NOTES for Luk 24:31
Paradoxical things happen to the apostles during their communion with the risen Jesus. First, for quite a long time they walk along the road beside the Teacher without recognizing Him. Then, at the breaking of the bread, they recognize Him and immediately lose sight of Him. What is happening? Did Jesus change so much after the resurrection that He could not be recognized at all? Hardly, since at other times the apostles did recognize Him.
Perhaps His nature after the resurrection ceased to be visible to the eyes of an ordinary person? Clearly not: both before and after the events described, the disciples saw Him, and more than once. What then is the matter? It is apparently a matter of who sees what is happening in the Kingdom, and to what degree. Indeed, the Kingdom has "drawn near," as the Savior Himself says. It is now near. And the Risen One dwells in it fully, to the end; He no longer belongs to the former, untransformed world.
One can see Him only insofar as one can look into the Kingdom. But from our world, still untransformed, the Kingdom can be seen only a little. One can see only its very edge, so to speak. On the other hand, it is now everywhere, always near, and if someone is walking beside you on the road, you can never be sure that this someone is in the same world as you. He may well turn out to be an inhabitant of the Kingdom, one who can be vaguely seen, without recognizing his face, even from outside, through the boundary that separates the Kingdom from this world. So the apostles saw the risen Jesus walking beside them on the road to Emmaus.
They were on one side of the boundary, He on the other, but while He was near the boundary His disciples noticed nothing, thinking He belonged to the same world as they did. But then came the moment of the breaking of the bread, when, in order for this breaking of bread to be accomplished in fullness, He needed to move away from the boundary into the depth of the Kingdom, to the Throne that is its center.
At that point the disciples recognize Him, for the breaking of bread makes them partakers of His life, and immediately they lose sight of Him: they cannot look into the depth of the Kingdom, into its center, where their Teacher has gone. This is not surprising: despite constant communion with the Teacher both before and after His resurrection, the apostles still lived wholly in this world. The Kingdom remained something external to them. After Pentecost, when they themselves become its inhabitants, they will learn to see the Teacher everywhere, wherever He may be and wherever they may be. But that still lay ahead, and for now the Teacher appeared and disappeared for them. Like His Kingdom.