Emmaus – Perspectives

The resurrection narrative that recounts how Jesus appeared to the two on the way to Emmaus has always brought me great hope (Luke 24:13-35). Two disciples that numerous historic traditions have held as being Cleopas and his wife Mary. (In Jn. 19:25 Mary is described as the wife of Clopas (Aramaic origin; Cleopas being Greek).) Let’s take it for a moment to be a married couple (my conviction, or at least Luke has written it that way to help us engage with the text).

They are not only physically walking but emotionally walking away from the place where they had been living with so much hope. They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel but, post-crucifixion, are now devastated. It seems that Luke is drawing on the narrative of another couple who walked devastated with what had taken place for them. Let’s jump back to that story: Adam and Eve have to walk away from the Garden. The now-unreachable promises of God bearing heavily on them, and they walk with the sentence of death on them. For Mary and Cleopas the evening hour is approaching, that hour when God would come to visit in the Garden. Cleopas and Mary are completely unaware who has come to walk with them, and I suggest that when Adam and Eve (and all those who follow generationally) left their Garden they were completely unaware that they did not walk simply as a lone couple, but a Stranger walked with them, for God did not stay in the Garden but walked also with them, sharing the ‘sentence’ of death with them. God walked it all the way to the place of the incarnation and through the cross, until Jesus becomes a ‘life-giving Spirit’.

This Emmaus walk is one that we often take. Hopes have taken a bash or are even gone. And we don’t walk alone for we are accompanied by shame, disappointment, regret, guilt or another equally burdensome emotion. But Emmaus tells us we do not walk alone. We might use different words to ‘And it is the third day since all this happened’ to express the depth of the loss of hope. But I think heaven responds with those same words. There is a third day when he meets us on the way and invites us to take bread again from his hands.

What an event! The birth of new creation marked by the raising from the dead of the ‘firstborn of all creation’, closely followed by a whole group of saints in Jerusalem also being resurrected (only Matthew records this, but it indicates a major time warp). Then the first appearance and being identified as the ‘Gardener’ highlights the connection back to the former garden… and then.

The road to Emmaus.

If not a married couple, Luke records it in such a way that we are to think it is a married couple… but a married couple I strongly consider it is: Cleopas and his wife Mary. The man is revealed as Cleopas (Lk. 24:18), and we have his wife identified in John’s Gospel (variant of name Cleopas is used Clopas, variants not being unusual also where Aramaic and Hebrew languages being similar are quoted):

but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene (Jn. 19:25).

The parallels (explicit and implicit) are incredible. Imagine the two leaving Eden. The discussion, the heavy hearts, the disappointment. The road to Emmaus and also the heavy discussion, perhaps even the ‘he let us down in the end’ discussion.

Then the day is closing, the evening is drawing in, as they walk with a ‘stranger’. Just like that other Garden when God came to visit at the ‘cool of the day’, certainly a stranger to them.
Their action in Eden caused their eyes to be opened (to shame); he breaks the bread and their eyes were opened.
They leave Eden with the ‘death’ consequence ringing in their ears; they talk to the stranger informing him that the one who carried the hope for the future had been ‘condemned to death’.
Behind them was a cherubim with a flaming sword that stood guard so that access to the tree of life was banned to them; but the flame no longer external but burning now within them (Lk. 24:32).

I am sure there are more parallels, but here on resurrection morning, with the birth of ‘new creation’ that changes sight (2 Cor. 5:16,17 – kaine ktisis -‘new creation’, not new creature… see up to date translations) there is so much to see.

Sight all the way back to the beginning. The original commission is re-established; the future placed in the hands of humanity again. Placed in the hands of humanity for when they were expelled from Eden a stranger walked every step with them. Unrecognised, unrecognised even by the righteous who could (as did Jesus) quote Psalm 22 ‘My God, My God why have you forsaken me’. They might have left with the sound of ‘death’ in their ears but the Living God left Eden also carrying the consequence of death in his heart, trudging through the dust with them.

(And as we continue to read in Psalm 22

For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help (Ps. 22:24).

We realise that God did not turn away from Jesus on the cross. Far from it, he was ‘in Christ reconciling the world to himself’. Even the final words of Jesus on the cross ‘it is finished’ are likely to be a response to the last words of Psalm 22 – ‘he has done it’. The idea that God turned away from Jesus on the cross does not bear up – there is no split in the Trinity, not even a ‘creative dispute’!)

The path from Eden for God was the path to the cross; the path for humanity was to the tree of Life. The cross was indeed the final door closed to the tree of knowledge of good and evil that religion in particular has always sought to cultivate. Right / wrong are such sub-criteria in Scripture, the overriding criteria being that of life and death.

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live (Deut. 30:19).

The resurrection.

Tells us God was with us and never left humanity. He walked from the Garden, determined that he would restore not a Garden but the whole of creation for and with us, where we could invite his permanent presence to be with us (no going to heaven then).
It tells us that we cannot flee from his presence; that he does not hide his face from us.
It tells us that the restoration of gender equality is essential for the way forward (and also what lies beyond gender, for there is not ‘male and female’).
It gives us sight back – to Eden and original purpose, and forward – to new creation; a creation that appears in contrast to this one as feminised, incomplete but to be explored (with the eschaton as both and end and a beginning).
It gives us new lenses to see others. Not through the lenses of categorisation but the lens of ‘image’, the ultimate lens being the Jesus’ lens.

Little wonder the couple did not sleep that night but made their way back to Jerusalem to tell the others. We live in that flow. The flow of resurrection.

Tag: Emmaus

Emmaus encounter

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