Third Sunday of Easter Reflection
READING: Luke 24:13–35
“Their eyes were kept from recognising him.”
I wonder if you’ve ever had that moment when you didn’t recognise someone you actually knew.
Perhaps you passed them in the street and walked straight by. Or you saw them in an unexpected place and it just didn’t register. And then later—sometimes embarrassingly later—it suddenly clicks: that was them. The face was familiar, the voice perhaps even more so, but something in your expectation meant you simply didn’t see them for who they were.
It wasn’t that they had changed. It was that your way of seeing needed to more open.
And perhaps something similar is happening on a much larger scale in our world.
We hear a lot at the moment about negotiations—between nations, between leaders, between communities. Attempts to bring peace where there has been conflict. All coming with their proposals – of what they expect to bring about peace. But at the heart of any real negotiation is not simply argument or strategy or proposals , but the much harder work of learning to see from another person’s or county’s point of view. To recognise the humanity of the other. To see beyond fear, beyond assumption, beyond the story we have already decided is true.
And that is not easy.
Because we tend to see what we expect to see. Will our preconceived beliefs.
And that is where this Gospel story that we have heard to meets us. Let’s recall the story.
Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem. Away from the place where everything has fallen apart. They are trying to make sense of it all. “We had hoped…” they say. Hope that has been shattered. A future that has collapsed.
And as they walk, Jesus comes near.
He walks beside them. He listens. He asks questions.
And they do not recognise him.
“Their eyes were kept from recognising him.”
They know the facts. They can tell the story. They have even heard the reports of the empty tomb.
But they cannot see.
And perhaps the question for us is not why they couldn’t see—but why we so often can’t see.
Because we too are shaped by expectation.
We expect God to appear in certain ways—clear, powerful, unmistakable. We expect resolution, clarity, certainty. And when life doesn’t fit those expectations, we assume God is absent.
But here, God is present in a different way.
Quietly.
Alongside.
Unrecognised.
The religious writer, Richard Rohr says the disciples are seeing with what he calls the “first gaze”—a way of seeing shaped by opposites: success or failure, hope or despair, life or death. In that framework, the cross can only mean one thing—defeat.
And so they cannot see what is right in front of them.
But the resurrection invites a different way of seeing—a “second gaze.” A way of seeing that can hold together what seems impossible: loss and presence, suffering and transformation, death and life….side by side.
“Their eyes were opened.”
Not because the facts changed. But because their perception did.
And notice when that happens.
Not while they are debating.
Not while they are analysing.
Not even while Jesus is explaining the scriptures.
It happens at the table.
“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”
And then—only then—“their eyes were opened.”
Recognition comes not through argument, but through relationship.
God’s deepest work is not controlling or fixing, but being with…..being with us.
And that is exactly what Jesus does.
He walks with them in their confusion.
He listens to their disappointment.
He stays with them as evening falls.
“Stay with us,” they say.
And he does.
And it is in that staying, that being with them, that recognition becomes possible.
Perhaps this event has something to say to us today —not only in our personal lives, but in the wider world…in our communities, in our families, in our fractured world
Because real peace—whether between individuals or nations—does not begin with winning an argument. It begins with learning to see.
To see the other not as an enemy, but as human.
To listen before judging.
To stay in relationship long enough for something deeper to emerge.
That is the hard work of negotiation.
And perhaps it is also the work of resurrection.
Because resurrection is not just about life after death. It is about the transformation of how we see—God, one another, and the world.
“Their eyes were opened.”
And suddenly they realise what had been true all along.
“He – the Christ- was with us on the road.”
And that raises a quiet but profound question for us.
Where might Christ already be walking alongside us, unrecognised?
In our conversations.
In our moments of uncertainty.
In the people we find difficult to understand.
Where might our eyes be closed—not through ignorance, but through assumption?
Perhaps we are looking for certainty, when God is offering companionship.
Perhaps we are looking for answers, when God is offering presence.
Perhaps we are looking for resolution, when God is inviting us into relationship.
And then there is that final detail.
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?”
Only afterwards do they realise that something had already been happening.
Their hearts had begun to awaken before their eyes were opened.
And that is deeply hopeful.
Because it means that God is often at work in us before we recognise it. Before we understand it. Before we can name it.
The opening of the eyes comes later.
And so perhaps the invitation of this Gospel is simple.
To slow down.
To listen more deeply.
To stay in relationship.
To allow our way of seeing to be changed.
Because resurrection is not only something that happened. It is something that continues—in the quiet opening of our eyes, in the softening of our vision, in the recognition that we are not alone.
“Their eyes were opened, and they recognised him.”
May it be so for us.
That in the breaking of bread,
in the walking of uncertain roads,
and even in the difficult work of seeing one another more truthfully—
we too may come to recognise
that Christ has been with us all along.
Image: Onur Burak Akin (Unsplash.com)
