The Gospel readings this week have a common theme: After his resurrection, Jesus appears to his followers, but they do not recognize him. When Mary Magdalene, arguably the one who loved Jesus the most, encountered Jesus while outside the tomb, full of grief and despair that Jesus’ body was not there, she thought He was a gardener. Only after Jesus called her by name did she have the shocking revelation that the person who was with her was the resurrected Jesus. Cleopas and the other disciple spent hours walking with Jesus, talking with him on the road to Emmaus, but they did not recognize Him. Only after He broke the bread, as He had done hundreds of times before with them, did the disciples have the shocking revelation that the Man who walked with them was the resurrected Jesus. Even the eleven Apostles, after hearing the Good News from Mary Magdalene and Cleopas and the other disciple, thought that He was a ghost when He walked through the locked door and joined them in the upper room (Luke 24:35‑48). “Why are you troubled? Why do you have questions in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, see that it is I, Myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And even after Jesus visited the apostles and revealed himself to them in the upper room, the apostles have trouble recognizing Jesus when they return to their “normal” lives as fishermen near the Sea of Tiberias (Sea of Galilee).
So why don’t the very people with whom Jesus has spent so much time, why don’t they recognize Him when they see Him? Why do the gospels spend so many words telling us about this lack of recognition? Some commentators rationalize: Mary was intent on finding His DEAD body. She was in deep mourning and did not look Jesus in the face until He called her name. Or perhaps her eyes were so full of tears that her vision was blurred. Cleopas and the unnamed disciple likely did not recognize Him because his physical appearance might have changed. The apostles have trouble recognizing Jesus because their boat was at least 100 yards (100 meters) offshore, so it is not surprising that they didn’t recognize him at so great a distance. While these rationalizations may have some merit, I think there is more to it.
Author C. S. Lewis has an interesting take on this. In one of his science fiction stories, he explains the physicality of angels. They are not LESS real than this physical world, but MORE real. However, because of our physical bias and lack of understanding, they seem to us to be insubstantial, ethereal, and ghostlike. In fact, it is the other way around. It is our physical world which is insubstantial compared to them.
He gives this example, which is all too real to the people of London in his time: Let’s say there is a wall of fog, but you don’t know that it is fog. It looks solid and impenetrable to you. Then let’s say a man steps through that wall of fog. Because you assumed the wall was substantial and solid you might conclude that the man was ghostly and insubstantial. In fact, it is the fog that is insubstantial and no more than mist.
This analogy perhaps helps explain the way angels can move through our physical world so easily and might be a good explanation for the unusual condition of Jesus’ resurrection body. He was not less real than this physical realm, but after His resurrection, He was more real. The walls, the roads, the food, the physical stuff of this world were to Him no more than vapors and the wisp of mist or a puff of smoke.
So, if this speculation is correct, the resurrected Lord was not recognizable because it really was Him, but He was existing in a greater dimension of reality, and they couldn’t see him fully with their mortal eyes.
The second reason they did not recognize him is more mundane and yet more wonderful. It is because he was glorified. He was transformed. His sufferings and trauma were over.
The best way I can explain this is to relate an incident that happened to me. I have a friend named Betty (not her real name). She was married to a depressed, unemployed, and violent alcoholic husband. She had three no good sons. Two were already in jail. The third was a violent drunkard. One night her son came home from a drinking binge and shot her and his father with a gun, killing the father and nearly killing her. When she recovered from her injuries, Betty was a wreck. Hunched over physically, with a dowdy dress and dreary hair, she was about as low as a human being could be.
About six months later, I again ran into her. A woman came into the room and gave me a hug. I didn’t recognize her. It was Betty. Her hair was nicely done. She was wearing a little makeup. She wore a new dress, and she was standing tall. I laughed and said, “Betty! I honestly didn’t recognize you!” She was transformed. All her burdens were lifted, and she had found both physical and mental healing.
I think the resurrected Lord was like that, only a million times more. He had borne all the battle. He had carried all our sins in his own body on the cross. His body was racked and torn apart. He was a wreck of a man–totally broken and battered.
But then when He rose again, He was restored. He was better and brighter and stronger and more handsome than He had ever been before. His perfection for having gone through the darkness and having come out the other side was greater than the perfection in which He was first born.
You and I are called to this same destiny. We are called to go through the darkness and the death with Christ and come out the other side. We are destined to be fulfilled and completed and to be all that God created us to be. Through the power of the pioneer who went before us, we are called to be unrecognizable in His reflected glory. If you are called to this, and I am called to this, then so is every other living soul. Everyone is called to this transformation, this resurrection.
Which reminds me again of C. S. Lewis who captured this much better than I in his poignant and powerful sermon The Weight of Glory:
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship; or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, to some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no “ordinary” people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals with whom we joke, work, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!