The post-resurrection appearances of Jesus are more than a little confusing. Before we dive deep into today’s reading, let us take a moment to review them.
There is no post-resurrection appearance in the original ending of Mark, the earliest of the three synoptic gospels. We end that story with the female disciples fleeing the tomb in fear and amazement and telling no one what they had experienced. Finding this dissatisfying and not consistent with the kerygma, or proclamation of the faith, second-century authors added what are now known as the shorter and longer endings. While Jesus appears in the latter of these, there are few details.
The authors of Matthew and the physician Luke use Mark as one source for their gospels, and add a lost source scholars call Q. In Matthew, Jesus appears to the women on Easter morning, and they take hold of his feet. He speaks to the male disciples later in Galilee.
Luke, drawing on a source the authors of Matthew are clearly not using, gives us two accounts of post-resurrection appearances. The first is today’s reading. We’ll circle back to that. The second immediately follows, for Jesus suddenly appears as the disciples who had returned from Emmaus spoke of their encounter. Jesus emphasizes his physicality, inviting them to touch his wounds, and even eating a piece of broiled fish.
The Gospel attributed to John comes from a distinct tradition, and contains many stories not found in the other three. In John, Mary Magdalene is the only woman at the tomb. Jesus tells her not to hold him. Jesus next magically appears in the locked house where the disciples are hiding. In John’s gospel, this is when they receive the Holy Spirit, breathed into them by Jesus, not at Pentecost as reported in the Lucan tradition. Jesus shows up in John again a week later, again through sealed doors, for Judas Didymus Thomas, aka Jude the Twin, had been absent the first time. This is the famous “doubting” Thomas story, unique to John, where the disciple is invited to touch the wounds. He appears a third time on the beach at dawn, inviting the disciples to break fast with him at his campfire.
It is, to be honest, a confusing set of accounts. Later Christians would hammer out an orthodox understanding of these events, insisting on the physical, bodily resurrection, even while retaining contradictory stories, like the insistence that Mary not touch him and the ability to pass through solid objects like locked doors.
But the most confusing of the accounts is today’s. It requires a kind of holy magic, and while there is holy magic aplenty throughout the gospels, this just feels off. We do not know where Lucan Emmaus was located, but modern translations render the text as seven miles from Jerusalem, so a good bit of a walk. The disciples, who knew Jesus well, spend that time in his presence without recognizing him. Okay, weird. He lectures them, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” All the prophets. That’s a whole lot of ‘splaining.
Now, I’m all about context. It is what I am doing right now, in front of a camera with a carefully crafted text intended to give you a tool or tools you’ll be able to use in real life. But sometimes explaining can feel pedantic, an exercise in hubris and superiority. As the Director of Learning for a Manhattan multimedia company in a prior life, I always looked for staff that found joy in giving people tools they could use, and avoided those who needed to prove something to themselves and others.
The lecture on the road to Emmaus feels a little pedantic to me, at least as written. But more important, it doesn’t work. Sure, Jesus fills their heads with knowledge, but they still don’t recognize him.
“He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” What he said was important, but in the end, they saw him for what he actually did.
And then… poof… he disappears, which gets us back to the massive weirdness in the post-resurrection appearances, but let’s just park that for now.
And, while almost two thousands years of preachers have tried to make this about sacrament, about communion, let’s park that as well.
“We waste the hours with talking talking.” So sings Dave Matthews. And they’ve wasted hours talking talking on the road to Emmaus, but they did not know him for what he said. They knew him for what he did. He was revealed in action, not in words.
To paraphrase the governor of our hardest hit state, “I’m not interested in what you are saying. I’m watching what you actually do.”
“He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.” Nourishment and prayer, moving out in two directions, toward his human companions, and toward his source, that God he dared to call Abba.
And then there is hocus pocus and he disappears into thin air, so there’s that, but not our lesson for today.
Our lesson for today is people don’t know us for our words, for our governance or parliamentary procedure, for our theological finery, dogmas and creeds. They know us for our love. It is one thing to “do church” well in the building, it is another to change lives well outside of the building.
As a church, you have done amazing work on the sort of radical hospitality Jesus practiced and preached, welcoming many, including me, who might not be welcome in other churches. Our faith has inspired some to become involved in community movements around civil liberties, immigration, women’s rights, so much more, while others find strength and encouragement for commitments they already held before becoming part of the Hope family.
And we are in this time, this time of disaster. Don’t tell me who you are. Show me. And we are, picking up the phone, maintaining relationships, running errands. Even as the disease forces physical separation, we strengthen our spiritual connections.
We face a long road ahead, more than the seven miles to Emmaus, but we are on a journey, Christ by our side, trying to make sense of what is happening, just like those disciples. And just as they knew who Jesus was by what he did, the world will know us by what we do next. What will we do next?
May the Holy Spirit be upon us, fire and wind and the power to make whole what is broken, to carry and to care, this day, this week, and for the many weeks to come, on this strange strange journey on which we find ourselves.
Amen.