Day 49 - Tuesday, April 18
Jesus on the Road to Emmaus
Scripture: Luke 24:13-35
That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad.Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”  And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Poetry:
"Supper with Jesus Christ"
by Thomas Carlisle
At first they didn’t know him
didn’t even see him
till he said
something
something which said
something to them
as always.

Always to them he spoke
always to him
or her
whoever
looked to his lips
fastened upon
his face
he spoke directly
and in person
person-to-person
until distance shattered
and vanished altogether.

Immersed in all that ailed
them and the world
they thought no hope
could interrupt
their dialogue
with doom and death.
But he was Life.

They let him slip
into that conversation
and insert a new
prevenient dimension.
They began
again with him
and saw all time
spread out before them
until it all
led to the hill
that crucified their dreams.

Him whom they had not welcomed
at first at last they could not
let go. They hailed him into
their home for bread
he held within his hands
until the breaking
burst their blindfold.

WILL WE SEE JESUS?

On the road to Emmaus we see resurrection church: on the first day of the week the Scriptures of God expounded in the promised presence of the risen Lord and participation in the meal of the body, where stomachs and hearts, body and soul, are warmed companionably.

That Sunday meeting, like many a Sunday meeting is participated in with reluctant, downcast postures. Hopes crushed and nerves frayed. How many of us have not sat or stood in worship preoccupied with our own burdens? Taken up in pondering our unwinding futures? We may even have nodded through a sermon, or paid lip service with our singing, yet our hearts have remained cold.  “O foolish ones, and slow of heart,” indeed!

As Thomas Carlisle suggests in his poem, the two disciples’ dreams had been crucified with their master, whom they had hoped would be the redeemer of Israel. He had been a prophet but now had gone the way of prophets to his death in Jerusalem. And now, they report, (in a cheerful note of narrative delight - to the risen Lord himself), their hopes are mocked with the disappearance of his body from the tomb. The women from their company are known to them and normally to be trusted; and their amazing testimony about the empty tomb is confirmed by disciples even closer to these two travelers. But where is Jesus?

“Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.” They knew the third day predictions that Jesus had spoken, but in their sadness cannot hope in their meaning. They use this third day code to allude to what they both share, in common shattered hope, without explicitly naming that outlandish dream to the stranger on the way.

Both artists, Brooks and Zaborsky, in their own ways, make Jesus an ethereal figure in their Emmaus paintings. Is he fading in along the way and then fading out from the table? And what can that mean for one who is physically resurrected, and for experience of him by disciples? Or is it rather that the superabundance of his more than mortal frame breaks the bounds of mortal vision – “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” As Jesus, the stranger expounded, did not he need to “suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

If we cannot hope to grasp or capture “glory,” can we still be attracted to it, glimpse it?

Cleopas and his companion are in flight, but even so, they have been shaped by their culture and discipleship to generous hospitality. Good habits die hard. They invite, they strongly urge, the stranger to eat with them. And in his gesture of blessing and breaking bread they recognize Jesus, the one who days earlier had done this exact same thing in new covenant anticipation of his death. This death - that had left them scattered, afraid, and fleeing – now remembered, re-members them: these two are unmasked to each other, opened toward each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

And so they rush back to the community that they were just earlier leaving – to speak of fulfillment, and receive news of that fulfillment: “The Lord has risen indeed.”

Our temporal hopes are indeed shattered along the way, and when we look to each other as sustainers of our hopes we fail one another, no church fellowship is perfect. Yet, having our eyes and hearts turned toward Jesus is how we will bear with and encourage one another. That sacrifice of worship of the risen Lord, for which we will often feel ill disposed or ill equipped, from which we would just as soon flee as enter in, is how the Lord will be present to us, until we share his glorified life in the banquet to come.

Will we generously host when our hearts are sad? Will we see Jesus in the face of each other in fellowship? Will we journey with another in doubt and hear the word of the Lord? In Jesus’ present ascension rule do we trust and look for the Holy Spirit’s presence in Word and Sacrament? Will we admit to the simple joy of the good news of our salvation in vulnerable brokenness, without reserve or sophistication? Will we see Jesus?

PRAYER
Lord, open our eyes and warm our hearts by your word of truth. Revive us by your presence and accompaniment along the way. May we enjoy telling of your resurrection as the hope that secures our future. Meet us, we pray, in our fears of today, and be to us nourishment for our souls.
Amen.

Andy Draycott
Associate Professor of Theology and Christian Ethics
Talbot School of Theology, Biola University.