Our gospel begins with Jesus’ closest
disciples having just heard about his appearance
on the road to Emmaus. We don’t really
hear what their reaction was. Maybe they
don’t even have time to stop and realize for themselves how they’re reacting,
because right then and there, Jesus appears in their midst. And they’re terrified. Which means they don’t get it. Whatever their heads are doing, their hearts
are not quite yet ready to receive their Lord; to receive the good news that
his love for them, for us, is stronger than death, the good news that he longs
to be with us,just as strongly as he longs to be with his heavenly father, so
will act to bring us to eternal heavenly life, acting to sanctify us to the
point that we can live heavenlily. It’s
the most extravagant, outrageous good news ever. And it’s no surprise that after the trauma they’ve
been through, they’re not ready to receive it.
They react to the coming of their Lord with fear.
I wonder how we’d react. I know we get it on a head level; we can
recite the creed and say Amen, but how ready are our hearts for that kind of
love? John’s letter is soberly realistic
about the presence of sin in the Church, but just as committed to the wonder of
Christ’s expiation of that sin, that what Christ does for us is not to take the
wrath out of God, but the rebellion out of us, to actually heal and purify and
sanctify us, so as God’s own love can be made perfect in us. Perfect.
How would we react, to be confronted with that love incarnate? To have our love revealed in contrast as but
a shadow of it, but to be assured that that love is being perfected in us. That we will love like Christ, and that he
died and rose again to make sure of it.
That might well terrify us. Because the more intimately we know Christ’s
love for us, the more the magnitude of his sacrifice and self-gift for us we
see and feel, and the more we wonder if we could ever be brought to love like
that. But, we can. He promises.
Because he, without in any way denying his humanity, loved like that,
and so raised the dignity of humanity.
The disciples’ hearts weren’t ready to
live up to that new found dignity, so they were terrified. But, Jesus won’t leave them in that
state. He declares peace to them. A standard Jewish greeting – Shalom! –
but this is no mere formula, but an ardent prayer. Peace.
He prayed, and prays still, that we might know peace. That we might be delivered from terror, and
know peace.
And then he shows his wounds. He shows that the peace he promises is not
one which evades suffering, which shirks vulnerability, but one that takes up
its cross, confident in hope. And he
eats. He reminds them, and us, that the
new life to which we will be raised is not one which takes away our
humanity. That we, and he, are raised
fully human, more fully human than we have ever been. And that includes our being redeemed as
fragile, woundable, and as capable of hunger.
Because it’s in those weaknesses that we encounter God’s healing balm
and nourishing feast as truly life-giving.
And the disciples find themselves
filled with joy. They’re still
incredulous, unbelieving; it will take their heads a while to catch up with
their hearts, but Jesus has brought them peace, and brought them joy. And it’s in their joy that they’ll learn to
worship, learn to have faith, and learn that they’re saved to serve, to be
witnesses of these things to the ends of the earth; to make present a waiting
world the hope and the love that is being wrought in them. How might we help the world find that true
joy, which is the privileged context in which faith and love can be nourished?
Here in this place, Christ enters our
midst and shortly after he does, we proclaim peace to each other. We’ve started to receive his word; we’ve
started to live out our vocation as church to make Christ present to each other
and to the world. “Peace.” No mere formula, it’s an ardent prayer. It’s a prayer we make with our lips and our
hands here, that we might keep offering it in all we do throughout the next
week, year… the rest of our lives. It’s
in making that prayer of peace take on flesh through our lives, that we’ll
encounter the Christ who sends us out and we’ll find his love, perfected in us.
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