While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."  They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. (Luke 24:36-37)   We quickly forget that worshiping a risen Lord is actually a very odd thing to do. Jesus has just appeared to the disciples on the Emmaus road.  In fact, he's appeared to Peter and likely to others at this point as well.  The Upper Room is all abuzz with Jesus sightings and the news that he's alive and on the move!  "It is true!" they had just been saying: "The Lord has risen and has appeared…"  And yet: when Jesus appears among them: they're startled and scared of what they see.  They think it's a ghost.  Which, to be fair, is what any sane person would've thought.  Regardless of whatever news that happened to be circulating at the time: the only picture or sound of Jesus that most of them had was the memory, accessed only through their own minds now, of the Jesus they had known before he had, well… died.  And, a mere rumor of this good news was not immediately enough to overpower the empirical truths that their own senses had perceived.  A mere rumor could not bring the voice and image of Jesus that lived only now in their memories back to embodiment before them. So, for Jesus to appear, embodied and speaking before them: what a shock to the system!  It's one thing to hear some good news, it is an entirely different thing to witness something for yourself.  For their own eyes to see and recognize a familiar face that they'd last seen dead, for their own ears to hear a familiar voice that they'd last heard on the cross—what a strange experience.  Almost like that sensation your body gets when you're sitting in your parked car and a large truck that fills your entire scope of vision begins moving next to you.  You feel like you're moving, but you know it can't be true.  So it must have been for the disciples.  To hear that Jesus was alive was not the same as the visceral, sensual experience of seeing and hearing the Jesus who was alive.  To perceive him for themselves was disorienting.  And yet, without that experience of disorientation, the reality of Jesus' life would never have had the power or force to re-orient them to a radically different understand of the world, of Jesus alive, and of the Kingdom of God he would send them to proclaim.  I think in some ways the same is still true for us.  We can sit in church, engage in Bible studies, and join in ministry ventures all our lives and never face that radical disorientation and reorientation that Gospel transformation—an encounter with the risen Christ—entails.  The Bible everywhere promises that we cannot meet Jesus and remain the same.  Encountering Jesus means a transformation of our hearts and lives: a repentance, a turning around, a dying to ourselves so that the new life of Christ might take hold of us and in us.  So: an invitation to pay attention.  With your eyes.  With your ears.  Watch for Jesus.  Listen for him.  Seek him out in prayer.  Attend to the ups and downs in your day today that might betray his movement in your life, inviting you to repent, to turn, to trust, to remember, to believe.  Jesus appears to the disciples who had gathered in his name and were eagerly seeking him.  It is to they that were paying attention that he appears, and to them that he speaks his word of "peace."  

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