From Gerhard Lohfink in Does God Need the Church?: Toward a Theology of the People of God

The resurrection of Jesus is intimately bound up with the resurrection of the people of God, that is, its eschatological gathering. The Emmaus story in particular shows this with special clarity. The knowledge that Jesus is alive by no means leads the two disciples who had been departing in resignation from Jerusalem to the climactic statement of countless Easter sermons, “life has meaning,’ or “there is life after death for us as well’ . Instead it takes them back to Jerusalem, where the rest of the disciples are: “That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together” (Luke 24:33).

p. 206 (emphasis mine)

So proclamation is bound up with incarnation, and from the inside, with sacrament. This “life of the body” is pointing to a people redeemed, and who are a sign of the Kingdom at work. The quality of their relationships should be astonishing to the world (ie “see how they love one another”). The result of such transformed relationships is a sharp contrast to the individualism and isolation of society, and a story of contagious freedom from the world’s powers.