on the road
When we hear Luke’s story tonight of Jesus who appears to the disciples on their way to Emmaus, we are faced with a particular manifestation of the Risen Christ. We are no longer at the empty tomb with the angels who tell the women that he is no longer there; we are on the road. And that road, if we follow it, may lead us to Munkeby, to Finland and even to Burgundy (with tonight’s members of the congregation). But how will we recognize the companion who is able to reveal the meaning of what we are living by explaining the Scriptures for us? For we are close to those two disciples who are sometimes riddled with doubt, disappointment, or meaninglessness.
About the resurrection: there is difficulty, but also luck. Difficulty, for it is not a palpable, spectacular event. We have to rely on remote witnesses, that way it is easy to doubt the whole story. But also luck, since we know that the same remote witnesses must have worked hard to assimilate what they saw and heard to learn to recognize the Risen Christ: In that respect we are close. This was particularly what happened to the disciples on their way to Emmaus: they did not recognize him until after the rereading of the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread that gave meaning to all that had happened: that Jesus’ death, no matter how terrible, has become the source of life, that the meaning of history leads us to this life, and that this new life is definitive, for death can no longer control it.
Humanity’s long aspiration toward a life which death no longer can control, toward a life that is no longer threatened, is realized in the particular story of the man Jesus, a story which is both strong and weak: Weak, because it is about a sign in the past whose manifestation is difficult to grasp, but strong, for this event completes our waiting: it is the perfect fulfillment of what was announced.
If we have got the grace to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, it is up to us, here and now, to let it be manifested in our lives with its strength and its weakness. It is weak, for it does not seem to have actually changed the course of events in the world, but the key that it offers us to open our mortal lives to a life where death no longer is in control, is a radical change to our way of looking at life. It is enough that it has happened once in the history of humanity, because nothing is the way it used to be any longer.
