The biblical story, as reported in Luke’s gospel (24:13-35) about what happened on the road away from Jerusalem and towards Emmaus is a classic story: something so radically outside the realm of our expectations happens that we can’t believe it. We can’t believe our eyes, our ears. These followers of Jesus knew that he had died—dead and gone.
I remember such a feeling when I saw the bare body of my dead father, his frail bony legs hanging limply over the arms of the big burly funeral director who carried him from his home. I knew he was very sick with esophageal cancer. The surgery to remove the tumor had left him unable to swallow. I knew he was going to die. He was only seventy-one. I knew I’d received a call from my mother early that Sunday morning that “Daddy died.” I, with my sister and mother, had kept vigil, taking turns for days as my father moved through his dying process. It took nearly a week. I timed his groans— every fifteen minutes as he tossed and turned on the pillow. The nurse said he wasn’t in pain. Was he wrestling with “demons” or himself or God? I thought I would die from helplessness just listening and counting. I knew my father was dying, yet when I saw him dead I did not believe it. I could not believe it. My love was not ready for this death.
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A neutral Jewish historian at the end of the first century reported: “When Pilate, upon hearing him (Jesus) accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemn him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (from “Overture” The Gospel of Jesus, by scholar John Dominic Crossan.)
Does this mean that these early Christians were stunned by their disbelief as if it were a delusion, or did it mean that some kinds of love never dies? I don’t know. But I do know that Emmaus-like experiences happen all the time. The couple in this Emmaus story left the crucifixion scene and walked along the road, incredulous. Of course they talked, trying to understand the incredible death. The gossip and the wondering ran wild. Who do we believe? How will we know? A stranger came along and asked them what they were talking about. They told him of Jesus’s death, and their incredulity.
Later that evening they invited this stranger to join them for more conversation and a meal. In the meal, the breaking of the bread, they recognized the meal we now call the Communion/Eucharist, the meal Jesus had told them to keep on doing for remembrance and for ongoing sanctification of Truth. Suddenly, they remembered all they had experienced in their travels with Jesus. Yes, he was dead and yes, he still was alive with them in this meal. Only then did they race back to Jerusalem in high spirits, proclaiming the aliveness of Jesus the Christ/Messiah.
Crossan wrote: “The symbolism is obvious, as is the metaphoric condensation of the first years of Christian thought and practice in one parabolic afternoon. Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”
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Some time after Dad died I rummaged through his drawers to find some kind of memory. I found his old faded golf sweater. I put it on. Its sleeves hung down well below my hands. I smelled the scent of his cigarettes, poked my fingers into the little holes made in the sweater by cigarette ash. I wore that old sweater on and off for some years, until one day, I knew I would never forget my father and his dumb toxic habits, nor his love for me and mine for him. That day I rolled up the sweater and placed it gently into the trash basket with a gentle pat. My father was dead. My father remains alive in my heart.
Will I see him again? I don’t know, nor do I much care. Remembering is enough. Loving and writing the memories is enough. Continuing to celebrate the sacramental meal Jesus instituted in God’s name is enough to keep the Love he preached alive—to trust and reenact its potency always. AMEN.
