The Road to Emmaus and Back
Isaiah 35:1-7, 10 and Luke 24:13-35
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
4/7/24
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus 2it shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice with joy and shouting.
The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it,
the majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They shall see the glory of the Lord,
the majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen the weak hands
and make firm the feeble knees.
4Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.
He will come with vengeance,
with terrible recompense.
He will come and save you.”
5Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf shall be opened;
6then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness
and streams in the desert;
7the burning sand shall become a pool
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp;
the grass shall become reeds and rushes.
10And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (NRSV)
The more I wrestle with varieties of biblical texts, the more deeply I hear a single voice speaking at the heart of them all. Just as the language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit affirms the presence of one God, the language of Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection affirms the same whirling mystery of grace.
The Incarnation suggests that human beings are born out of an eternal union with the Creator. We can deny or mask our oneness with God, but we cannot destroy it. It is our “original blessing,” and it cannot be undone by any talk of “original sin.”
Taken seriously, the truth of humankind’s God-imaged selves can affect everything we say and do. It can move us toward excitement and delight. It can motivate us toward the blessed hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:3-11) that leads us to work for God’s holy justice for all.
A healthy understanding of Incarnation can even help us celebrate things like birthdays and Christmas. When a gift reflects incarnate awareness, it reveals in both giver and receiver the eternally-beloved person God sees. So, maybe the gift of colored pencils and a sketch pad energizes a shy child for creative expression and self-understanding. Maybe a camera helps an older person to share the world as their eyes of experience and wisdom have learned to see it.
The best gifts tell you that the giver celebrates your existence and regards you, yourself, as a gift. And if God gives us life, what does that say about who God is and how God loves?
As the ultimate affirmation of Incarnation, Resurrection is a whole different animal. Resurrection completely rearranges our human being. As a gift given to restore our primordial and eternal union with God, Resurrection releases us into God’s realm of unbounded mercy and love. That’s why Resurrection and forgiveness are so intimately related. To forgive and to be forgiven is to shed a deadly burden that diminishes our lives, a burden that buries us in tombs of regret or vengeance.
Now, yes, it is easier to forgive when the other admits offense. The scandal of the gospel, though, is that God’s forgiveness in Christ is preemptive; it precedes our repentance. And while such grace is entirely loving to the one forgiven, forgiveness between human beings is also entirely liberating to the one who forgives. Preemptive forgiveness says, Regardless of anything you do or don’t do, I will not allow anything to impede my joy. So that at least I may live fully and freely, I forgive you.
I understand that there are wounds so deep that preemptive forgiveness can become impossible. In those cases, I think one starts by simply asking for the gracious strength not to seek vengeance. By saying No to revenge and Not yet to forgiveness, we acknowledge and live in the tension of the ongoing struggle between our destructive impulses and our elemental need for relationship.
Forgiving and being forgiven both involve the same painful death—the death of pride. Proud hearts beat with a living death, and can neither let go of grudges nor admit error. Nonetheless, I trust that the God of grace always sees those hearts not as lost causes, but as places of potential resurrection. Remember what Isaiah says: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly.”
Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection have something else in common. They reveal the fullness of their transforming power not inside some tomb or sanctuary, but out there—in the world, in the midst of day-to-day life.
13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”
They stood still, looking sad. 18 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?”
19 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, 20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 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. 22 Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23 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. 24 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.”
25 Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 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. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.
32 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?” 33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.
34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread. (NRSV)
As Cleopas and his companion travel the road toward Emmaus, their destination is simply geographical. They have yet to experience their own transforming deaths—their own Friday.
Enter the resurrected Jesus, who shows up as a random stranger.
“We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” says Cleopas.
Wow, says Jesus. You sure are slow to die to that which blinds you to truth.
Now, let’s be easy on Cleopas. It’s no small thing to die to the generations-long expectation that God’s messianic plan includes military conquest. Indeed, just two verses after speaking of the desert blooming, Isaiah says that God “will come…with terrible recompense…[to] save you.’” Cleopas represents everyone who expects shock-and-awe from God, and it’s hard to let that hope die in order to follow Jesus, who teaches non-violence, forgiveness, humility, and compassion.
As the three men walk, Jesus reviews the story of God’s involvement in and for the Creation. In doing so, he gives these pride-bound disciples another run at Friday, another chance to die to all that their well-intentioned doctrines, and all that their years of frustration and suffering have led them to believe about God’s activity in the world.
Then, when Jesus breaks bread with them, their eyes [are] opened, and they [recognize] him. They see him through the spectacles of community and grace.
When Emmaus is our destination, geography defines our journey. And maybe it begins that way, but Cleopas and his companion don’t stay in Emmaus. After their burning-heart experience, and after the revelation of the elusive, here-and-there risen Christ, they hurry back to Jerusalem, giddy with wonder and excitement. So, the road they travel is The Road to Emmaus and Back—a seven-mile hike that ends at dusk, only to turn them around and send them back those same seven miles, in the dark.
As a Friday-to-Sunday experience, the Emmaus journey is the perennial passage of Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection. The startling newness that begins in Emmaus returns us to day-to-day reality where we embody the news of Resurrection by sharing our own transformed selves.
To share ourselves is to live in community. And the body of Christ lives, moves, and has its being in the world through community. As Trinity, God is community. Joining this holy and dynamic kinship, we enter God’s presence. We experience the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And newly-birthed into the sacredness of our God-imaged selves, we follow the risen Christ wherever he leads.
One spiritual teacher says, “I believe that the Christian faith is saying that the pattern of transformation is always death transformed, not death avoided…That is always a disappointment to humans,” he says, “because we want…transformation without cost or surrender.”1
On the road to Emmaus, we try to avoid God’s death-transforming grace. And Emmaus can be anywhere—in front of some screen or other distraction, in our fears and resentments, at the bottom of a bottle.
In Emmaus, though, death is transformed through the sharing of fellowship, stories, and meals. And in that communion, God strips us of our comfortable but selfish assumptions, then turns us, and sends us back out to do what we could not do before—begin learning to live according the radical grace of Christ, from whom we were born and into whom, through the power of Resurrection, we are being constantly re-born.
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