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that is the only way to be resurrected."
The real miracle is resurrection -- not saving you but helping you to die as you are so that you can be as you should be. God allowed Jesus to die on the cross. And the story is beautiful: on the third day Jesus is back, resurrected, new, young, no more son of man but only son of God. He is so new, so fresh, that even his own disciples fail to recognize him.
He meets two of his disciples who are going towards a village, escaping from Jerusalem, because now they are afraid that the next thing is going to be that the disciples will be caught and they will be killed. The rumor is hot: the master has been killed, now the disciples will be killed. Everything is destroyed and not even a trace is left behind of this man and his work. So they were escaping.
Jesus meets them on the way, believing that at least his own disciples will recognize him. But they don't recognize him -- they talk with him as if he were a stranger. Jesus is very much puzzled.
Then they enter a small restaurant to eat something -- they are tired -- and Jesus breaks bread. Then they suddenly recognize him, because that is the way Jesus used to break bread; something of the old, then recognition happens. Then they suddenly come awake, as if they have come out of sleep or out of a dream, and they say, "Is it you? We could not recognize you on the way." And they had been walking for at least three hours, talking -- and they had been talking about their master being crucified to the master himself! Jesus must have been laughing inside himself, that they were talking about the master but they couldn't recognize him.
People are recognized only by their old habits. When Jesus breaks bread, immediately the disciples recognize him, because "That is the way of Jesus! Only he used to break bread that way!"' As if suddenly the clouds disperse, the darkness is gone, and they see that Jesus has come back. The form is so new... no trace of the old.
My own feeling is that Jesus must have deliberately broken bread in the old way just to give them a clue.
God allowed Jesus to die so that a resurrection became possible.
Amitabh,
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