they saying? This Jesus, whom they knew, this particular Christ,
whom they saw crucified —and you know,
there’s this old theory goes back to the nineteenth
century that maybe he didn’t really die on
the cross, he just swooned. Come on. The Romans were expert at
putting people to death. And this is not
someone who’s staggering into their
presence barely alive. No, no. This Jesus whom they saw
crucified appears to them alive. A ghost from Sheol?
No. He says it. I mean, does a ghost have flesh
and bones as you see I have? “‘Touch me and see, a ghost doesn’t have
flesh and bones.’ As he said this, he showed them his
hands and his feet.” We’re not talking about
some ghostly presence or up there somewhere in heaven. No, no. This is the Jesus
whom they knew. And then I love this
detail because it’s funny. “While they were still
incredulous for joy,” beautiful phrase, isn’t it? They were just so overjoyed that
they could barely believe it. He says, “Anything
here to eat?” Just to emphasize the fact. And then they give him,
we hear, a piece of baked fish and
he ate it in front of them. Remember that line from
the Acts of the Apostles, when St.Peter says, “We who ate and
drank with him after his resurrection
from the dead.” That line always strikes me
because it’s so visceral, it’s so real. We who sat down and
ate and drank with him. This is someone now appearing
alive again in his body. Now mind you,
just like anybody else? Well, no, clearly. Because as they were
talking among themselves, suddenly Jesus appears
in their midst. On the road to Emmaus, there he is with them,
and then he disappears. Is there something strange and
elusive about his appearance? Yeah. How fascinating, too, that
very often in these accounts they don’t know for sure
that it’s Jesus. Remember that? And you think unless that
had really happened to them, they would’ve eliminated
that from their account. They wouldn’t have
talked about that. I think that’s a very
vivid memory that he was so transfigured. Even as he appears really
to them in his body, he’s still so transfigured that it took them
a while to understand. Think of the story of
the Transfiguration. It’s Jesus, yes, the Jesus
whom they knew, but now metamorphosed,
now elevated, now becoming
dazzlingly white. He’s on the event horizon,
if I can put it that way. He’s on the event horizon
between this world and the world to come. And, everybody,
this gives us, I think, a keen sense
of what our hope is. Christian hope is not, “Hey, I live this world
and that’s all I got.” No, no, no, no, no. We long for this
fulfillment in heaven. Christian hope is not, “I go down to shadowy Sheol.” No, no. That I come to a fullness
of transfigured life, yes, in my body,
but now elevated and rendered luminous
and perfect. Not escaping from the body and going up to
some spiritual realm. No. We look, don’t we say, for the resurrection
of the dead, we await the resurrection
of the body. That’s our creedal language. Not the escape of the
soul from the body. No, the elevation and
transfiguration of the body. Think about this, everyone. Go back to the
beginning of the Bible, and we have God creating
the whole material order in all of its beauty and
variegated complexity. Do you think God just wants
all that to just fade away? He’s done all that and
it amounts to nothing? The whole idea is to
escape from all that? No, no. “I’m creating a new
heavens and a new earth.” God wants to renew
all of creation. He wants to renew
the material order. All of that is implied
and contained in this idea of
the resurrection. St.Paul talks about
the spiritual body. That’s his way of gesturing
toward this paradoxical reality. Paul, mind you,
who saw him, Paul, who was the
enemy of the faith, persecuting it, and then his whole life is
changed because he met him. He met him on the
road to Damascus. This is what we’re
talking about, everybody, this Jesus,
in his body, bearing his wounds, eating and drinking
before them, and yet transfigured and
elevated to a higher pitch. This is what we celebrate
during this Easter season. You know, I’ll
close with this. I think one way
to move spiritually through the Easter season is to cultivate your
capacity for surprise. What God has in store for us, it’s not nothing, not going back to
the dust of the earth. It’s not the soul
leaving the body behind. No, no. “Eye has not seen,
ear has not heard what God has planned
for those who love him.” Cultivate your
capacity for surprise. Cultivate your capacity to
imagine a spiritual body. That’s at the heart
of Christian hope. That’s at the heart
of our Easter season. And God bless you.
