'He showed Himself alive after His passion by ... proofs.'
By sight, repeated, to individuals, to companies, to Mary in her
solitary sadness, to Peter the penitent, to the two on the road to
Emmaus. At all hours: in the evening when the doors were shut; in the
morning; in grey twilight; in daytime on the road. At many places--in
houses, out of doors.
The signs of true corporeity--the sight, the eating.
The signs of bodily identity,--'Reach hither thy hand.' 'He showed them
His hands and His side.'
Was this the glorified body?
The affirmative answer is usually rested on the facts that He was not
known by Mary or the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and that He came
into the upper room when the doors were shut. But the force of these
facts is broken by remembering that Mary saw nothing about Him unlike
other men, but supposed Him to be the gardener--which puts the idea of
a glorified body out of the question, and leaves us to suppose that she
was full of weeping indifference to any one.
Then as to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke carefully tells us
that the reason why they did not know Him was _in them_ and not in
Him--that it was 'because their eyes were holden,' not because His body
was changed.
And as to His coming when the doors were shut, why should not that be
like the other miracles, when 'He conveyed Himself away, a multitude
being in the place,' and when He walked on the waters?
There cannot then be anything decidedly built on these facts, and the
considerations on the other side are very strong. Surely the whole
drift of the narrative goes in the direction of representing Christ's
'glory' as beginning with His Ascension, and consequently the 'body of
His glory' as being then assumed. Further, the argument of 1 Cor. xv.
goes on the assumption that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God,' that is, that the material corporeity is incongruous with, and
incapable of entrance into, the conditions of that future life, and, by
parity of reasoning, that the spiritual body, which is to be conformed
to the body of Christ's glory, is incongruous with, and incapable of
entrance into, the conditions of this earthly life. As is the
environment, so must be the 'body' that is at home in it.
Further, the facts of our Lord's eating and drinking after His
Resurrection are not easily reconcilable with the contention that He
was then invested with the glorified body.
We must, then, think of transfiguration, rather than of resurrection
only, as the way by which He passed into the heavens. He 'slept' but
woke, and, as He ascended, was 'changed.'
II. The renewal of the old bond by the tokens of His unchanged
disposition.
Recall the many beautiful links with the past: the message to Peter;
that to Mary; 'Tell My brethren,' 'He was known in breaking of bread,'
'Peace be with you!' (repetition from John xvii.), the miraculous
draught of fishes, and the meal and conversation afterwards, recalling
the miracle at the beginning of the closer association of the four
Apostles of the first rank with their Lord. The forty days revealed the
old heart, the old tenderness. He remembers all the past. He sends a
message to the penitent; He renews to the faithful the former gift of
'peace.'
How precious all this is as a revelation of the impotence of death in
regard to Him and us! It assures us of the perpetuity of His love. He
showed Himself after His passion as the same old Self, the same old
tender Lover. His appearances then prepare us for the last vision of
Him in the Apocalypse, in which we see His perpetual humanity, His
perpetual tenderness, and hear Him saying: 'I am ... the Living One,
and I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.'
These forty days assure us of the narrow limits of the power of death.
Love lives through death, memory lives through it. Christ has lived
through it and comes up from the grave, serene and tender, with
unruffled peace, with all the old tones of tenderness in the voice that
said 'Mary!' So may we be sure that through death and after it we shall
live and be ourselves. We, too, shall show ourselves alive after we
have experienced the superficial change of death.
III. The change in Christ's relations to the disciples and to the
world. 'Appearing unto them by the space of forty days.'
The words mark a contrast to Christ's former constant intercourse with
the disciples. This is occasional; He appears at intervals during the
forty days. He comes amongst them and disappears. He is seen again in
the morning light by the lake-side and goes away. He tells them to come
and meet Him in Galilee. That intermittent presence prepared the
disciples for His departure. It was painful and educative. It carried
out His own word, 'And now I am no more in the world.'
We observe in the disciples traces of a deeper awe. They say little.
'Master!' 'My Lord and my God!' 'None durst ask Him, Who art Thou?'
Even Peter ventures only on 'Lord, Thou knowest all things,' and on one
flash of the old familiarity: 'What shall this man do?' John, who
recalls very touchingly, in that appendix to his Gospel, the blessed
time when he leaned on Jesus' breast at supper, now only humbly
follows, while the others sit still and awed, by that strange fire on
the banks of the lonely lake.
A clearer vision of the Lord on their parts, a deeper sense of who He
is, make them assume more of the attitude of worshippers, though not
less that of friends. And He can no more dwell with them, and go in and
out among them.
As for the world--'It seeth Me no more, but ye see Me.' He was 'seen of
_them_,' not of others. There is no more appeal to the people, no more
teaching, no more standing in the Temple. Why is this? Is it not the
commentary on His own word on the Cross, 'It is finished!' marking most
distinctly that His work on earth was ended when He died, and so
confirming that conception of His earthly mission which sees its
culmination and centre of power in the Cross?