The gospel narratives which cover the events of Easter Sunday tell us that there was a considerable amount of movement on that day and on the days that followed. On the morning of the Resurrection itself, the women were up early, with the intention of reaching the tomb as quickly as they could. When they found that the tomb was empty, there was an immediate change of plans. After Peter and John became aware of the startling news, they too headed for the burial site, and they too came to terms with the unexpected turn of events.

When Jesus made contact with the disciples, his instruction was that they should return to Galilee and that he would meet them there. Galilee was not just a convenient meeting place. It was the place where so much of their earlier experiences in the company of Jesus had taken place.

Above all, Galilee was a place in the heart of the disciples. It was there that the dream had began, the place where they first set out on the road of discipleship, and it was the place where their hearts were fired up with hope and enthusiasm by this wonderful person they had recently met, and who had invited them to be his followers.

But the dream had dissipated completely with the arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus. The disciples may well have felt that everything was dead, and the faith they had in Jesus was only a fantasy. Yet they were told to go back to the place where it all began: “Go back to Galilee. He will meet you there.”

Fortunately, they followed the instructions, and went back to Galilee.  Better still, Jesus was true to his word. He was there to meet them. His physical appearance was not exactly as they had remembered him, but he was not a ghost either or merely an idea. The differences were there but Jesus was still ready to eat the fish that had been caught, to be touched again like any other human being, and still able to exercise the kind of power that would ensure that the lives of the disciples were changed forever.

That is ultimately what the Resurrection does for all of us. It challenges us to go back to Galilee, to rediscover our dreams, to rekindle our hopes and to spark up again our desire to follow Jesus. Those hopes and desires may have been crucified in the past, but they can be resurrected.
 
Two of the disciples decided to go down a different route and to head off on their own to the town of Emmaus. We are told that their faces were downcast. In a sense they were walking away from their dreams. Emmaus in those days had a reputation. It was a place with a roman spa, a place for entertainment and diversion. The disciples were muttering to themselves: “We had hoped.”  Luckily for them, they were not able to reach their destination. Jesus appeared to them on the road, and he was able to redirect them in their thinking, rebuilding their hope in the light of the crucifixion, and so they returned to Jerusalem, to rejoin the community.

The lesson for us out of the experiences of the first disciples is that in our moments of discouragement, when our hopes seem to have been crucified, we need to go back to Galilee and to Jerusalem, back to the dream, back to the beginning of the road of discipleship which we had taken up before everything went wrong.

We will never quite get to Emmaus before Christ meets us on the road, burns some holes in our hearts, explains the latest crucifixion to us, and sends us back to Galilee where it all makes sense again.

I pray that it will be the experience of all of us that we may be able to return to Galilee, to re-discover our faith in Jesus, and to start out again with a new heart and new confidence again this Easter.

May the peace of the Risen Lord be with each of you and those you love.

ADRIAN L DOYLE  AM
Archbishop of Hobart