The Risen Christ visits the disciples
(From the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, verses 36-48)
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Someone was pounding on the door downstairs.
"Oh, no. This is it," Peter said quietly to his friends. "The Roman soldiers have finally found us."
"What are we going to do?" Andrew asked him.
"We're all going to be killed, just like Jesus," said Matthew. He bowed his head and started to cry.
"Maybe if we just stay quiet, they'll go away," James whispered to the men.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
Whoever it was, wasn't going away.
Peter got up, took a deep breath, and went downstairs. He looked through the crack in the door. It was Cleopas and his brother Bartimus. Peter knew these two men. They loved Jesus. Like Peter, they had been heartbroken when Jesus had died. And like Peter, they had been completely confused by the women's news: that Jesus' body was no longer in the tomb where they had laid it a few days ago.
Peter opened the door. Cleopas and Bartimus dashed in and grabbed Peter's shoulders.
"We have seen him, Peter! He's alive!" Cleopas shouted.
"Who?" Peter asked. He had never seen his friend so worked up.
"Jesus! We saw Jesus!" Cleopas told him.
Bartimus said, "We were heading back to Emmaus. Then this guy shows up and starts walking with us. At first he acted like he didn't know anything about Jesus."
"And then he starts to teach us from the scriptures and the writing of the prophets," Cleopas jumped in. "He helped us see that for generations the holy writings have been pointing to Jesus and his gospel of salvation. He was so smart. He knew everything."
Bartimus interrupted. "But here's the amazing part. When we got to Cleopas' house, we invited the man in for supper. And then ..." He shook his head and began to cry.
Cleopas put his arm around his brother's shoulder. "He sat down at the table with us. He picked up the bread my wife had baked. He lifted it up and he blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to us. 'Take, eat,' he told us. That's when we knew. The man we'd been talking with all afternoon was Jesus."
"Well, where is he now?" Peter asked him.
"That's just it – we don't know," Bartimus told him. "He just vanished. One moment he was at table with us. The next, he was gone."
"We ran all the way back to Jerusalem to tell you these things. What the women told us was true. Jesus is alive. He's alive!" Cleopus said.
"Come upstairs," Peter told. "The others need to hear these things."
Cleopas and Bartimus began to tell their story to the 10 disciples. The men were amazed. Some doubted the story that Cleopas and Bartimus told. Maybe they were just really tired and had dreamed it all. How could this happen? How could someone who was dead come back to life? It was impossible!
Suddenly, they all felt a rush of warm air in the room and heard a familiar voice.
"Peace be with you."
They turned around, and there was Jesus. He was standing in the room with them, arms outstretched, smiling. "Peace be with you," he said again.
"Oh my God," screamed John. "It's a ghost!" He hid his face in his brother James' shoulder.
Jesus shook his head. "Why are you so scared?" he asked them. "Why do you doubt what your friends have seen and heard? Come, look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." Jesus put his hands out. His friends could see the wounds where the nails had been.
One by one, the disciples came to Jesus. They touched him. They hugged him. They kissed him. They began to laugh and cry for joy. It was Jesus! He was here with them! He was alive!
"Have you got anything to eat?" Jesus asked them.
Philip brought him a piece of broiled fish. Jesus ate it. "Oh, that tastes good!" he said. "I was so hungry!"
Then Jesus sat down with the disciples. "Just as I told Cleopas and Bartimus as we walked together: everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must come to pass." And for a few hours, Jesus helped them all understand how the Hebrew scriptures were tied to Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God, how they pointed to his work of healing and forgiveness.
Finally Jesus got up. "I must go," he told his friends.
"No!" they all shouted. "Stay here, please!"
But he said to them, "Soon I am going to be with God in heaven forever. And I promise you, we will all be together there some day. But now you have important work to do for me here on earth. You must leave this room and go out into the streets of Jerusalem and beyond. You must proclaim to everyone what you have witnessed here today. And you must preach about repentance and forgiveness. That is what God wants. And that is what I want."
Questions to think and pray about:
What does Jesus' voice sound like to you?
How can you show forgiveness to someone?
Who do you know who needs to experience the kind of love that Jesus has?