“Road to Emmaus: Heads Up!”
By Joanne Leatch
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Reading:Luke 24:13-35
When do we stop noticing things? Really noticing things? When do we start trudging through life, not so impressed, posture a little hunched, eyes to the ground; a little bored, a little beaten down? Can you remember? Because we all do it. At least sometimes with some activities. You know who doesn’t do it? Well, dogs for sure. They’re excited about everything. But Little kids don’t do it either. They notice things and are usually very appreciative. One of my most vivid and precious memories from when my children were little is a beautiful spring day, when the snow hadn’t finished melting and my sons Tim and Geoff were about four. Off we went to the Kortright centre, a conservation centre a short distance north of Toronto. Our mission was to see if we could see the spring peepers. Spring peepers are small frogs, among the first to come out at the end of winter. They are called chorus frogs because they call out with a high-pitched trill. Like birds, they are harbingers of spring. We had a wonderful morning. It was bright and sunny and shiny with the kind of blue sky that doesn’t happen every day. We did see the peepers and they did not disappoint. And then it was lunchtime. I packed lunch. We sat down, opened our lunch, and as part of it, I passed out the three hard-boiled eggs that I had made. One of them looked at me with stars in his eyes, said, “Mama, you made me an egg?” He was so thrilled, and I was thrilled that he was thrilled. I knew that I would savour that moment for the days when life was a chore and not shiny and bright.
Well, here we are today with a pair of travellers on a dusty road outside Jerusalem. They are trudging along, not noticing much of anything and certainly nothing is shiny or bright. They have walked this road scores of times before. Today they are rehashing everything that has happened over the past week, like an echo chamber. I can’t believe that it turned out this way. Do you remember last week when we were all in Jerusalem and everybody was yelling hosanna? Now he’s dead. I really thought he might be the one, the Messiah. Didn’t you think he might be the one? Yes, I thought so too. One of them might have remembered that he said that he would be raised from the dead. Another pipe dream, as unrealistic as dreaming that the Romans might leave them alone and go to other parts of the world instead. Then they discuss it again and again because the whole thing is so raw, so fresh, so awful.
I once saw a huge graffiti written on the TTC cement wall up near Davisville. It was so great that I took a picture. It said, “But really, if everything had turned out well, what would we have to talk about?” The two people are walking along the road from Jerusalem and Emmaus. We know that one is Cleopas. He is most likely the brother of Mary – yes that Mary, the mother of Jesus – husband Joseph. Cleopas was a follower but not one of the 12 disciples. Many scholars think that his walking companion was his own wife, also named Mary. This earnest conversation happens in compressed time. This walk is happening the same day that the women came rushing back from the tomb, breathless, saying, “He’s not there.”
The road to Emmaus is one of the most written-about stories in the New Testament but in reading commentaries, it’s a story with many layers and the ultimate meaning isn’t clear. Even on the surface, it’s quite remarkable.
Luke is a wonderful storyteller, bringing everything to life. Look at how his version of the Christmas story has made it everywhere from churches to popular culture. Remember Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas simply quoting the King James version: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field.” And you could go on, and so it is here. The best gospel storyteller sets a vivid scene. You can feel the dust. Also, this is the only place this story is found, which also makes it a little odd. Whereas some stories are found in three or even four gospels, it could be that different places set out different encounters had by people and groups with the resurrected Jesus.
For example, only the gospel of John covers Jesus on the beach cooking fish for some of the disciples. So here as they are walking along, deep in conversation, along comes an ostensible stranger, and says, “what are you talking about?” That in itself is a little odd. We probably wouldn’t do it, and we would be surprised if someone did it to us. Remember that this is the same day of the resurrection, the empty tomb. They ask him if he is the only one who doesn’t know what has been going on. “What?” He asks. So, they tell him. This was a bit of a risk on the part of Cleopas. Everything that had happened had political significance. This stranger who wanted to know what they were talking about could have been a collaborator with the Romans, a spy. But Cleopas is desperate to talk about what happened, so he takes a chance and tells him everything. We really thought that this Jesus, who was crucified, was the one who would bring about our new Exodus. The one who would redeem Israel. And he just keeps talking, unaware of who the stranger is.
Theologians have written a lot about this. It is one of many strange things about this story. Why can’t they recognize him? Some of the translations say that they were “kept” from recognizing him. One simply says that they were “not able” to recognize who he was. But no translation says why. Academics have speculated. One explanation is that Jesus was alive but was somehow different, transformed but that, if so, it is a mystery we can’t solve. Others have said, “God stopped them from recognizing him.” A simple answer but the next obvious question is, why? Here they start stretching. Hmm, maybe so Jesus could tell them everything on this walk and they wouldn’t interrupt him. Others have suggested that it was really more of a human problem. They just couldn’t make sense of anything that happened. One writer suggests that they couldn’t recognize Jesus because they couldn’t recognize what had just happened and what was happening. They weren’t looking for Jesus or expecting him because they thought that Jesus was dead.
And what happens next after they tell Jesus what is going on is also unusual. Jesus starts talking. And talking and talking and talking. There was a lot of time. Depending on which geographer you read, it’s at least 11 kilometres from Jerusalem to Emmaus and perhaps longer, up to 20. Jesus starts teaching them everything about himself from the Old Testament. But first he rebukes them. The milder translations say that he said something like, “Oh how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared.” But one paraphrases it as, “Ugh, so thick headed! So slow hearted! Why can't you believe what the prophets said?”
I don't know about you, I’m a good Canadian and probably would be polite and not say anything, but I know what I’d be thinking. “Where do you get off? I just met you. Who do you think you are?” It doesn’t say what they thought, but they could have been forgiven if it was something along the lines of: “Really? You’re the one who didn’t know anything about what was happening in Jerusalem.”
In any event, they still don’t recognize him, and he starts to talk. One commentator says that when Luke writes that Jesus interpreted to them everything about himself throughout the Bible, he doesn’t mean that he told them a few or even a few dozen isolated and random facts and verses. He says that Luke means that he told them the whole story from Genesis on, everything in the Hebrew Bible. He says that this would have included how God’s anointed one had to take on the world’s suffering, die under its weight and rise again. All of this is what we will be learning about in the next several weeks right until Pentecost. Pastor Jason will begin next week with Jesus in Torah. We will study such topics as Jesus in history, Jesus in the psalms, Jesus in prophecy. And it all comes from here where Jesus told them everything about himself in the scriptures.
But back to Emmaus. Don’t you think that by now they really must have been wondering who this was. They arrive at their destination and ask him to come to their house, and he agrees. Then more astonishing things happen. Scripture tells us that he takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it and gives it to them – and they immediately know who he is. Well, no wonder, we think. They recognize him because it’s just like the last supper. It is but they weren’t at the last supper. Had someone told them about what had happened at that meal? Or is there something intrinsically special about what we now call the communion meal? We can’t know. But suddenly their eyes are opened and at that moment, he vanishes. Again, another extraordinary event and not something we can understand.
Theologian N. T. Wright suggests that it may be that we will only ever be able to get glimpses of Christ in this life. He also posits that you need the combination of head and heart to really experience the living Christ. You need the scriptures that he told along the road, but you also need your heart to be engaged to notice the presence of Christ there, breaking bread with us, distributing it to us. I’m grateful to the Tuesday Bible study group. We had a great discussion about the necessity of connecting the mind and the heart, particularly in Western society where we tend to think that we live in our heads.
I find the next part a little amusing. Because they are human, they immediately start to rewrite history, making themselves more knowledgeable, more preceptive. “Didn't our hearts burn within us” as we were travelling along the road? The equivalent of, “We knew who he was all along.” No, they didn’t. But it’s okay because they were only human. They hadn’t known who he was all along in the same way that we don’t recognize him 2000 years later. But they do hurry back to Jerusalem immediately to spread the word, to tell the others who had stayed there that Jesus had indeed risen and had appeared to them.
Back full circle to our little kids whose eyes are wide open and who notice everything. Although my children are all grown up, small children still do notice and comment on everything. A couple of weeks ago in the middle of a piano lesson one of my students turned to me said, “Joanne, your earrings are really big today,” then turned back and continued playing. He was right. No criticism. Just noticing.
Let’s be like children and deliberately try to notice what Easter and the walk to Emmaus mean to us today. In her Easter message, Bishop Susan Bell, of Niagara said that Easter is a reversal of the story that this world wants to tell us and how it wants us to act. The world wants us to be fearful, to believe that anger and not love will eventually win. She says that will not happen because we are an easter people. She is right. We are an easter people. Even if we can only glimpse Jesus now and then, we know that he is alive and with us. We definitely caught a glimpse of Jesus on Easter Monday here at our community dinner when we joined with members of the community who really needed this dinner and about 500 meals were served. We were all in community together. There was such connection and so many excellent conversations. One person said to one of our members, “This is so wonderful. But why do you do this?” And she was able to reply that we do it because we are a church, this is what we do and really, Jesus tells us to do it.
But to really notice, we have to look around intentionally. If you’re too young to have seen the now classic movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you can stream it online. As well as playing hooky for a day and having incredible adventures, Ferris is also a bit of a philosopher. My favourite line is: “Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” So, as hard as it is, as much as the world wants us to be trudging along the dusty road, head down, rehashing everything bad that has ever happened to us, let’s not do that; let’s try to notice Jesus with us here today.
Benedictine nun Mary Lou Kownacki writes, “Easter grabs us and shouts, ‘live!’ The radiant Jesus who leaves the tomb challenges our complacency with the forces of death, be they hopelessness, fear, discouragement or lack of will. There is too much work in the world that still needs to be done.” I would add, work that we can do here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church and we can all do in the community. So, this week, let’s resolve to notice things the way children do. Eyes open. Heads up. We have been given a precious gift of life here and now. We need to look for a glimpse of Jesus. In so doing, we will know or God and make him glad. Thanks be to God.