Our reading today, for this second Sunday of Easter, is one of those story’s that raises many questions. Well it does for me.
Questions like:
Who is Cleopas, who is the other person with him and why in Luke’s gospel did Jesus appear to them?
Why are they going to Emmaus and where is that anyway?
Why were their eyes kept from recognising him? And then why did he disappear as soon they did?
How is that their hearts were at the same time so slow to believe yet burning within them?
I do not have the answers to all these questions. As always, all I can really share with you is some things that I have learned as I have researched and reflected on these questions and what I think this teaches us about Jesus and resurrection and what it might say to us about resurrection life 2000 years later.
Okay, first questions, who is Cleopas, who is the other person with him and why in Luke’s gospel did Jesus appear to them?
This is the only story in which Cleopas appears. He is not one of the so called twelve and yet Luke describes him and his companion as “two of them.” Some have suggested that perhaps they were two of the 70 that Jesus appointed and sent ahead of him in chapter 10 to announce the Kingdom of God.
The other person with Cleopas remains unnamed. Biblical scholars as renowned as NT Wright, have suggested that Cleopas’ fellow traveller could have been his wife, Mary. Their case is built on the idea that “Mary, mother of James” at the Crucifixion scene and witness of the empty tomb in Matthew, Mark and Luke could be the same person as “Mary, wife of Clopas” present in John’s crucifixion scene. And of course, Clopas and Cleopas are the same person.
If Cleopas and his wife, Mary had travelled with Jesus to Jerusalem for Passover, it makes sense that they would be travelling together afterward. It wouldn’t have been unusual for a married couple, in this relatively private context, to converse with each other along the way about what they had experienced and what it might mean.
This is one hypothesis but ultimately though we do not know who they were. They flit into the story and then out, never heard from again. And yet according to Luke’s gospel they are the first people that the resurrected Jesus encounters. And it is by far the longest post resurrection encounter. Despite the fact they are relatively unknown, some might even say “random” people Jesus sees them as significant and their role in the story is crucial.
As we have been reflecting on Luke’s gospel this year, we have noted on a number of occasions that Luke often refers to the actions of disciples, both male and female, beyond the so called twelve. Luke, it seems has much more expansive and inclusive view of discipleship. It is something for everyone, not just a chosen few.
This encounter, like the resurrection itself and all Jesus post resurrection encounters is quiet, humble and elusive. One might think that a God who suffers a torturous and wholly unjust death would come back with a vengeance, determined to shout his triumph from the rooftops, and prove his accusers and killers wrong. But Jesus does no such thing. He doesn’t enter the Temple and make a scene. He doesn’t appear to the Sanhedrin, or show up at Pilate’s house, or set the sky ablaze. He makes absolutely no effort to vindicate himself, or to avenge his cruel death. Rather, the risen Christ takes a walk on a quiet, out-of-the-way road with two bewildered followers, who are nursing their broken dreams, wondering if they dare hope again in the wild vision of angels who said that Jesus was alive.
Why are they going to Emmaus and where is that anyway?
Like the identity of these followers, no one really knows exactly where this story took place. The map on the PP shows different possible locations of, and roads to Emmaus.
The picture below the map shows the remnants of an ancient Roman road to Qubeibah. Qubeibah is one the contenders for Emmaus and tis shown on the middle road on the map. The men in the picture are Franciscan Priests, Father Salem Yunis, from Aleppo, Syria, and Father Oscar Rodriguez, from El Salvador. They were priests of the church in Quebeibah which is also pictured.
The church is a Franciscan cathedral. It claims to enshrine the stone remains that Franciscan tradition holds was the home where the risen Jesus shared a meal with the two disciples in today’s passage and then disappeared.
Qubeibah stands just outside the wall of separation between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Every year on Easter Monday there is a festival held there. Palestinian Christians gather with Christian pilgrims to break bread as the disciples did with Jesus.
Whether this is the location or not, the story continues to speak to the current residents. In his 2024 homily, Brother Zaher Abboud, the current guardian of the Franciscan convent said, “Today we are in a similar context to the one in which the disciples of Emmaus lived: war, deaths, insecurity. In the Gospel, we see that the Lord starts to walk with the disciples and to explain the Scriptures to them. We do not believe in a Christ-magician who solves the situation, but in a God who walks in our lives, in our difficulties and explains our life to us in the light of the Scriptures. Jesus makes himself known in breaking bread, in the Eucharist. When we are in difficulty, we return to the Eucharist and plea as the disciples of Emmaus did: ‘Stay with us.’”
The Custos of the Holy Land who had travelled from Jerusalem for the event, finished the service saying, “We have seen faithful from various communities and in celebrating we have felt the presence of the Risen in our midst. Even in a situation marked by conflict and many difficulties, it is possible to trace the signs of the presence of the Risen. I am thinking of the small community of Gaza: celebrating Easter and expressing faith in the Risen Lord in a situation where all the surroundings speak only of death is an extraordinary sign of Easter, just like the ability to keep the heart free of hatred and open to reconciliation.”
Why were their eyes kept from recognising him? And then why did he disappear as soon they recognised him?
While, I do not have an answer to these questions, I do know this experience intimately. Don’t we all? Have we not all at some time walked that road to Emmaus? That road of disappointment, of broken dreams and failures saying, “but we had hoped?” Have we not all wanted something so badly, prayed for it, fought for it, come so close to getting it and then had it snatched away from us at the last minute?
I think perhaps there are many people across the world, and many of us here, on that road right now.
And I imagine also we have all at some time, failed to recognise the hand of God in our lives or failed to recognise Jesus showing up because he came in a way that we were not expecting? Or we have failed to see past our own unmet desires and dreams to the more wonderful thing that God was doing? It think this must be common.
But I hope we have all at one time at least experienced that wondrous moment when it seems the scales finally fall from our eyes and we behold the presence of God and faith and life make a little more sense. Those thin places where the veil between heaven and earth feels thinner, the world around seems more enchanted and God as close to us as breathe? Or perhaps at a time of grief or pain we have felt the love and grace of God and the power of those praying for us? Perhaps we have even experienced the miraculous or heard the still small voice of God speaking directly to our hearts?
And then as quickly as it comes, it vanishes.
I think perhaps our encounters with the risen Christ are mostly like that: enigmatic, fleeting, mere glimpses, little ambushes. And we’re left with the question, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us? Didn’t they?”
Well mine certainly are.
And these moments mostly come to me at ordinary times, when I am walking the dog on the trails, or sharing a meal and deep conversation with someone. They come when I am here at church but also at the hospital and the prison. They come when I am reading the bible, listening to music, laughing and crying. We do not have to be doing something extraordinary to encounter the risen Christ, we just have to be open and attentive. Open and attentive to the story’s that have gone before us in the Scriptures and in this place. Open and attentive to the moment we are in and the people we are with not distracted by phones and things happening elsewhere. Open and attentive also to the new thing that God might be doing within us and amongst us.
How is that their hearts were at the same time so slow to believe yet burning within them?
An article I was reading from CT this week described the heart condition of these people as actually twofold: slow and burning. That is a strange affliction, the author said. But common. Sorrow and hope, awe and self-pity, wonder and worry, believing and doubting, are all mixed up in them, and us, tugging us one way, jostling us another.
We should not be afraid of this. I love the description this article gives of Christians as people of the slow, burning heart.
What defines people of the slow, burning heart is hope, yearning, a knowing in their bones, in spite of loss or sorrow or aloneness, that there is Something more, Something else, Something better. What defines them is a hauntedness, a shaky but unshakable conviction that the Christ they see now through a glass darkly, in little fleeting puzzling glimpses, they will see one day face-to-face.
May we too be people of the slow, burning heart.
