The promise of Emmaus
It was Easter Day, and rumors were flying. A group of women had gone to Jesus’s burial place to anoint his body, but they’d found instead an empty tomb, and they’d been greeted by dazzling figures who told them that Jesus had risen. The women told their story to the apostles, and it “seemed to them an idle tale.” But there was no denying that the tomb was empty.
Two of Jesus’s followers heard all these stories and decided to leave Jerusalem to go to a town named Emmaus, about seven miles away — a walk of about two and a half hours. We don’t know much about the two travelers. One was named Cleopas, and some traditions say that the other was Cleopas’s wife, but we’re not really sure. We also don’t know why they left. We just know that they did. Maybe they had business in Emmaus. Maybe they were frightened. Maybe they couldn’t bear to stay in a place where so many terrible things had happened.
What we do know is that they were walking away. Away from the city where the women had found an empty tomb just that morning. Away from the other disciples. Away from all that they’d hoped Jesus would do.
As they walk, they talk through the events of the past week, and they mull over the morning’s puzzling rumors. A stranger joins them. He asks what they’re talking about. They stop for a moment, and look sad. Sad, and preoccupied with their own worries. Cleopas asks, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have taken place in these days?” The stranger replies simply, “What things?”
And they tell him. They tell the story of Jesus’s arrest and crucifixion. They talk about the hopes that they’ve now given up on. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” “We had hoped,” but now he’s dead. And they tell the mysterious tale the women had brought back from Jesus’s tomb — a tale they clearly don’t know what to make of.
The stranger walks with them along the road, away from Jerusalem, and he lets them talk.
Then the stranger begins to speak. As they walk, he opens the scriptures to them. He tells them that things happened as they had to happen.
When they arrive at Emmaus, they urge him to stay with them. “It’s almost evening and the day is nearly over.” So he goes inside with them. Maybe to an inn. More likely to the home of friends or family of Cleopas and his companion.
The stranger is a guest. But at the table, the guest becomes the host. He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And in that moment, their eyes are opened, and they recognize Jesus. They realize that the stranger they’d been walking with is the same man on whom they’d pinned all their hopes, the same man they’d seen die just days before. They recognize him, and he vanishes.
The disciples wonder at all they’ve seen and heard. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?”
They realize in that moment that Jesus had walked with them all afternoon. They didn’t understand it while it was happening. They’d spoken to Jesus for hours without realizing who they were talking to.
But yet maybe there had been signs. “Were not our hearts burning within us?”
Scenes of dazzling angels and an empty tomb are what we usually think of when we think of Easter. But I suspect that the Bible gives us so many versions of the Easter story because the writers are trying to describe the indescribable. And maybe because different lenses on the story will resonate with different people. The road to Emmaus is the Easter story that’s always spoken most clearly to me.
Because the road to Emmaus is our road too. Christ walks with us even when we don’t recognize him. Even when we’re walking in the wrong direction. Even when we’re running away. Christ walks with us even when all hope seems lost.
Maybe you’ve had an experience like that. A time when you can only see God’s presence in the rear view mirror. A moment when you realize, days or weeks or years later, that God was with you even though you didn’t know it at the time.
We don’t have to be on the right road. We don’t have to fully understand. Christ still walks with us.
That’s the promise of Emmaus. Even when we’re tired and frightened and confused, Christ walks with us. When your heart burns quietly within you, pay attention. Christ will be with us in the breaking of the bread.
Cover image: a portion of the painting Le Repas d'Emmaüs (Supper at Emmaus), Matthias Stom (1615–1649).