NOTES for Luk 24:35-38

The apostles' reaction to the risen Jesus appearing among them is entirely understandable if one allows that at that time they still knew about the Kingdom and its life more by hearsay than from their own experience. It could not have been otherwise: the experience of the life of the Kingdom began to open to them on the day of Pentecost, which still lay ahead of them. For now, they remained completely inhabitants of this world, knowing about death and the afterlife no more than any of their contemporaries knew about them.

People in those days connected the afterlife with the world of shadows, with the realm of the dead, where everyone goes and where there is no question of any recompense. There were, of course, other versions, among the Egyptians, for example, or among the Greeks, who taught both about different states of postmortem existence and about postmortem recompense, but they were not very widespread and usually did not go beyond the cultural and religious tradition within which they had been formed.

Among the Jews there was no developed teaching about the afterlife, and Yahwist ideas about it did not differ from the ideas of most other peoples. So what could the disciples have thought when they saw their living Teacher before them? Their first thought was: this is a ghost, a shadow that has come out of the tomb. The corresponding Greek word here can mean both "breath" and "spirit" in the sense of the Spirit of God, but also "spirit" in the sense of a shadow, ghost, or apparition.

In Sheol, as the realm of the dead is called in Hebrew, there could be nothing but shadows, ghosts, and spirits. Sheol is not simply a place of death; it is a place of unceasing dying that can never come to an end. The biblical understanding of the soul sees in it a stream of life that can be more or less full depending on how much of God, His presence, and His breath there is in a person's life. This stream can be utterly full, as is the life of the Kingdom, or it can barely trickle, almost dried up, as is the existence of shadows in Sheol.

In the Kingdom, life overflows like wine from a cup during Shabbat; in Sheol, a person feverishly tries to hold on to the pitiful remnants of it that he managed to carry with him from the world of the living. In the fallen world before the coming of Christ, Sheol was the only real afterlife. People spoke of the resurrection, waited for it, and believed in it, but no one truly knew what it would be like. And so they take the risen Savior for a shadow that has come out of the tomb, only to be convinced very soon that in reality He is far more alive than anyone who considers himself alive.

For many people today, the question of resurrection recedes into the background, giving way to thoughts about postmortem existence, the immortality of the soul, rewards and punishments after death, heaven and hell. Meanwhile, the Bible says very little about all this, if it says anything at all. Evidently the biblical authors were concerned not with what often concerns us today, but with something completely different: what they called resurrection from the dead.

At first glance it can appear that the difference is not essential: in the end, the subject is still life after death, and the details are not so important. In reality, the difference between the immortality of the soul and resurrection is very great. What is the immortality of the soul in general? What kind of life, what kind of postmortem existence, could be meant in that case?

From the biblical point of view, the postmortem existence awaiting a person is rather bleak: it is not full life, but its pitiful likeness, which can hardly satisfy anyone. There is no question of a person's complete disappearance after death, but what awaits him after death can be called life only with great reservation. All that remains of a person is a shadow; he loses feelings and thoughts, almost loses the memory of his own life and of the world of the living: a shadow in which only a remnant of consciousness barely flickers. It is no accident that when the apostles saw the risen Jesus, they thought they had before them the shadow of their Teacher coming out of the tomb: none of them expected any other postmortem existence, and a meeting with a shadow, even the shadow of a loved one, could bring the living nothing good. The Bible tells us nothing about a blessed postmortem existence or about postmortem recompense like that mentioned in Egyptian or Greek myths.

But it does speak about resurrection, and the image of the risen Jesus shows us quite clearly the difference between postmortem existence and resurrection. Resurrection is not the preservation of pitiful remnants of life after the death of the body, but a return to life in all its fullness, requiring the transformation of human nature itself. Such is the transfigured humanity of the risen Jesus: on the one hand, He can pass through a locked door, which is no longer an obstacle for Him; on the other, He is able to eat the same ordinary earthly food that any of us eats. He is not a shadow; He deliberately lets the disciples touch Him so that they can be convinced of this. He is a man of flesh and blood, although this flesh and this blood live according to different laws from those by which we live.

And He gives the apostles the chance to understand that He has not simply returned to life, but has conquered, has overcome death, which no longer has power over Him. In the same way, it has no power over the life of the Kingdom that He brought into the world and offers to each of us.

The Gospel of Luke ends with a brief description, or rather a brief mention, of the Ascension. The evangelist's logic is understandable: he wanted to describe in full the entire forty-day period of the risen Jesus' stay with His disciples, right up to the completion of that period.

But this is, so to speak, a purely factual, event-based logic. There is another logic in the Gospel as well, one connected with the spiritual meaning of the events taking place. It is no accident that, speaking about meetings with the Risen One, the evangelist describes in such detail what happened on the road to Emmaus, when the apostles, walking along the road and talking with the Teacher, did not recognize Him, and later, during the breaking of bread, having recognized Jesus, immediately lost sight of Him. On the day of the Ascension He also disappears from the sight of His disciples. Clearly, with the Ascension a new stage begins in the establishment on earth of the Kingdom that the Savior brought into the world.

That this Kingdom includes the whole world, together with its physical nature, had become clear even earlier, when Jesus allowed His disciples to make sure that He was not a ghost, not a shadow that had come out of the tomb, but a real living Man. Of course, His human nature changed after the Resurrection; otherwise appearances like the ones the apostles had to observe on the road to Emmaus would scarcely have been possible. But in a certain sense it still remained nature, though transformed: if it were otherwise, He could hardly have tasted earthly food after the Resurrection. After the Resurrection Jesus does not turn into an angel, into a bodiless spirit that has lost every connection with the natural world. He remains a Man, but His human nature changes in quality.

The same thing must finally happen to the world and to each of us, if we follow the path into the Kingdom to the end. Being transformed, the world loses nothing except the evil whose captive it has become. And we, being transformed, lose nothing except the sin that keeps us from living the fullness of the life of the Kingdom.

But in order for the Kingdom to enter the world, its King must be in His own place. Not at the boundary that separates the Kingdom from the fallen world, where even a person who has not yet come into contact with the Kingdom can see Him, but in the very depth of the Kingdom, at its center, on the throne where Christians with good spiritual sight saw Him. To those who are unable to look into the depth of the Kingdom, it may appear that the King has gone away, disappeared, dissolved into that radiant cloud of God's presence that usually accompanies a theophany. In fact, He has simply gone to the place where the King must be when events decisive for His Kingdom are beginning. And that means the events will begin. Very soon.

Today's reading once again makes us think about how fallen man perceives the reality of the Kingdom. The apostles' first thought when they saw their risen Teacher standing among them was that before them was a ghost, a shadow that had come out of the tomb (v. 37). It would seem that for the disciples, who did not expect to see Jesus risen, such a reaction was quite natural. But on the other hand, it is still rather difficult to confuse the ghostly, barely visible shadow of a dead man with a risen man full of life. Such a thing would be possible only if the disciples simply had not managed to see Jesus properly.

Judging by the fact that He had to let them touch Him specifically (vv. 39-40), that is what happened. Apparently touch became the decisive argument for the disciples, while sight, it seems, failed them. Meanwhile it is obvious that if the body of the risen Jesus was dense enough to be touched, then it could be taken for a ghost only if the apostles simply could not distinguish it properly. The situation somewhat recalls the meeting of the disciples with the Risen One on the road to Emmaus: there too the apostles did not recognize Jesus, even while speaking with Him. Apparently it is very difficult for a person who remains in a world not yet transformed and who does not yet possess developed spiritual sight to discern people or objects whose nature has already been fully transformed. If a person sees them with ordinary physical sight, then probably he sees them vaguely and indistinctly enough that they really do resemble transparent or translucent shadows.

In reality, however, transformed nature is least of all like a bodiless shadow. Moreover, it interacts perfectly with the nature of our world. An example of this is the fully earthly food, not yet spiritualized in any way, eaten by the risen Jesus (vv. 41-43). Apparently in this case we are dealing with a concrete manifestation of the universal laws of the Kingdom: it does not destroy or exclude our nature, not yet transformed, but includes it within itself after first transforming it. And here, as one can see, on the scale of one small room, there took place what at the Savior's return will take place on the scale of the universe: the world will be transformed and become part of the Kingdom. And then the age in which we have had to live will come to an end.

Luke's third and final account of the disciples' encounter with the risen Jesus opens before us a reality that is scarcely attainable in our earthly life. Like the women who came with spices to His tomb, we can touch the mystery of the Resurrection through faith; we can meet Him when our heart “burns” as we read Scripture and recognize His living presence in the breaking of bread. But to see Him face to face, feel His touch, and see the marks of His teeth in a honeycomb—all this lies beyond human experience after the Ascension. And yet this is the foundational experience of all Jesus' disciples, of His Church: to know that He has truly risen. This knowledge, this experience, is preserved in Scripture and in the Church's memory, and it fulfills its mission in the world: to bear witness to the Resurrection, not logically or rationally, but on some other level. He is alive, and therefore all subsequent history—described in the Book of Acts and continuing to our own day—has meaning.

At first, when the Risen One appeared to the apostles, they did not recognize Him, and not only because He had changed. To recognize Him, one must attune the heart, just as a trained eye can immediately find the needed object amid a chaos of things. Christ taught the apostles to recognize His voice, and so after several days of confusion they were able to return to fellowship with Him. But even for the disciples, a temporary falling away from Christ led to their failing to recognize Him.

Now, after His visible departure from the world, we too do not always manage to discern His presence. But even today, through faith, we are able to attune ourselves to fellowship with Christ. For He who promised to be with us until the end of the age is still near. It is He who accompanies us along earthly roads and reveals the meaning of Scripture that eludes us because of our spiritual lack of attentiveness.

And of course, like the apostles, we too can recognize Him today in the breaking of the bread, when He not only reveals Himself but also unites Himself with us.

If in the previous story the women never met the risen Jesus, becoming participants in the Gospel of the Resurrection only by faith in His word, now a real meeting is described for us. For Christ, unrecognized by the travelers, remains Himself, and they really did share conversation and a meal with Him, even though they recognized Him at the very last moment. Earlier, Jesus taught crowds of people and openly argued with the scribes and Pharisees, but after the Resurrection only those who themselves want it with all their heart can see and recognize Him. And this recognition takes place precisely in the heart: "Were not our hearts burning within us?"

The experience of these two disciples is open to everyone who cannot reconcile themselves to the death of hope. In fact, it is the experience of the Church, when "two or three are gathered" in order to meet Christ in the Scriptures, for everything there is written about Him, and to recognize His presence at the meal of the Kingdom.

An interesting question: why do the apostles walking on the road to Emmaus not recognize their Teacher? Of course, they were not expecting the Resurrection; it seemed to them that everything was over, and to the One they took for a stranger they bitterly told everything "that had happened in these days in Jerusalem." But how can one fail to recognize the One with whom one has spent several years, speaking with Him every day? A changed humanity, not easily perceived by the eyes and senses of fallen man? Perhaps yes, for the Kingdom reveals itself with difficulty, and only in part, to untransfigured sight. But at the moment of the breaking of the bread they see Him with complete clarity. What happened?

A theologian could perhaps build an entire sacramentology on this one fact. But the matter here may be both simpler and more complex: the disciples simply partook of the Kingdom, entered it, and found themselves right at its center, where He, their Teacher, is. And from within the Kingdom the Kingdom can be seen well, so the apostles, of course, immediately made out Jesus without difficulty. But how and why it turns out that the Kingdom now opens to the disciples, then closes again to them, remains something one can only wonder about.

One thing is clear: now it is truly near, so near that one can cross its boundary without even noticing it. Yet, on the other hand, it turns out that one can cross the boundary of the Kingdom without noticing not only the boundary, but even the Kingdom itself. One can pass through it without seeing or sensing anything, without noticing even the One whom, while He still belonged in His human nature to the untransfigured part of creation, it had been impossible not to notice. Apparently what is needed is a relationship actualized here and now, a bond like the one uniting those gathered around the broken bread, in order to experience the reality of the Kingdom. And it turns out to be infinitely great: as soon as the apostles recognized Jesus and found themselves in the same spiritual dimension with Him, He immediately disappeared from sight, dissolving into the infinite distance, for He is at the center of His Kingdom, and the apostles, it appears, are still very far from the center...

And yet the meeting took place. That is the main thing. The rest will follow, for ahead lies an entire life, a life to be lived in the Kingdom.

The message of Jesus' Resurrection forms the heart of apostolic preaching, the center of Christianity. Today the evangelist shows how uncontainable and overwhelming it was for the first disciples. Luke describes their doubts and hesitations in order to reflect the experience of his community (the local church), but his story can fully apply to us as well. We too have heard more than once about the Resurrection, read about it more than once in the Gospel, heard it in church preaching, and told others ourselves. But, like the two travelers to Emmaus, it is very hard for us to believe in the Resurrection until the Lord Himself, unnoticed by us, widens our hearts and opens to us by His Spirit the Scripture that bears witness to His Resurrection.

The Resurrection is not an abstract theological concept. Faith in it is based on a personal meeting with the Risen One, as the myrrh-bearing women met Him, as the two disciples recognized Him in the breaking of the bread, as He appeared before all the apostles. But it is also based on our meeting: even if we have not yet recognized who was speaking with us on the road of our life, the burning of the heart and joy over the Risen Lord already testify that we are becoming participants in His glory.

Reading the Gospel accounts of the disciples' meetings and fellowship with the risen Teacher, many people wonder why, having recognized Him at the moment of the breaking of bread, the apostles immediately lose sight of the Savior. It would seem that just a moment ago, as they were walking along the road, they saw Him perfectly clearly; He was beside them, and now He is no longer there, and no one knows how or where He disappeared.

Meanwhile, the nearness of the Kingdom entering the world can explain much here. Even before His death and resurrection, Jesus spoke of the Kingdom having drawn near, of its now being close, of its already entering the world. And after His resurrection He again confirms this thought. But now the situation has changed: after the resurrection Jesus already belongs fully to the Kingdom, and He is present in this world insofar as the Kingdom has entered it. He no longer crosses the boundaries of the Kingdom; He does not touch the fallen world, not physical nature as such, but that part of it which has not yet come into contact with the Kingdom. Meanwhile the apostles still belong precisely to the fallen world, and belong to it entirely. For them the situation will change only after Pentecost, when they come into contact with the Kingdom, feel its breath, and enter it; then they will learn to see the Kingdom as it is, to perceive its infinite depth, where there are no distances and where it is therefore easy and simple to meet Christ: one need only call Him.

For now, before Pentecost, the disciples see only, so to speak, the outskirts of the Kingdom, that boundary by which it touches the still untransfigured world. The boundary itself is transparent; it is easy not to notice it. And the risen Savior, who is on the other side of it, appears to be walking the same road as the apostles. He really is walking the same road, but His part of the road runs on the other side of the boundary that separates the Kingdom from the fallen world.

The disciples, of course, notice no boundary: they are sure that the mysterious Stranger is an inhabitant of their world, not a resident of the Kingdom. And as long as He remains as close to the boundary on His side as His disciples are on theirs, the apostles notice nothing. But then the moment of the breaking of bread comes, and Jesus is where He can only be at that moment: at the center of His Kingdom, as befits the King. From the boundary of the Kingdom He goes into its depths.

And, naturally, He becomes invisible to the apostles, because they cannot yet look that far into the depths of the Kingdom. It appears to them that the Teacher disappeared precisely at the moment when they finally guessed Who was before them. In reality, of course, Jesus had not disappeared anywhere: if the apostles had been able to see the Kingdom as it is, they would have seen their Teacher there in glory. But their time had not yet come. Pentecost was still ahead. For now, the apostles could only wonder and guess why their Teacher appeared so unexpectedly and disappeared from sight just as unexpectedly.