Everyone has gestures special to them. Distinctive little things that they alone do: the raising of an eyebrow when sceptical; holding a coffee cup in a particular way; beginning a question with a certain tilt of the head.
These things can be the stuff of love or of irritation. But actually most of them are the kinds of things that you don’t really notice on a day-to-day basis. It’s often only when we haven’t seen a person for some time that we suddenly become aware of the little things that they do.
Or they catch you by stealth when you’re thinking about something else; maybe you are sitting quietly somewhere and you can hear someone approach; they suddenly cough in a certain way, and you know instantly who it is.
Everyone has these gestures: they are the seasoning – the salt and pepper – of the way we express ourselves in the world. And we’re not always aware of them. It can take someone really close to us to know and see them.
Perhaps, with their senses overworked after their post-crucifixion trauma, it was just such a gesture that woke the disciples up finally to the presence of Jesus in their midst.
These bedraggled and devastated disciples had been through an emotional hell, after all. Their friend, the one who had filled their heads and hearts with such love, such hope of a new world and a new way of life, had been tortured and killed. And they had abandoned him. We can only imagine their feelings – of helplessness and grief, of guilt and regret, of failure and fear.
Then, there had been some strange incidents. In the verses just before the ones we heard today, people had reported finding an angel in the empty tomb. This angel had announced that Jesus was alive and, more than that, had told them this was entirely what they should have expected all along. Peter had been to see for himself, but couldn’t understand what had happened.
Then there was the appearance of a stranger to Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. They too had received a lecture setting out their failure to understand that the events of Holy Week had to happen.
And yet none of these things seemed to really convince them. In the end it was not the appearances of strangers, angels or otherwise, that brought it home; it wasn’t the lectures, nor even the presence of Jesus himself. This all seemed to terrify and confuse them.
Instead it was very simple gestures that really identified Jesus for them, that made the Messiah real. In our reading today, it was when he asked for and ate a bit of fish. On the road to Emmaus it was the breaking of bread. Perhaps, because they had been so close to Jesus over those last years, they saw that the way this person took food was quintessentially Jesus.
Suddenly, after all the drama, a simple gesture seems to open the disciples’ understanding, and the mission of the Church can begin.
That mission, of course, is one that we continue. It’s a huge task, a daunting task, and – it seems to me – we spend a lot of time and energy talking ourselves into it, girding our loins for what many of us see as an undertaking for which we are unsuited and unprepared.
But perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree. The disciples were motivated to carry on their task not by lectures and angelic appearances but by a moment of true recognition brought about by the simplest of gestures.
Perhaps we too should be looking for the simplest, most commonplace things that will identify God to us.
What those things will be we don’t know, but it’s a good reason be attentive to the world, to the people around us.
One of the messages of Easter is the opening of the eyes: the moment of true recognition that enables the beginning of the rest of the story.
That’s what people are looking for: a gesture that opens our eyes and allows us to claim Christ for their own. That makes them say, “This is the one!” “This is Christ to me!”
Whatever it is that brings that moment, it will pave the way forward to a new life and the beginning of the rest of our own story. It’s a message of good news, and it sure beats the abundance of egg-shaped chocolate – at Easter, or on any day.
J Routh, adapted from …
‘Common Worship Living Word, Year B 2001-2012’,
edited by J Williams, published by Redemptorist Publications.