NOTES for Luk 24:31
Paradoxical things happen to the apostles during their fellowship with the risen Jesus. At first, for quite a long time, they walk along the road beside the Teacher without recognizing Him. Then, at the moment of the breaking of bread, they recognize Him and immediately lose sight of Him. What is happening? Did Jesus really change so much after the resurrection that He could not be recognized at all? Hardly, since at other times the apostles recognized Him.
Perhaps His nature after the resurrection ceased to be visible to the eyes of an ordinary person. Clearly not, because both before and after the events described, His disciples saw Him, and more than once. So what is the matter? Apparently, it is a question of who sees what is happening in the Kingdom, and to what extent. In truth, the Kingdom "has drawn near," as the Savior Himself says. It is now close. And the Risen One abides in it fully, to the end; He no longer belongs to the former, untransfigured world.
And He can be seen only to the extent that one can penetrate the Kingdom with one's gaze. But from our world, not yet transfigured, the Kingdom can be seen only a very little. One can see, so to speak, only its outer edge. On the other hand, it is now everywhere, it is 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 very well turn out to be an inhabitant of the Kingdom, whom one can dimly see, without recognizing his face, even from outside, through that boundary that separates the Kingdom from this world. That is how the apostles saw the risen Jesus walking beside them on the road to Emmaus.
They were on one side of the boundary, and He was on the other; but as long as He was near the boundary, His disciples noticed nothing, thinking that He belonged to the same world as they did. But then came the moment of the breaking of bread, when in order for that breaking of bread to be accomplished in fullness, He needed to move away from the boundary into the depth of the Kingdom, toward the Throne that is its center.
And it is there that the disciples recognize Him, because the breaking of bread brings them into participation in 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, since the apostles, despite their constant fellowship with the Teacher both before and after His resurrection, still lived wholly in this world. The Kingdom remained something external for 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 find themselves. But that still lay ahead; for now, the Teacher appeared to them and disappeared. As did His Kingdom.