I have posted on the walk to Emmaus that took place as it seems to reflect on our journey of life – ups and downs of it. This one I wrote in a series for Lent alongside other authors.
The resurrection narrative that recounts how Jesus appeared to the two on the way to Emmaus has always brought me great hope. Two disciples that numerous historic traditions have held as being to Cleopas and his wife Mary. (In John 19:25 Mary is described as the wife of Clopas (Aramaic origin; Cleopas being Greek).) Let’s take it (as I believe) for a moment to be a married couple.
They are not only physically walking but emotionally walking away from the place where they had so much hope. They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel but 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. Adam and Eve have to walk away from the Garden. The now-unreachable promises of God bearing heavily on them, walking with the sentence of death over them. For Mary and Cleopas the evening hour is approaching, that hour when God came in that original narrative 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 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 through history to the cross.
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.
Bread from that hand gives hope. Fresh hope. Substantial hope.