It seems fairly obvious from the scriptural accounts of Jesus’s post-resurrection appearances, that the risen Jesus is different from the Jesus his followers experienced before the crucifixion. Certainly, there is continuity- it is the same "person," but one who has changed as the result of the experience of dying and rising.
As a result of this change, his disciples who accompanied him on his journey along the back roads of Galilee, journeyed with him to Jerusalem, and who experienced first-hand the events of his passion and death, had to let go of the earlier Jesus so as to relate to the risen Christ in a new and different way.
You see, dear friends, the mystery of life in Christ is that Christ can live in you. He comes to live in you by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is not a throw-away line. The fact that Christ lives in you by the Holy Spirit’s power is emphasized by the fact that for Monday and Tuesday of the Easter Octave our first Mass readings from the Acts of the Apostles, are taken from the account of the first Christian Pentecost. In our reading from Acts this morning, we see the effects of Christ’s power exercised by Peter in healing the crippled man by enabling him to walk.
Our Gospel reading this morning from Saint Luke’s Gospel, which was written by the same inspired author who wrote Acts, is the scriptural teaching par excellence about relating to the risen Christ in a new way. We relate to the risen Christ in a new way because he relates to us in a new, more powerful way. The Eucharist is the sign and symbol of this new way of relating.
Like Mary Magdalene in yesterday’s Gospel, something that is a feature of many of Jesus’s early post-resurrection appearances, Cleopas and his companion do not recognize Jesus, despite being his disciples. Again, this shows that there is a difference between the resurrected Jesus and Jesus before the crucifixion.
This stranger, who “drew near and walked with them,” schooled them as to how the events of Jesus’s passion and death, which left the two discouraged if not quite in despair, were foretold in the Hebrew Scriptures.1 They were convinced by this stranger's explanation. It was not until they invited him in, sat at table with him, that they recognized him in the bread blessed and broken.
We, too, this very morning will experience Jesus in the breaking of the bread. This is true whether you’re here in person or participating virtually. Your spiritual, or visual communion, is enough to allow you to recognize Jesus.
Today, the risen Lord invites us to a new relationship with him. Maybe our inability to gather together to celebrate these sacred mysteries due to the pandemic is an exercise in our not clinging to an outmoded, static, relationship with the risen Christ. Maybe through this troubling time, he is calling each of us, which means all of us together, to a new, closer, more dynamic and powerful relationship with him and with one another and, indeed, with the whole world.
What you won’t witness is a magic trick. What we see can only be seen through the eyes of faith, the very same “eyes” with which Cleopas and his companion recognized Jesus Christ risen and alive.
Perhaps the risen Christ bids us to never again take for granted his presence in the Eucharist. Maybe he wants us to realize the power he gives us in and through the Eucharist- a power wrought by the Holy Spirit, who is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence among us, in us, and through us. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, the risen Lord comes to be present in us even more than he remains present in the tabernacle. His presence in us is meant to be a powerful, dynamic presence.
By receiving Holy Communion, the risen Christ is not content merely to be present in us; he gives himself to us so that through us he can be present to others. His presence is expressed in acts of service, acts of diakonia. Loving care and concern for others is the power of Christ.
I want to end this morning by noting that it was 30 years ago today that I was baptized. At the Easter Vigil of 1990, I was fully initiated into the Church of Jesus Christ. I have to say, that these decades, which constitute most of my adulthood have been a school of learning how to relate to the risen Christ in an ever-new way.
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