This is the continuation of a series that started with “If only I could see Jesus.”

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Jesus starts with their fears, and does everything he can to establish his presence. He says “Peace”. He lets them hear his voice and his words. He shows them his hands. He eats fish.

But then he gets to the work at hand. This meeting isn’t about a friend who came back to life and will eventually have another funeral. These people had already seen that with Lazarus.

Jesus says to the group what he had said to the two on the road. “What was once in the future is now in history. The stories you learned growing up, the hopes that you had, the things I’ve been telling you would happen now have happened.”

And he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

For the rest of that evening and for the next few weeks and for the rest of their lives, these people felt the way they thought shifting. What he’d been telling them for three years finally had meaning.

When you get to the end of the television series and you discover the key that changes the whole series, you think, “Is that what happened in episode three?” And you want to watch it again to see how everything unfolded.

Jesus retells the stories twice on this first day, and then keeps retelling them. The stories that pointed to him and are now fulfilled in him.

He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.

And Peter and John and the rest of the disciples started to tell that story, too.

The theological story, of sin and repentance and forgiveness.

And the story of Jesus, who lived enough that people knew him, who died enough that people grieved him, who rose and ate fish with friends and spoke to their fears and gave them understanding.

For the disciples, the theological story they always looked forward to being true was true in the personal story of Jesus.

And it made sense, after he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures.

May it be so for us.

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Reflecting on Luke 24:36-48.