What we just heard in the Gospel happened on the day Jesus rose from the dead.
It’s the same day the women went to the tomb at dawn and found it empty.
It’s the same day two of Jesus followers, walking to Emmaus, were joined by a stranger they didn’t recognise; a stranger who walked with them, talked deeply with them, but whom they didn’t recognise until he broke bread with them. … Then he vanished.
You’ll remember how they get up immediately and rush back to Jerusalem to find ‘the eleven’ and all the others, who are astounded, because they’ve just heard that the risen Jesus appeared to Peter! “The Lord has risen indeed,” they’re saying.
The two Emmaus travellers then tell everybody about their experience on the road. And it’s while they’re telling their story that Jesus suddenly stands among them and said, “Peace be with you.” … That’s where we just came into the story today.
It’s odd. Everyone’s just been saying how the Lord has risen, but when he does appear, they take him for a ghost—they’re terrified! I wonder if this is what severe shock and grief make you do. Didn’t CS Lewis say that grief felt just like fear. A Grief Observed But Jesus shows them he’s physically resurrected. Just like at Emmaus where he broke bread, he eats with them.
Another Gospel, John, tells us that the disciples huddle together behind locked doors, afraid that the authorities will come after them. I think Luke’s account also shows us how they struggle with fear—and struggle to take in these strange reports of “Jesus sightings”; wonder what it all means. Then suddenly, Jesus is there in their midst, “opening their minds,” (v.45) and he sets them free from their fear.
We need such transformation today. Today, this text challenges our own fears. What locked doors do we hide behind. Our fear may be very personal; fear of hearing the dreaded word “cancer;” fear of unemployment, the threat of financial insecurity, the fear of loneliness, and loss. But often our fears get played out at a national level. Australians fear being flooded with asylum seekers, terrorist attacks, identity theft, our way of life being destroyed. We need to be set free from these fears.
Underlying our fears is the fear of death, our own or that of someone we love. Our fears hold us captive. It makes it difficult to give witness to the great joy that is ours—that the bonds of death could not hold Jesus. Jesus is alive. Jesus suddenly stands among us and says, “Peace be with you.”
The power of the resurrection is the power to transform us—to take away the power that fear exercises in our lives, and in its place, to plant the seeds of life in all its fulness. A life lived in fear is a life half lived—Strictly Ballroom
The hope of the resurrection is grounded in the experience of those first followers. Jesus suddenly stands among them and says, “Peace be with you.” Nancy Blakely, a hospice chaplain, sees hope in this passage that closed minds can be opened—set free—a whole new way of life opened up. She says the potential is for a release in a prophetic way. “The word of God calls us to peace rather than security”.
Blakely sees that such a theme becomes problematic in a day and age when we get so driven by personal and national security issues. She asks if the attempts to keep us secure might actually be working against the peace that the world needs? Blakely, N. R. (2008). Pastoral Perspective on Luke 24:36b–48. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B (Vol. 2, p. 426). Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press.
Yes, hiding behind “locked doors” may help us feel more secure. But we are still left with our fears and mistrust. The passage from Luke asks the question of us today, “How are we to be released from those fears in order to be a proper witness?” How can we allow ourselves to be transformed so that we can hand on the peace that Christ’s resurrection offers us?
Jesus didn’t conquer death so people could continue living lives corralled by fear. Jesus rose from the dead and came back to us to give us Peace—peace of the active, creative kind—peace that sets us free to be our most creative, our most generous, our most enabling. Jesus rose from the dead and came back to us to give us Peace; a freedom that sets aside any constraint that might prevent us from passing it on—like we just saw him do today with his paralysed, grief-stricken, confused followers.
They’d given their lives to him, and when he died, they thought they’d lost everything. Jesus rose from the dead and came back to them to give them everything they thought they’d lost and much more: Abundant Life: peace, purpose, passion, hope, love, joy—all the qualities that let you live life to the full and make you want to enable others to do the same. Jesus came back from the dead to give us that kind of peace
Let me finish with a charge from St Teresa of Avila …
Christ has no body now on earth but ours,
no hands but ours, no feet but ours,
ours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth,
ours are the feet by which Christ is to go about doing good
and ours are the hands by which Christ is to bless others now.
Amen