NOTES for Luk 24:51

Jesus Christ finalizes His terrestrial way. The event signifying the alteration of the entire universe – the union of God with His creation – is ending so "quietly", as it commenced. Very few people witnessed the Incarnation, quite as it isn't also a crowd that attended the Ascension. God chose for His advent a remote suburb of the Roman Empire, oppressed nation, poor and simple people - He made everything so that His love could touch everyone, and not only some "elites". He did not accompany His way with world cataclysms, natural disasters and other "impressive" things – in order that nobody should be forced to come to Him. And at the last moment before the Ascension, Christ rebukes nobody, nor threatens - on the contrary He promises the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the followers and blesses them. God doesn't drag, nor compel anyone - he calls and "attracts". And at the same time, He carries out all that is necessary so that the creation can find eternal life - because in Christ, even our human nature rises to heaven.

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.

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.

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.

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.