After the Resurrection of Jesus, two apostles were walking to a village called Emmaus. They were talking together about all that had happened over the past days, when Jesus himself, whom they didn’t recognise, came and walked beside them. (Luke 24:13-16).
These two apostles explained to their travelling companion their hope that their friend Jesus would have been the one to set Israel free, but he had been taken and crucified. Yet from what they had heard from some of the women, when they checked his tomb that morning it was apparently empty.
Jesus spent considerable time explaining to Cleopas and his mate all the passages of scripture about Jesus from Moses, through all the prophets, and still they didn’t work out who he was. What he was telling them failed to sink in because they were that engrossed with their own thoughts.
This story is so like us today. We tend to walk along the roadways of our individual life journeys, that intent on what is happening in our lives, we often fail to recognise that the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus is walking with us. Sure, we can go to church and listen to the scripture stories and talk among ourselves but, like the two apostles, the messages often don’t seem to sink in.
It wasn’t until the evening when the penny dropped. ‘They recognised Jesus at the breaking of the bread’ (Luke 24:35).
Could it be that this is the trigger we need to recognise and embrace the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus within each one of us? For us the Eucharist can be the re-enactment of, not just the last supper, but the recognition of Jesus by the two Apostles on their way to Emmaus.
Our receiving of the Eucharist can be what we need to revitalise our relationship with the Spirit who walks with us. Like Cleopas and his mate who got excited about their revelation and ran back to tell the other apostles they had seen Jesus, we too, can get excited about having recognised Jesus as well. Each time we receive the Eucharist we can recognise Jesus ‘at the breaking of the bread’ and thus renew our friendship with our God who lives within us.
I’m Peter Mack and that’s how I feel.