Today we hear part of Luke's Resurrection narrative. This passage follows on directly after the narrative of the Journey to Emmaus. You will remember in that account two disciples, not named, were journeying from Jerusalem to Emmaus following the events of the Crucifixion, and met the Risen Lord on the way but did not recognize him. Jesus journeyed with them and in conversation with them opened up to them the scriptures concerning himself. As they neared their destination the disciples asked Jesus to supper and it was at table as Jesus broke the bread that their “eyes were opened and they recognized him”. Then we are told : “Jesus vanished out of their sight” It was then that they said “did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” The disciples headed back to Jerusalem and told the others their experiences and the eleven told them that “The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon!” So today's passage begins: “While the disciples were telling how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them “Peace be with you.” Then comes their terror and amazement and reaction to this what seemed to them like a ghost. But Jesus subdues their fears by showing them his hands and his feet and requests something to eat.

As we were reminded last Sunday the Risen Jesus is no ghost, no disembodied presence. Whatever else he is Jesus is embodied; he is real presence. We believe in the resurrection of the body as we say in the Apostles' Creed. That is the whole of us, body, soul and spirit, if you will, is important to God. In other words our physicality, our spirituality, our psychology, our sexuality, and our intellect are all important components of our identity as human beings and because God has taken human form in the person of Jesus Christ and through his death and resurrection has redeemed our humanity our whole personhood, our whole identity as human beings is created, loved and redeemed by God. In other words no part of us is left out of God's saving, redeeming, restorative love.

These resurrection narratives in the gospels and particularly here in Luke are at pains to point out on the one hand the continuity between the Jesus the disciples had known and experienced in his ministry as well as in his Passion and Death and with the Risen Christ they were now experiencing. So this familiar motif of the displaying of the wounds. There is a clear continuity between the Crucified Jesus and the Risen Christ. The same can be said for the physicality of Jesus standing before them in the room asking for food, inviting Thomas to touch his wounds and so forth. And in Luke there are important associated themes linking what has gone before to what is now being experienced. You will remember on the Road to Emmaus, Jesus “opened the scriptures concerning himself to them”.

So in today's gospel Jesus says: “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.” Not only is there this physical continuity in Luke but there is a scriptural continuity. All that has happened in the resurrection; all that the disciples are experiencing is a fulfillment of the sacred scriptures. This is part of God's plan of salvation. Likewise at Emmaus it is when Jesus breaks the bread as he had broken it at the Last Supper and in the miraculous feedings that the disciples recognized him in the familiar act. Not that the disciples had understood that before. But like the disciples on the road to Emmaus whose “eyes were opened” when Jesus broke the bread so here Jesus “opened their minds to understand the scriptures.”

The gospels are filled with this “seeing” in a new way: think of the blind who receive their sight; think of the Prodigal Son “who comes to himself” and sees his situation as it really is. So here the experience of the Risen Christ gives new insight.

And here we touch on the other dimension of Luke's gospel. And that is that while there is definite continuity between the pre and post Resurrection Christ there is also a degree of discontinuity: there is a whole new dimension to this Risen Life. That is shown in the various gospel traditions by several devices. One is the lack of recognition. Like Mary Magdalene in John's gospel who supposes the Risen Christ to be the gardener or the disciples on the road to Emmaus who did not recognize the stranger walking with them so we hear elsewhere in the gospel narratives of disciples “doubting” and “disbelieving” until “their eyes were opened” or Jesus called them by name or did a familiar act like breaking bread.

But there is another example of this which is easily missed and that is Jesus' opening words to the disciples in today's and indeed last week's gospel: “Peace be with you.” Our ears are so used to that Sunday by Sunday in the liturgy that it hardly strikes us as extraordinary thing to say. Isn't that what religious people do? But this is the first time in the gospels that Jesus says such a thing. For this gift of peace is the gift of the Risen Lord. This is the peace predicted by the angels to the shepherds at Jesus' birth “and on earth peace among those whom he favors” and at the entry into Jerusalem when Jesus is hailed in words associated with the coming Messiah “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Jesus only gives this greeting of Peace because he is the Risen Lord Christ. It is precisely this peace, peace between heaven and earth, between God and humankind, that is has been won by Christ through his Passion and Death on the Cross.

So there is continuity and discontinuity in the Resurrection. But there is yet another aspect to this new dimension to the Resurrection in Luke. Hear those words from the end of the gospel passage: “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” What we see here is that this experience of encounter with the Risen Lord leads seamlessly to the Mission of the Church. In Luke's gospel this forms a bridge to the second part of Luke's writing in the Acts of the Apostles. Resurrection is no stand alone event but is inextricably linked to Mission. The Risen Lord appears to the disciples not so much to reassure them that all is okay and that life can go on as before as it were but rather to lead them on into a new place; to transform them and to give them the challenge of the universal mission.

As a good example of this disconnect between continuity and discontinuity as experienced in the Resurrection I think of what we are doing to day in the Town Hall meeting. We are all well aware of what has been going on in this parish physically with the new development and its completion. It would be easy to think well that is all over now we can resume life as it was before. As if we have learned nothing or experienced nothing in the intervening time. But while we have been abuilding this parish has changed; this community and society has changed; and indeed we all have changed. We simply cannot take up life as it was before. We cannot simply put things back in their places like they used to be. Not only do we have differing ideas what it was like before but more importantly we need to think what is the appropriate way to do things now, to meet current challenges and needs.