Being with the Lord in his Resurrection

Fr Kevin Head sm

In our Church’s early days, Christians were mostly poor, struggling, and persecuted.

The request of the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), ‘stay with us Lord, it is almost dark,’ was a prayer of the Church in its struggle. Luke’s Gospel was written in Antioch, Syria, 50 years or so after Jesus died and rose from the dead. The Church was very fragile. It was under pressure from the Syrian government and from the Jewish leaders.

How could the Lord be with the Church in such a dreadful world? Where can we find the Lord in the often sad, dark and messy world in which we live?

In the Emmaus story, Luke shows how Jesus stays with us, with the Church. He encourages us to meet the Lord in his Word and Sacrament. He describes the meal at Emmaus in the same way as he describes the feeding of the thousands (Luke 9:12-17) and the Last Supper (Luke 22:14-22). Jesus blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his friends.

We know we won’t find the Lord in eating too much, or in getting drunk, or in lying or cheating or stealing, or in doing any of the other things we know to be wrong.

We will find him by living according to his teachings and values. We find him in feeding the hungry, in visiting the sick, in comforting the sorrowful, and in prayer together.

Most of all we find him, the Lord who stays with us, in the Word of Scripture proclaimed, in the Eucharist, and in our love for one another.

It is reasonably easy for us to discover the crosses in our lives, and Jesus made it clear to us that if we are truly trying to follow him, the cross will be an unavoidable aspect of our day-to-day existence.

We find the resurrection in our self-giving
love for others

Our own sadness and the sorrows of others can weigh on our hearts. It’s been well said, I think, that rather than let the cross weigh on our heart, we must heave it up on to our shoulder! Brave words! Easy to say and, in my experience, difficult to execute.

When she arrived at the tomb, Mary Magdalene was so bound up in her pain and grief that she could not recognise Jesus through her tears. It was only when Jesus called her out of herself that she recognised him. Jesus effectively calls her beyond her cross into his risen life.

I think the Lord does the same for us. He calls us through our pain into new life. He does that by calling us to focus on others, on his people who are poor, or lonely, or sick.

In 2 Corinthians 4:12 St Paul wrote ‘death is at work in me, but life in you.’ In other words, when he looked into himself, into his own heart and soul, Paul saw his failures and shortcomings and his sinfulness; but when he looked outside himself, at the people he had taught and loved and cared for and given every ounce of his energy for, he found life, he found the resurrection. And it’s the same for us. We find the resurrection in our self-giving love for others, in those to whom and for whom and with whom we do good. The Lord is truly risen! Alleluia!