The Paschal Trilogy – Part III/III – Resurrection Sunday
Luke 24:30-31, ‘When He was at table with them, He took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him.’
The disciples did not recognize the Risen Lord until He *broke* the bread and *gave* it to them. This is significant, because, when we come to this place in Luke’s Gospel, we have already been instructed by his narrative to understand bread that is *broken* by Jesus and *given* to His disciples as the image of His own body, broken and given on the cross (c.f., Luke 22:19). Thus, when Jesus performs this seemingly simple act of hospitality, the reader recognizes that it is, in fact, the *Risen* Jesus offering the broken body of the *Crucified* Jesus to His people…And it is only at this point that the eyes of the disciples are opened and the realize that the one sitting before them is the Lord Himself.
Indeed, it is only ever in this way that we truly know Christ, and so truly know God in Him. It is only by receiving Him as the Crucified One who is Risen, as the Slain Lamb who is standing, as the One who died and yet, behold, lives forevermore—it is only in *this way* that He becomes to us the Exegesis of the unseen God.
The Crucified Jesus is the Bread of Life, He is the One in whom we see and know and receive our God…and yet, we cannot receive Him as such apart from the Risen Jesus…It is only in and by the Risen One that the Crucified One is offered to His people as the Bread, as this Life, as this Revelation….and that is precisely the image that Luke paints for us in this passage…
It is the Risen Lord who Blesses the Bread of the Crucified Lord as the Nuptial Feast of His Bride; It is the mercy-riven hands of the Resurrected One that break the Bread of the Crucified One and give Him as True Food and True Drink to His people; Only in the flesh of our Risen King do the wounds of the Crucified Servant shine with the radiance of divine love; And only as the heart that was mortally pierced on the tree pulses with indomitable life upon the throne do we hear in its beating the Name of the Only True God.
The Lord is risen, He is risen indeed.
