Emmaus
Emmaus
Luke 24:13-35
So, a couple of weeks ago, on Palm Sunday, I offered a historical perspective on Luke’s gospel. After a Jewish uprising in 66 AD which temporarily cast the Romans out of Israel, Rome, eventually, took action. They allowed the population to swell at Passover and then refused to let anyone leave. They walled off the city. They cut off food and water supplies. After four months of starvation, the Romans killed almost everyone and destroyed almost everything in Jerusalem. Ten years later, when Luke’s gospel was written, that destruction was the defining event for the nation.
Beyond the sheer trauma, Rome’s invasion would have accelerated one particular growing issue for Christianity. For a brief period of time in the earliest days of Christianity, most people would have either seen Jesus of Nazareth, themselves, or would have known someone who did. Jesus made the rounds in this relatively small nation, preaching and teaching and healing. Not everyone would have been in Jerusalem for Passover to witness what we call Holy Week but a lot of people would have been in the city. Regardless of how one felt about Jesus, at Passover, Jerusalem was the place to be. The group of witnesses was much smaller when it came to the folks who stood by Jesus when he was crucified. Ultimately, only a handful of people experienced the presence of the risen Christ.
So, right away, the number of direct witnesses of the most critical moments in Jesus’ life is pretty small. Every one of those witnesses is mortal. Some would have died of natural causes pretty quickly. The authorities continued to persecute and arrest and execute followers of Christ. No one really wanted to write much down, even if they knew how to write and had access to paper, because no one wanted to leave evidence for the authorities to gather. So, the stories of Jesus and his teachings were passed orally from person to person with a powerful authority granted to those who could speak from first-hand experience.
Over time, as more and more of those witnesses died, people began to write down the stories, initially as individual fragments, then as a plot driven collection, and ultimately as gospels. Still, though, even as this happened, the witnesses kept dying. Over time, Christianity, itself, was saved from the dustbin of history because it spread beyond Jerusalem into the countryside and into other nations. However, by 80 AD, 47 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, nearly all of those eye witnesses would have either already died years earlier or would have died more recently at the hands of the dreaded Romans.
Christianity needed to evolve from a faith grounded in eye witness experiences of the presence of Jesus, the Christ, into a faith in which believers could have their own experience of that presence, here and now, even though they never met the man. If you’re with me, then you may see Luke’s project in a different light. Why would he tell us the story of an Easter morning when the women do not meet the risen Christ but truly feel his presence? He does this because this is what believers were now required to do—to remember what Jesus taught and to feel his presence come to life through those teachings. Stand in the present. Dare to open your heart and remember. Then, feel the presence of the living Christ, just like the women felt that presence in the empty tomb.
Or…perhaps for most of us, the experience is more like the two travelers who are heading home to Emmaus. Let’s start with a wrinkle as we listen to this story. We usually talk about the two men on the road to Emmaus. One of these people turns out to have a man’s name—Cleopas. It is fair to assume that this was a man. It’s also entirely possible to argue that the other person was a woman. Why? The other is not named, which happens a lot to the women. It might even be possible that this person was Cleopas’s wife. Why should this matter? We should be challenged to test what we think we know and listen to scripture carefully. We should also feel free to make a connection to our own experience. So, if we have ever, possibly, theoretically traveled with our spouse and had a heated conversation at the end of the day about what in the world just happened that might just connect us to this text…
To bring the story to life, we have to create a picture in our mind’s eye of what’s going on. At the same time, we should come to grips with the fact that nothing is ever heard again about this guy named Cleopas or this other person. At the outset of the story, the two people are referred to as “Two of them.” This seems to count them as followers of Jesus, though they certainly were not part of the eleven disciples or the inner circle. Rather, all indications are that they were part of the “curious” who came to Jerusalem to see for themselves. They acknowledged that they hoped that Jesus was the “One who would redeem Israel,” in other words, the Messiah. However, there seems to be quite a distance between hoping that would be true and declaring that Jesus is the Christ. Basically, this makes these two people a lot like us, curious but, not yet necessarily or not always 100 percent, all in. Presumably, if things had gone the way that they expected them to go, then their hopes would have been confirmed and they would been all in at that point. However, that’s not what happened.
Therefore, these two people are having quite an argument. One commentator that I read suggested that these two people are “beside themselves” over everything that they’ve seen and heard in Jerusalem. Another person suggested that they were “exchanging words,” which sounds exactly like what a husband and wife might do after a rough day—theoretically, hypothetically, I hear. Another suggestion was that what was taking place was theological combat, which anyone who ever went to seminary has experienced. Of course, in any of these cases, the goal in an argument is victory—right? We’re in it to win it and I win it when I prove you wrong.
All of this is taking place—two unknown people who are kind of “believers,” who are walking along in grief and confusion—as they head home to…Emmaus. Get this…no one really has a clue about Emmaus. It apparently was so small and so unremarkable that no one really thought to put a dot on the map and label the dot, “Emmaus.” The consensus seems to be that it was about 7 miles outside of Jerusalem but I suspect this understanding rests mostly in figuring out how far these two people could have walked. Perhaps the only thing that might be worse than being from Emmaus was being on the way to Emmaus but not yet there.
So, two unknown, unremarkable people are walking from Jerusalem, the center of the universe for the nation, to a town so “podunk” that no one had ever heard of it. These are the people whom the risen Christ chooses to meet, not the disciples, not the faithful women, not the authorities, no “In your face, Herod!” moment. Nope, the risen Jesus chooses to show up and take a walk with two nobodies on the way to nowhere. Two people who are beside themselves with grief are about to take a walk beside Jesus.
There appears to be only one thing that Jesus enjoyed more than a good road trip. We’ll get to that later. However, there is no question that Jesus loved his time on the road. Before he’s ever born, Jospeh and Mary travel to Bethlehem. When Jesus spun tales, he told us about what happened on the road to the Good Samaritan or told us about the moment when the father spotted his prodigal son coming down the road. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem from the 9th chapter all the way to Palm Sunday. So, it should not surprise us that the risen Jesus would be discovered not in an empty tomb but on the road.
It also shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus would lead with a question. These two people, we are told, are kept from recognizing Jesus, but we are not. Jesus asks the two people, “What are you discussing?” I imagine, at the least, given the heated nature of their little chat, Jesus might have been having some fun with them by calling it a “discussion.” (Kind of in the, “Your mother and I aren’t arguing. We are having a discussion.” sort of way…) This is when Cleopas gets the honor of being referred to by name so that all of history will know that he was the one who accused God-incarnate of being clueless: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things which took place there these days?” (Imagine how Cleopas would cringe one day over that one!) Then, Jesus asks a second question, “What things?”
Jesus wants to hear what these people think and feel. He wants to know what their experience has been: “Just tell me…be honest here. What things?” This is why, under non-pandemic conditions, it comforts me when I hear the buzz of people chatting in the sanctuary, “How was your week? What’s been happening?” Then, we turn and do the same thing in prayer, “Tell me about your joys and concerns…” The two people detail out everything they’ve seen and heard: what happened to Jesus, who they hoped he would be; everything the women said they had seen.
Once these two people have named their experience, Jesus puts that experience in context. In fact, Jesus says that they are “foolish and slow of heart to believe,” which is disturbing until we realize that what he is doing is making the “reversal” that he so often made in teaching moments. “You have heard it said…but I say…” “Everyone was sure the priest would help the man in the ditch but…surprise!…it was the Good Samaritan who helped the man instead.” There is what we expect to be true and there is what we believe to be true and then there is what is true, regardless of our expectations. Jesus offers a quick study session on the prophets and all the predictions about the Messiah and says, basically, “Now do you see?” The irony here is that Luke tells us almost nothing of the details of Jesus’ argument. He just shows us that these folks still don’t really get the lesson, even with Jesus teaching them!
Though they did not understand everything, they did know that as the darkness grew, the stranger had nowhere to go and nothing to eat. They “strongly urge” him to come stay and eat with them. (Of course, eating with others was, in fact, Jesus’ favorite activity. Remember?). Jesus enters their home and sits at their table. (See why I think they might have been a married couple?) Then, he takes the bread, blesses it and breaks it and offers it to them (almost the same words used at the last supper). Immediately, they recognize Jesus. In an instant, Jesus disappears. They say, “Did not our hearts burn within us?”
Luke tells us this story to assure us that we don’t have to have met Jesus of Nazareth to meet the risen Christ. If you want to meet the risen Christ, be honest about your life, your confusion, your broken heart. If you want to meet the risen Christ, open your heart to be God’s word, to the larger story of God’s relationship with human beings. If you want to meet the risen Christ, act with compassion toward the stranger in need. If you want to meet the risen Christ, break bread and share a cup and bless those things in Jesus’ name. Do these things in remembrance of him! Sooner or later, you, too, will feel your heart burn in his presence.