Christian Art | Road To Emmaus
Gospel Of Luke 24: 13-35 | King James Audio Bible | King James Version KJV
13 ¶ And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.
14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.
16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?
18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.
21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.
22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;
23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.
25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,
34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.
This is a dark time, and, as Luke writes his Gospel, it is a dark time for the Christian communities. Jesus has been crucified. Well then, so the logic of the Old Law states, Jesus could not possibly have been the Messiah. Except he was.
Luke writes primarily for the communities of Greece, mostly pagan converts. There has been the great persecution of Nero. Jerusalem has been destroyed in the year 70 by the Romans. The Apostles and other disciples of Jesus have progressively disappeared or been martyred. It must have been hard to believe in Jesus in these times. Christians must have felt tired on their journey. We needed to be reassured, to be given the confidence to keep going. In this sense, these early Christians were in a similar position to the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
On the road to Emmaus, the disciples are lost and despondent. They are talking with each other to try to make some sense out of what has happened. Their Lord has been crucified. According to their understanding, the Messiah could not have met with such a fate. It seems to them that all their faith in Jesus has been in vain. They feel great sorrow. Jesus comes to them to reassure them, to help them to see the truth of what has happened through the crucifixion, to give them hope to go on.
The disciples do not initially recognize Jesus. This tells us something about how Jesus approaches us in our lives. It can take a long time before we recognize the call to vocation, and then we realise just how often we have been called in the past without our realizing that we are called. It is when we are truly open to our Lord that we know that he has been calling to us so much before to have faith and to follow him.
Jesus asks the disciples what is wrong and he patiently hears them recount what we know of the death of Jesus, and his burial, and the events of Easter Sunday when Jesus’ tomb was found empty. The disciples even speak of the witness of Mary Magdalene and the other women, who have told them what the angels have said to them, and yet they have not seen what the women saw. The disciples are shrouded in gloom and the failing of faith. Their world at this time must have seemed a very hollow space, emptied of life and hope.
Jesus now, without directly revealing himself, teaches the disciples again about the Scriptures. Jesus presents to the disciples the truth of faith, tells them once again of the necessity of his death on the cross to bring about all men’s salvation, of his path to glorification being via the cross, and Jesus interprets the Scriptures to them, leading the disciples to a new and truer understanding of the words with which they were already familiar. Jesus wants the disciples to realise they already know the truth; that what they need to do is to free themselves from the preconceptions of the old way of seeing things, and with the eyes of faith understand the reality of Scripture.
The disciples are energised by Jesus’ words. They beg Jesus to stay with them and Jesus consents. And so a stranger on the road is offered and consents to receive hospitality. There is friendship, the sharing of a meal, just as there was at the feast of the Passover, the Last Supper. Trust has been offered, received, shared.
It is perfectly fitting that recognition comes to the disciples as our Lord blesses and breaks the bread at this meal, and shares it. Now the disciples see who has been with them. Our High Priest has shared his body once again, bloodlessly now. The disciples’ eyes are opened. They now understand how their hearts have burned through Jesus’ presence. They have shared Christ’s body. They are a part of the body of Christ. Jesus can leave them now, knowing that they can walk onwards together, as it were by themselves, without further immediate assistance. We might be reminded of the time we learned to ride a bicycle, when the stabilizers were removed and our mother or father who had supported us let us go.
The disciples’ faith has been restored. It is beautiful to know that the first instinct of these disciples was to return to Jerusalem, no matter the danger, to share the good news with their friends.
Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, you take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us; you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus’ message may strike us as difficult to understand. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus’ message is one of peace and Christian brotherhood, of reconciliation with our fellow human beings and with God, whom we are asked to call Father. Today Jesus speaks of variance and contradiction. Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword [ … ]
In the parable of the prodigal son, the story Jesus tells is so homely and familiar to our lives, and to our most basic human and family instincts, that even without the deeper meanings as we interpret the parable, it would be powerfully moving to hear as a tale of estrangement and difficulty followed by forgiveness and reconciliation through love [ … read more … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
