The gospel passage begins with the narration of the excited Emmaus disciples about their long-time encounter with the Lord. As they were talking, Jesus appears in their midst, and encounters the disciples who did not know how to make sense of the nature of the figure of Jesus that they were seeing. The Risen One had a special nature that they were not familiar with. He could enter closed doors but had a corporeality to his spiritual body. He was eating with them.
It is a phenomenon that they were seeing for the first time, they did not have categories to understand it, much less explain. So they were startled, terrified, and doubted. They had seen Jesus raising Lazarus. But they knew for sure that he returned with a body that would perish again. There was a certain difference that they could not comprehend with the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus explained to them the reality of his new glorified body. Scripture scholars tell us that this was a way of writing that Luke used to convince the Greek believers and otherwise of the reality of the resurrection.
Jesus is seen convincing the scared and doubtful disciples of the reality of the resurrection. The resurrection is the greatest evidence for the project of announcing repentance and God’s forgiveness of sins. That project is supposed to be announced to “all the nations” of the earth. And it had to begin with these doubting disciples. So Jesus makes extraordinary efforts to invite the disciples to faith. Jesus “opens their minds” just as he had done this “opening of minds” to the Emmaus disciples to understand the scriptures.
Opening of mind requires us to learn new categories of thinking, a whole new paradigm of thinking which is very difficult for us to master. Jesus has a peculiar way of achieving this goal. He starts with individuals, changing their convictions. It does not begin like a mass movement. Jesus begins a change by changing the minds of just a few disciples. Jesus does that to Saint Paul on his way to Damascus. Then the story started rolling on about resurrection, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins. This communication was from heart to heart that breached the borders of nations and epochs. That message is still spreading. We can easily relate the expansion of this message like the spread of the corona virus. It started from an animal and spread to humans in a corner of China, and now the virus has spread to all over the world in spite of all efforts to contain its spread.
Humanity is beginning to learn that large scale changes can be made by making minutest tweaks in the fundamental engineering of things. Even the Covid-19 vaccines are little protein codes that program our bodies to produce antibodies to fight the virus. Likewise, a little change in what we believe and in whom we believe can change the whole perspective and direction of our life.
In fact, God has always used this method. In the Old Testament, we see God, getting just one man to believe in his projects. He called an old and sterile Abraham to believe in a promise to have children as many as the stars of heaven and the sand on the seashore. And that promise was fulfilled. He calls Noah to believe in building a boat in a place where there was not even a pool of water! Yahweh invites Moses, a stammering man to stand up to the mighty power of Pharaoh and speak to him face to face and lead a multitude out of slavery. God makes great things happen by changing the categories of thinking of one person!
Ultimately, it is important that we absorb the message of the resurrection. In the name of the Risen One, repentance and the forgiveness of sins is preached to all the nations, and to me personally as well. The Risen One is giving me peace and forgiveness, liberating me to a freedom of the child of God. If I am liberated to this new faith, I will start a movement too…