Emmaus

Today's Gospel recounts that strange but beautifully crafted story by Luke – the journey to Emmaus. From one perspective, it is a story about a stranger. And a stranger is one who is sometimes given to acting strangely. The story begins in a very ordinary way. Two people, Cleopas and his unnamed friend (or it might even be his wife – who knows?), were walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus. Possibly they were not impressed by the news of the empty tomb, for surely they would have remained in Jerusalem with the other disciples. The shattering events and disappointments of the last few days left them feeling downcast and without hope.

As they walked despondently, discussing what had happened and what effect it had on them, a stranger joined them, and they did not recognise him. When he asked them the cause of their despondency they were taken aback. “You must be the only person in Jerusalem who doesn't know about the terrible things that have just happened there.” “What things?” asked the stranger. And it all came pouring out. They spoke of Jesus of Nazareth whom they had all accepted as the one God had chosen to redeem Israel from slavery and death, but who had been put to death by the religious establishment and the occupying power. Their hopes were shattered, nor had the reports of the empty tomb given any consolation.

So after Cleopas and his partner had recounted their story, the stranger began to talk. First, he upbraided them gently for their slowness in reading and understanding the Scriptures. Then, he opened up for them the meaning of those Scriptures concerning himself. When he had finished this “Bible study” they still did not recognise the stranger.

The day was drawing to a close, so the couple persuaded the stranger to go in and share their evening meal. While they were eating, the stranger gave them a clue as to his identity. He took and broke the bread, the bread that was his body, broken and offered in love for the world. At that moment of taking and blessing and breaking, the eyes of the disciples “were opened”, only to find that there was nothing to see, for the stranger was no longer with them. In that split second between recognition of the risen Christ and his disappearance, the disciples “saw the Lord” and their faith was restored. They simply had to return to Jerusalem to tell their friends what had occurred – the exposition of the Scriptures by the stranger and those final telling words, “He made himself known in the breaking of the bread.”

Jesus the stranger. This aspect of his ministry comes over loud and clear throughout the four Gospels, though after two thousand years this can quite easily elude us. He is the stranger and he does strange things and speaks strange words. John, in the prologue to his Gospel, recognises this from the beginning: “He was in the world; but the world, though it owed its being to him, did not recognise him. He came to his own, and his own people would not accept him.” John the Baptist told a deputation of Pharisees: Among you, though you do not know him, stands the one who is to come after me.” The

Pharisee, Nicodemus, went to Jesus by night only to hear his strange words about being born again. At Jacob's well, the woman of Samaria met Jesus who spoke strange words that the water he shall give will never make her thirsty again. Indeed, his strange words and actions even persuaded his own family to think he was out of his mind. He was Jesus the stranger.

But was he? Dig down more deeply, and we discover something different and surprisingly startling. We human beings were created by God in his image and likeness. And we were to grow more and more into that image and likeness. But our self-centredness, our sin, prevents us from growing to be God-centred and Christ-like. Indeed, our self-centredness has arrested the whole course of God's creative activity in us. In reality, we are in the process of dying. When the New Testament speaks of death, it is not primarily referring to physical death, but to the death of our humanness. And that death would be a grievous end to the crown of God's creation.

That is why Jesus came from God to enter into this lamentable human condition to put things right. When Jesus was made man, he started anew the long line of human beings. He provided us, through death and resurrection, with a way to reconciliation and healing, so that the opportunity we had missed, namely to live a God-centred life, we might achieve through him. Jesus, in other words, is God's new version of humanity. In him, in his manner of living and loving, the intention of God for us humans is clear and complete.

He is the only perfectly mature human being into whose likeness we are to grow. Herein lies the startling twist. The truth is that Jesus is not the stranger who acts strangely. We are the strangers and we act strangely (it's called sin) for the image and likeness of God in us has not been allowed to grow and mature. We have failed to become what God created us to be.

Now we return to the story of the journey to Emmaus. The first thing it shows is that God's love is so expansive that he does not want to annihilate us nor keep us at a distance. He does not want us to be strangers. The coming of the risen Christ to meet the two disciples is almost an acted parable of the longing of God; God taking the initiative; God coming to meet us where we are and accepting us as we are. His longing and love for us knows no bounds. Notice, though, that the risen Christ does not reveal himself immediately.

This leads us to the second part of the story in which Jesus expounds the Scriptures. And that in itself demonstrates to us the pre-eminence they should have in our lives. For they speak to us not only of what Jesus did and said, but how the Holy Spirit inspired and spoke through the New Testament writers to inspire and guide us to become Christ-like and therefore truly human. Paul, as are other New Testament writers, is inspired when he writes of our relationship with the risen Lord: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” When he talks about “the fruit of the Spirit” in Galatians 5 and the nature of love in 1 Corinthians 13, he is really describing the character of Jesus and, at the same time, the character of the truly human person, reconciled and healed. Notice, though, the two disciples still did not recognise the risen Lord.

And that leads us to the last part of the story. The evening was closing in on them, so the disciples invited the stranger to share a meal. The stranger seems to have taken over the role of host for, we are told, “When he had sat down at table, he took bread and gave thanks; he broke the bread and offered it to them.” At that point the stranger vanished. Later the couple told the disciples in Jerusalem how he had expounded the Scriptures and how they had recognised him in the breaking of the bread.

Throughout history, some Christians have attempted to spiritualise Christianity and turn their backs on the material world as being somehow evil. This is not the teaching of the Bible. From the beginning, the book of Genesis asserts that God made a human being from soil. We are earthy creatures, and our immediate destiny is here. We are not just spiritual beings who are looking forward to our passports to heaven. When the Spirit of God is poured into the soul and body of a human being then, and only then, is there the human being God has created.

It should not be surprising then that the stranger should reveal his identity in the very material action of breaking a loaf of bread. Looking back, the disciples would have been reminded of how Jesus acted during a meal. Looking forward to our own time, we are reminded that we continue those same actions of taking, blessing, breaking and sharing in which the risen Christ makes himself known to us.