A few days after the death of Jesus. Dejected and saddened, two of his friends leave Jerusalem for Emmaus. On the way, they meet a mysterious stranger...
Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.
He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
“What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.
Luke 24:13-35
It is extraordinary!
Jesus has appeared to us too!
He is alive!
He is risen!
He is risen indeed!
It’s only been a few hours since we left Jerusalem... so many things have happened.
Nothing will ever be the same again!
But wait, let me catch my breath. I have to tell you about this extraordinary day from the beginning...
This afternoon Cleopas and I decided to head back to Emmaus. To be honest with you, the events of the last few days have made us so discouraged, so desperate, that we decided to leave.... and go anywhere, to flee from Jerusalem. And since Cleopas has relatives in Emmaus, we thought we might as well go there.
Leave Jerusalem, the place of all our hopes. Where Jesus, the Messiah, was to triumph over the Roman occupiers, restore true worship to the God of Israel and re-establish - at last - the throne of David.
Leaving Jerusalem, the place where things had begun so well when the crowd welcomed Jesus with cries of:
Luke 19:38Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!
Then, those polemics at the temple, where Jesus put those corrupt religious people in their place, after having driven out those who were getting rich off the pilgrims.
You remember how he confounded them with his wisdom... I still remember their face when Jesus threw at them: Luke 20, 25“Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
Leaving Jerusalem, the place where, just a few days later, all our hopes were dashed, while our religious leaders plotted to accuse him, for fear of losing their influence; while Pilate condemned him on the spurious grounds of being the King of the Jews, even though that cursed governor knew him to be innocent; he condemned him to crucifixion, the most inhumane, humiliating death imaginable, for fear of the mob, for fear of losing his status as a friend of Caesar.
Leaving Jerusalem, the place of failure for us, his disciples: when our fears took over and we abandoned him, betrayed him, left him to his fate. It’s easy to blame Judas for betraying him, or Peter for denying him... the reality is that none of us stood up for him at that moment, or even accompanied him when he needed us the most.
Leaving Jerusalem, the place where Jesus remained strangely passive in the face of his condemnation. He whom nothing seemed to be able to stop... he who did not hesitate to stand up to the religious leaders... he who opened the eyes of the blind, healed the sick, delivered the tormented... he, all of a sudden, seemed resigned, really throwing himself into the lion’s den when the troop came to arrest him in Gethsemane, barely opening his mouth when confronted by Pilate, accepting his fate like a sheep being led to the slaughter.
Leaving Jerusalem... to put some distance between us and this place where, once again, the hope of Israel has been crushed... where, once again, the God of Israel seems to have been powerless: where is he, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the covenant? Where is the God who acted with power to free our ancestors, slaves in Egypt, and lead them into the promised land? Where is the God who established the kingdom of David and promised that he would never lack a descendant on the throne? Where is the God who brought back the captives from Babylon, delivering them from the exile to which their infidelity had led them?
Leaving Jerusalem...
Putting distance...
To take some distance...
And then he arrived. He joined us on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and I did not recognize him... The last time we had seen him, he was dying on a Roman cross. We thought he was a pilgrim who had come to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem... at this point, a little company wouldn’t hurt.
Anyway, we started walking together. He asked us what we were talking about and why we looked so sad.
Cleopas answered him: “Are you the only one staying in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what happened there these days?
No, he did not know.
It was almost impossible for someone who had come to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem not to know about the situation.
Instead, we started to tell him the story... his story! as best we could:
About Jesus of Nazareth: he was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.
And then he began to speak to us... well, he began by rebuking us... almost insulting us... one of those sharp, but truthful and lively formulas that he has a secret for. Once again, we should have recognized him.
“How foolish you are,” he told us, “and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
And then he told us the story... our story... his story, in fact.
It was strange because at the same time, he wasn’t telling us anything new: we know the characters he was mentioning and the stories he was telling. But at the same time, the perspective with which he was telling it all was different; there was something completely new and unexpected in the way he was telling these things... that we have known since we were children.
In fact, he was telling the story of Israel not as a glorious past time or a golden age to which we vainly hope to return.
No!
He was telling the story as an anticipation, an expectation of a more complete and perfect work of God through his Messiah.
God’s promise to Abraham was not fulfilled when our ancestors arrived in Canaan. No! God’s promises to Abraham will be fully fulfilled in the Messiah: in him, not just Israel, but all the nations of the earth will be blessed with a fuller and more complete blessing than a piece of land; a true peace and reconciliation with God.
The deliverance of our ancestors from the land of Egypt is but a reflection of a greater reality, a grander deliverance, a more perfect liberation: the Messiah, the Christ, comes to free all human beings from sin and its attendant broken relationships with God, with one another, and with ourselves.
The kingdom of David is only the prefiguration of a greater, more harmonious and more solid kingdom whose king is none other than the Messiah himself.
The return from exile from Babylon is itself only a foretaste of a greater forgiveness, a more perfect restoration that God offers to the guilty.
But for these greater and more perfect promises to be fulfilled, there must be a sacrifice, greater and more perfect too, than the lamb that is offered each year in the temple at the feast of the Passover.
He quoted to us the words of the prophet Isaiah, written so many years ago:
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,Isaiah 53:2-7
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
Cleopas and I were hanging on his every word...
On the one hand, I was listening to the stranger speak to us, giving us a new perspective on this story that we hear every week in the synagogue.
On the other hand, I was trying to think fast, to put together the pieces of the puzzle that, according to the stranger’s perspective, fit perfectly... but resulted in a totally different picture than the one I was used to.
And I know Cleopas well enough to see that he too was thinking and trying to make sense of the stranger’s words.
If the stranger was right, then we were wrong to expect a Messiah who would come to liberate Israel from Roman oppression. God’s plan of liberation was greater and more comprehensive.
We had to give up independence... or rather, we had to give up thinking that God’s main concern was Israel’s independence from the Romans; his concern is liberation from the deeper evil that eats us up inside.
Mark 2:1-12And then I remembered some episodes from Jesus’ life. When he said to a paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This had rightly caused a scandal among our religious leaders: only God can forgive sins... who does this Jesus think he is, to arrogate to himself a power that belongs only to God? At the same time, Jesus had healed the paralytic with a simple word: “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” That had demonstrated to everyone the extraordinary power of his word.
How Jesus summed up his message in these few words: The kingdom of heaven has come near. We had always thought he was talking about the kingdom of Israel that he would finally restore. He had often told us that he was to go up to Jerusalem. We expected a military victory at the end of this march on the capital... instead, Jesus had died at the hands of the Romans. The same Romans we hoped would free us from.
Even though it seemed like the perspective presented by the stranger made sense... at the same time, we couldn’t understand it, couldn’t fully grasp it. It was as if the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but we were still missing several of them and the complete picture totally eluded us...
The sweltering heat of mid-day had given way to the evening breeze, bringing a welcome coolness. The shadows were lengthening; we were bathed in the beautiful light that precedes sunset. We were enveloped in the scent of pine trees and field flowers, as if the vegetation was coming back to life after having suffered from the crushing heat of the afternoon.
Crickets were singing all around us, like a choir with a thousand voices. In the distance, we could hear the bleating of sheep as the shepherds gathered their flocks to lead them to the well.
The children played, alternately shouting, laughing and crying. The women, taking advantage of the coolness, went out in small groups to the well. The men returned from the fields, causing the children to shout “Daddy, Daddy!” and the smiles on their wives’ faces. The old men, sitting with dignity at the city gate, contemplated this overflowing life as the guardians of a peace and serenity that nothing seemed able to disturb.
The temperature, the light, the smells, the sounds, the occupations of the people... everything exuded a peace and harmony that seemed to reflect the peace and harmony that reign in the heavens. All of a sudden, Jerusalem and its unbreathable atmosphere seemed very far away.
He seemed to want to continue on his way.
“Come on, you don’t travel like that, alone, in the countryside at nightfall. It’s far too dangerous. The family of Cleopas will be honored to offer you a roof for the night and the evening meal.”
Eventually he was convinced and Cleopas took us to his family.
I don’t know if they were expecting us or not... but they were really happy to see us: they welcomed me as if I was one of them and they shared with us the evening meal. A very simple meal: bread and dried fish. But you could see that they were happy to offer us what little they had.
And that’s when everything changed. As we sat down to eat, instead of letting the host give thanks as is customary, Jesus himself took the bread, raised his eyes to heaven and said the prayer of blessing.
Seeing him do these gestures that he had done so many times before us...
Hearing him say once again those simple but profound words...
By noticing suddenly on his wrists the marks of the nails which held him to this cursed cross...
Finally...
Finally, our eyes opened... and we recognized him.
It is him! It is Jesus! The crucified of Jerusalem...
He is risen! He is alive!
He is the one who accompanied us on the road to Emmaus.
He is the one who gave us this masterly teaching on our history... on his history!
He is the servant who came to suffer and die for the sin of his people... for our sin!
He is the Messiah who comes to bring us perfect reconciliation with God.
As our eyes - at last - were opened... He disappeared!
He was simply gone, as if we had seen and heard everything we needed to.
So, no matter how dark it got, no matter how dangerous it was, no matter how tired we were, we had to return to Jerusalem.
To return to Jerusalem with this new hope: He died, he rose again.
To return to Jerusalem, the place of defeat which has become the place of victory.
To return to Jerusalem, to announce this good news to all of you and to the entire world:
He is alive!
He is risen!