Resurrection ruminations (1) strange meanderings

Wednesday in Easter Week

April 15th

READING: Luke 24: 13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over 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 took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed 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 they did not see him.’ Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION

As we slow down a little from Holy Week and rejoice together in the mysteries of Resurrection, may I take a pause in these reflections to tell you one or two elements that form them? Scholars these days will often speak about the “reading site” of writers and readers engaging with a text. They will talk about the “lens” through which we read. Our life story, our location, what’s going in the world and in our lives. Almost all texts are alive with these influences – as readers of Scripture we might argue the biblical texts are “extra alive,” or “sharper than a two edged sword,” as the author of Hebrews put it when she was delivering her powerful sermon to a slightly nonchalant Christian people.[1]

So, as I brought you some reflections for Holy Week I did so out of my backstory as well as our shared circumstances. The latter are far more important, though the former will have shaped all that I shared. And as we move on into post-Easter lockdown and I continue to share thoughts with you there are a couple of the former influences that I should explain, before you throw these pixels at the cat.

In the first place, my training in biblical interpretation emerges very much from a literary critical tradition approach. Such an approach moves from “this is what happened” to “this is the information that the author, some years after the events described, wants us to work with, enflamed by the Spirit of God, as we extrapolate gospel meaning for us today from the Jesus stories that have been circulating amongst Jesus-followers these past several years.”

The gospel writers were not envisaging a “for us today” such as we are experiencing. But there is more in common between the first century and ours than there is that is different.
Pandemic? While it was still seventy years or so away the Antonine Plague in 165 c.e. would slaughter 5 million people across Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, and Italy, ringing more death knells for the overreached and decomposing Roman Empire. And, while that was still a few years off, the ancient world remembered only too well the plague that swept through Libya, Ethiopia and Egypt, eventually entering Athens during the Peloponnesian War, killing roughly half the city’s population, including its general, Pericles.

The ancient world also knew muddlement of misinformation. Conspiracy theories, leaders of the world who reversed the names and weight of truth and lies, megalomaniacs, narcissists, rumour-mongers, drama queens, as well as fighters for truth, martyrs for hope, bearers of sacrificial love, justice and compassion.

So, as I often cite, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

So much then, for history. What then of two, then three travellers, walking to Emmaus?

REFLECTION

Luke sets about highlighting some interesting features as he tells this story. Like all the post-Easter stories this one breaks out of the constraints of normality. Some scholars tend to have a “yeah it didn’t really happen” response to this: “I haven’t encountered people disappearing when they blessed, broke and delivered bread, so clearly it’s a fairy tale.”

I don’t take that approach. I don’t know what happened … lives were dramatically transformed by the post-Easter encounters, and that’s good enough for me. I don’t think, though, that the two travellers sat down, had a sandwich and a chinwag, and decided they better go and cheers the spirits of the Jerusalem disciples with some fabricated palaver. No: the dramatic changes I have experienced in my life over 40+ years of faith haven’t included people disappearing too often, but neither have they been restricted to mere logical, prosaic events.

So, what does Luke want us to know? Other kinds of scholar tried to de-mystify aspects of this story: the travellers, Cleopas and his mate, were walking towards the setting sun so they didn’t recognize the stranger (see v. 16). Maybe. But something bigger than a setting sun is happening here. The travellers were walking away from fellow-disciples: maybe that’s significant? They use a touch of embellishment when they suggest “everyone in Jerusalem knows.” In reality, outside the Christian scriptures, there’s not a lot of indication that anyone took much notice of the Jesus-happenings. But, slowly, they changed the world. Luke couldn’t have seen how much they changed the world, but certainly even when he was writing lives were being changed and faith communities were growing. Why?

Cleopas and his companion[2] explore, in conversation, the events that they have observed. The stranger who expounds on these events by use of the Hebrew Scriptures (v. 27) broadens their world view, heightens their understanding, and then appears to complete the lesson with some form of blessing involving a shared meal. We wouldn’t have to be geniuses to discern that some sort of “agape” meal, if not full eucharistic event, is taking place here, with the word broken open then the bread broken, and enlightenment dawning (and the stranger disappearing from sight, but not memory).

There are a myriad more details to explore here, but I’ve probably pushed the envelope enough already. But so what in our locked down, virus-afflicted, apocalyptic present?

We can’t, most of us, share meals with friends or strangers at the moment. We can share love. We can share hope. Within the bounds of common sense (and common sense civic law) we can be a resurrection-proclaiming people. We can pray and live and act as a people who hold to a hope that is greater than the confusion and despair that has dominated our pixels and airwaves. We can practice the “r u ok?” that we have learned many times even before Covid-19. And we can know, even if our civilization is undergoing incomprehensible implosion and our church is quivering and lives are being lost at least around the world if not in our own immediate sphere, we can know that we can, like Cleopas and Mary, leap up and speak love and hope to our small worlds.

Because that’s Luke’s biggest message. Tell. Because that is how you and I have heard, how our lives were transformed, how hope expanded across the globe and across centuries. “That same hour they got up and told.” And so can we: with words if necessary, but with every fibre of our resurrection life being.

(Tomorrow we will return to briefer reflections ... Thanks for tackling the journey).

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[1] That, by the way, was in part a self-interested flag to alert you to my book on Hebrews, which is available from on-line booksellers even in a time of lock-down, and could give you food for thought in these strange times. Entertaining Angels is available from all on-line booksellers in Kindle or physical forms!

[2] Some say it may have been his wife, Mary, and some heart-warming art depicts this gender re-balancing view: see https://artandtheology.org/2017/04/28/the-unnamed-emmaus-disciple-mary-wife-of-cleopas/