Easter 3 Sermon - BMT - April 19, 2026

Scripture Readings: Isaiah 43:1-12; Psalm 116:11-16; 1 Peter 1:13-25; Luke 24:13-35

Transcript

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During this season of Eastertide, we're journeying with Jesus for forty days in his resurrected body before he ascends into heaven. So for forty days, Jesus is revealing himself to the disciples and various other eyewitnesses. But what's so striking and frankly bizarre is our gospel reading today in Luke. It's bizarre, but it's actually not peculiar. This is actually a pattern that you see in many of the other resurrection stories. The stories where people meet the resurrected Christ. And the shocking claim that's being made is people see the resurrected Christ and they do not know it's the resurrected Christ. This happens with Mary Magdalene, right? She thinks Christ is his gardener. Happens here with the disciples on the road to Emmaus and happens to the disciples at the end of the book of John when they're on the beach, and when the disciples are fishing, they see Jesus on the beach, maybe they're waving to him, you know. No clue. And one thing that's so powerful, I think, about these stories is that it goes against our modern intuition. What I mean by that, this idea that maybe you have thought, I know I've thought it, if I just, man, if I just had a video of all this, if I, if I, if there is a photograph, you know, a first century Palestinian Polaroid shot of the resurrected Christ, uh, well, apparently you could have video and you have a picture, still not see. In fact, Lou takes it even further. Imagine walking for seven miles with Jesus. He's opening up the script the scriptures about himself during that entire walk. And still not see who he is. It's incredible. So the question that the gospels put before us is not just simply, yeah, I believe the resurrection, I believe that it happened, but the question is: do you see the resurrected Christ? What prevents us from seeing the living, crucified, resurrected Christ? That's the question. This in Luke's gospel is something of a microcosm, I would say. It's like an instance of a larger pattern that we see in the Bible as a whole, and then in the gospel story, the story of Jesus as a whole. Well, what is this pattern that is on display in this reading in Luke, and that we see even more broadly or generally at the Jesus story? It's the pattern of veiling and unveiling. The pattern of hiding and revealing. This is the pattern. Jesus is talking about this all the time in his ministry, right? The mysteries of the kingdom are hidden. They're hidden. Right? The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden. You know, fill in the blank, in a field, in a loaf of bread, in a seed. That this is hidden. And it needs to be found, revealed, seen, illuminated. This is in fact why Jesus speaks in parables. He speaks in parables so that Jesus says, right, so that they hear they don't really hear. So that they see that they don't really see. This mystery that's been hidden, now revealed in Christ. This pattern of veiling and unveiling. And in fact, this is the Jesus story that the power of God is veiled in the Passion in the cross of Christ and unveiled in the resurrection to reveal that it was revealed in the unveiling. It was unveiled in the veiling. Like it's this dialectic, this going back and forth of veiling and unveiling, hiding and revealing. And apparently, the God, the Father of Jesus, is a God that likes to play hide and seek. And I do mean that. This appears to be something that there's a deep spiritual truth in this hiding and seeking God in that which appears to be hidden, veiled. This seeking. We need to ask, well, how do we see the risen Christ? Apparently, it's not enough to have a photograph or video. It's not enough to walk seven hours and talk about Isaiah with them right by us. How do we see the living Christ? We don't see with our visible eyes. And in fact, in many ways, this may even be a hindrance, I would argue. I think the Gospels would argue. We see this in the, you know, the young man, the pool of silom is healed, who is blind. We see it in blind Bartimaeus, right? Blind Bartimaeus can see Jesus, who he is, a mile, miles away, miles before the disciples who are walking with Jesus, see who Jesus is. So we're talking about spiritual perception, right? There's standing with Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and then there's seeing Jesus at table. Spiritual perception. Well, how do we perceive spiritually? What does that mean? We're modern people, right? This sounds like fairy tale stuff. The Bible says, Jesus says, that this perception is the perception of the heart. Jesus teaches, right, in the Beatitudes, blessed are the pure in heart. Why are they blessed? For they will see God. The pure in heart will see God. Paul says that we need to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened. Our vision, our spiritual vision is darkened, and the Lord needs to illuminate and give us sight with respect to our heart. Well, then that elicits the question: well, what in the world is the heart? What is the heart in the Bible? In the history? The heart is the culmination of what we most deeply desire. That is our heart. That is my son. The heart is the culmination of what we most deeply desire. Jesus says, wherever your treasure is, there your heart is. Right? If you treasure wealth, then you will seek ways of building wealth. If you desire fame, you will seek ways to have fame. This heart is a matter of seeking, desiring. And this divine act of hide and seek, it seems to me that the unveiling of the living Christ is recognized in our seeking the person of Christ. And this is a desiring and a seeking that Jesus says, like it's a promise. You know, those promises, I love promises in the Bible. Jesus gives a promise. What does he say? He says, if you seek, you will find. Period. If you knock, it will open. The living Christ, the resurrected Christ, is to be the object of our deepest seeking, our deepest desiring. This is the burning of our hearts that I think the disciples on the road to Emmaus are experiencing in Jesus, almost like Jesus was like priming the pump of like their spiritual capacity to see. Their hearts were burning in them. As he's unveiling, right, the scriptures, unveiling and revealing the hidden truth that's in Moses and in the prophets with regard to him. And then the disciples are sitting at table with Jesus, and this formula, right, you'll have noticed that formula that Luke used to describe Jesus, taking the bread at the table, right? It's the same formula we use in the liturgy. It's the formula of Eucharist. Took it, blessed it, broke it. Right? And they go back to the disciples saying exactly that, right? He was revealed. Where was he revealed? In the breaking of bread. But this is wild. Because Christ is veiled to these two disciples, and then in the breaking of bread, Christ is revealed, unveiled, and then no sooner is Christ unveiled, he's veiled again. Did you catch that? Immediately. Now you see him, now you don't. Immediately hidden again. The church fathers understood this as the Christ is revealed, unveiled in the table, and then becomes revealed in us. Where is Christ? Christ is here. The body of Christ. This veiling, unveiling. That we ourselves become veiled as Christ is revealed in the church. That we, Paul says, right, your life is hidden with Christ in God. See, God loves hide and seek. And this act, this act of communion, this act of the Lord's Supper, breaking bread of the table, it is to say, I really do believe this, what Luke is saying, this is how the church understood, that the Lord Christ is hidden, mysteriously hidden in the bread and the wine, and is to be unveiled at that moment of partaking. That this is the great mystery, right? Paul says, the mystery. What is the mystery that's been hidden for all the ages? Paul says, it's this. This is the mystery. Christ in you. Hope of glory. Christ veiled in you. Christ hidden in you. You hidden in Christ. That this act of veiling and unveiling, hiding and revealing, that this is what the table is meant to transform the eyes of our hearts such that we become capable of seeing in the world, in the church, everywhere, this Christ who is everywhere. We become like Saint Patrick, right? Christ behind me, he's in front of me, Christ to my right, to my left, Christ under me, Christ is in me. Christ becomes ubiquitous everywhere. That this is the veiling that we, through the eyes of our heart, are able to perceive the resurrected Christ. This veiling we see in the Gospels. If you recall the story of the sheep and the goats, right? The great judgment. That Christ is veiled, right, in the poor. At that moment, what is the metric or the criteria of the judgment? People come forward and Jesus looks at them and he says, Um, here you go, you go over here. I was hungry. I, Jesus says this, I was hungry, and you gave me no food. I was thirsty. I was in prison. Never came to visit me. Christ hidden in the poor. Christ hidden in the weak. And this is, I believe, precisely what our hearts, our minds, our imagination, our soul is meant to be transformed to see. Christ in us, the hope of glory, Christ in our sister, Christ in our brother, Christ in the poor. This renewed imagination that is brought about in this incredible act of veiling and unveiling. That we, it seems that what we're meant to do is to engage in this mystery repeatedly, and with that degree of repetition in God's grace and devotion and our desire that it transforms our ability to see. And you say, well, my life is pretty boring, you know. I don't know if it is or not. Work 40 plus hours a week, you know, I got these duties I have to do. My life seems pretty unextraordinary, or maybe it's a life that feels completely void of goodness, of God, of Christ, feels dull, maybe, or maybe feels painful, whatever the case may be. It's not a life that we routinely experience as full of Christ. May even come to church, like, you know, Christ here, right? Really? It's the same people, right? Or kind of our addiction to novelty and news and social media, you know. We don't like seeing the same people over and over. Same prayers, really? And it's, I think, precisely the point. Yeah, Christ is hidden. Christ is hidden here. And the way that we perceive the resurrected Christ, who is right now seated in the heavenly places, is through this deep desiring to encounter him. And let us not be fooled into thinking, you know, well, Christ could be hidden in that person's life, but Christ is definitely not hidden here or in my life, my circumstances. This is the gospel. God loves to show up in precisely the places we think God ought not show up, or God is found precisely in the places where we believe God ought not be. A pregnant, unwed, uh teenage mother, yeah, yeah, Christ is there. Uh with tax collectors, prostitutes. Yeah, yeah, Christ is there. In the poor, the naked, the weak, those in prison on death row, those people. Yeah. Yeah. Christ's hidden there. I invite all of us to pray for the grace to have the eyes of our hearts enlightened. Pray for the help we need by the Spirit to perceive this Christ, who, in the instant that he's unveiled, he's veiled again. And that we would recognize, as St. Augustine says, that as we partake of this great mystery of the table, that we see that that which is placed in your hands, that which goes into your mouth in your body, is your very life, mysteriously, the body of Christ, partaking of the body of Christ. Amen.