Jesus (59 page)

C
HAPTER
23

Emmaus

“Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

W
E GOT LOST ON
the road to Emmaus. On our way back from Galilee to Jerusalem, after visiting the River Jordan, George and I decided to visit the site of one of the most beloved Gospel stories.

Losing our way wasn't surprising. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's guidebook adduces as many as
four
places that claim to be Emmaus, where Jesus appeared to two of the disciples after the Resurrection. Much of the confusion stems from two ways of translating the distance mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Some ancient copies of Luke say that Emmaus was 160 stadia (31 kilometers) from Jerusalem; others say 60.

The oldest tradition situates it at Emmaus-Nicopolis, a town mentioned by St. Jerome in the third century, which today is near the Trappist monastery of Latrun. The other three claimants are: Abu Ghosh, which boasts a twelfth-century Crusader church; Qubeiba, a town venerated since the sixteenth century; and, finally, an even more ancient town called Emmaus, nearer to Jerusalem, whose name was supplanted after the emperor Vespasian sent Roman troops in
AD
70 to establish a colony, which eventually subsumed the old city. That last location might be the most accurate, but after the town was “lost” its absence gave rise to other claimants, which now have a longer history of veneration by pilgrims.
¹

Confused? So were we. In the end, I remembered Drew, my editor at
America
magazine, waxing eloquent about the beauty of one site. “Don't miss Abu Ghosh,” he said several times.

An hour outside of Jerusalem, the town of Abu Ghosh was easy to find. Inside the city limits, we spied a gleaming white statue of Mary atop a Benedictine monastery that crowns the highest point in the hilly city. Our guidebook described a Crusader-era church and historic mosaics and, to further whet our pilgrim appetites, noted that the town had for twenty years allegedly been the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Indiana Jones sprang to mind.

In a few minutes we spotted a blue sign reading “Crusader Church” with a helpful arrow. This would be easy. George drove up the hill, in the direction of the arrow until we reached a drab, cinder-block school, which had nothing to do with the monastery.

“Where are we?” asked George.

Carefully we traced our way back to the sign and started over. Fifteen minutes later we were at a dead end, though we could still see the statue of Mary, looking down at us, somewhat mournfully I thought.

“Uh!” said George. “Who puts up signs that don't
work
?”

On the third try, we nearly got trapped in a roundabout and almost collided with a small white van. Its passengers shook their fists at us.

Finally George said, “Let's go to the
next
Emmaus.”

The Emmaus near the monastery of Latrun held more appeal for George, because of its identification with the Good Thief crucified alongside of Jesus. In his ministry to prisoners, George often uses this Gospel character as an entrée to the compassion of Jesus. While Jesus hangs on the cross between two thieves, one says, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” The other thief (known as Dismas from later manuscripts) rebukes the impenitent thief, saying that though the two of them had sinned, Jesus had done nothing wrong.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom,” says the Good Thief. Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
²

Latrun was sometimes said to be the birthplace of the Good Thief, and George had read about a chapel in the monastery dedicated to the patron saint of prisoners, which he much hoped to see. The word
Latrun
comes from either the words
Castellum bonu Latronis
(“Fortress of the Good Thief”) or the Crusader-era
Le Toron des Chevaliers
(“Castle of the Knights”). Over time these two names supposedly evolved into Latrun. Yes, I know, more confusion.

We spied the towers of the Abbaye Notre Dame de Latroun from the highway. After our frustrating experience at Abu Ghosh, Latrun was easy to find. As we pulled into the driveway, I had consoling thoughts of a cool, quiet, spacious chapel where we could pray for an hour or two. There were many notable sites in Latrun, said our guidebook, and I cheerfully ticked them off for George: a Crusader-era church, a Byzantine monastery, a modern-day Trappist monastery, and even some Roman baths. I couldn't wait. We pulled up to the monastery gates.

To find them closed.

“Closed from 11:00 to 3:30,” George read from the sign posted.

“They're closed for
four and a half hours
?” I said. “What are they
doing
?”

“Praying?” said George.

I protested that the Trappist monasteries in the States at least allowed you to enter their chapels while the monks were going about their monastic business.

We pounded on the immense wooden doors and rang the bells, fruitlessly.

On the lush grass outside the monastery walls were small rectangular stones marked with crosses. I was confused. Not only couldn't we figure out which Emmaus was real, but the ones we were able to locate didn't pan out. We couldn't see what we wanted to see. George was disappointed that we wouldn't see the chapel of St. Dismas.

“Well, if we can't see the place, at least we can read the story,” he said, and we opened up my New Testament to the Gospel of Luke. It too is a story about confusion and about seeing.

O
N THE DAY OF
the first Easter, a disciple named Cleopas and his friend
³
are discussing the events surrounding the Crucifixion, as they journey to whatever Emmaus was the real Emmaus. They are walking west, into the sunset, at the close of day, which adds an element of melancholy to the tale that Luke tells.

As they walk along the road, they are joined by a mysterious stranger, whom they do not recognize. Luke, however, tells the reader plainly who it is: the Risen Christ. Strangely, though, the disciples' “eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

When Christ asks the two what they are talking about, at first they simply stand there, silently, “looking sad.” (The Greek word,
estathēsan
, implies coming to a complete stop on the road.
⁴
) Then Cleopas says, somewhat sharply, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” They recount for him in detail the story of Jesus of Nazareth, who was “mighty in deed and word.”

They then sadly describe the events of the Crucifixion and share with him their crushed hopes: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” You can hear their dejection as they explain what they wanted to happen, instead of what did happen. But they also share the confusing news reported from “women of our group” of Jesus's empty tomb and even “that he was alive.” Some have returned to the tomb and found it just as the women had described.

“We had hoped” may be the saddest words in the New Testament. All of us have known the sorrow of having high expectations dashed. We fall in love, hoping this might be the right person for us, but then a messy breakup comes, and we are left alone. We start a new job filled with excitement and then can barely believe how miserable the work becomes. Recently one of my friends told me that his child had received a terrible evaluation from a psychologist, crushing many of his loving desires for his child. “We had hoped.”

Among the saddest of lost hopes is a miscarriage—where dreams for a child give way to sorrow. You thrill to the exciting news of a friend's pregnancy, and you listen with anticipation over the next few months as she and her husband tell you about visiting the doctor, buying furniture for the baby's room, purchasing baby clothes, celebrating at the baby shower, and arranging the details for the delivery. And then you hear the awful news. All that planning and hoping and dreaming have ended. It is an unspeakable sadness. “We had hoped.” These are the words of the disciples; they are crushed and lost.

Far from not knowing “the things that have taken place,” the stranger explains why Jesus had to suffer, according to the Scriptures. He even scolds them for not understanding how these things had been foretold. “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” Jesus then interprets for them the passages in Scripture that refer to himself. For the confused disciples, Jesus makes sense of things.

Here is an irony we have seen often in the Gospel stories: Those who supposedly don't know anything in fact know everything—like a demon-possessed man who identifies Jesus early in the Gospel of Mark. And the ones who should know—like the learned scribes and Pharisees, or the disciples, particularly as portrayed in the Gospel of Mark—continue to misunderstand him. The secret knowledge here in Luke's Gospel is similar to the Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark, but with a twist. Here the Messianic Secret is revealed by the Messiah himself, though his identity escapes the notice of the two disciples, who were given repeated signs of who Jesus was.

All this may seem obvious to those of us who read the story today. Of course it must be Jesus! Who else would it be? How could the disciples not have expected something wonderful to happen? But we are looking backward, at the past from the present, when the disciples are leading their lives forward—as we do today.

After the two disciples press the stranger to stay with them in an inn or in their house, he agrees. The resurrected Jesus does not force himself on the people he meets; he waits for an invitation.

Then, over dinner, he distributes the bread in a striking way. “He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” It is the familiar pattern:
take, bless, break, give
, which occurs in the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes and the Last Supper. Perhaps Cleopas and the other disciple were present at both of those events. Just then “their eyes were opened,” and they suddenly recognize who he is.

A beautiful painting by Caravaggio, “The Supper at Emmaus,” completed in 1601, depicts this precise moment. Jesus sits at a rough-hewn table between the two disciples. Poised over the tabletop, Jesus extends his right hand, having pronounced the blessing. The disciple on the right, on whose garment is pinned a scallop shell—the symbol of the pilgrim—is stunned by the sudden revelation of the stranger's identity. He flings his arms wide as he stares at Jesus. And, in my favorite depiction of surprise in the history of art, the other disciple grips tightly the arms of his chair. He seems ready to spring from his seat entirely, unable to control himself, or perhaps he is hanging on for dear life.

As Luke tells the story, as soon as the two recognize him at table, Jesus “vanished from their sight.” Not surprisingly, the disciples castigate themselves for their inability to realize who was in front of them. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” Scripture and daily life are both places in which to recognize Jesus.

After Cleopas and his friend race home to Jerusalem—seven miles!—they are told that Jesus has already appeared to Peter. “The Lord has risen indeed!” they say, “and he has appeared to Simon!”
⁵
Then the two recount to the disciples how Jesus became known to them “in the breaking of the bread.” Notice that after Jesus vanishes, he leaves behind the bread, the Eucharist, as a sign of his presence in the community.

The Road to Emmaus is a story packed with deeply human emotions, familiar to anyone who has suffered loss and seeks hope: the sorrow that Cleopas and the other disciple express about their dashed hopes, their petulance about the stranger's seeming indifference toward the news of the day, their shock over the baffling report of the empty tomb, their frustration that they had missed seeing Jesus when he was in front of them, and the enthusiasm of hearts that “burned within them.”
⁶
The story also demonstrates how the disciples came to understand the Resurrection not only through direct experience of the Risen Lord, but by reflecting on it
together
, as a community.

T
HE
R
OAD TO
E
MMAUS
is also a story suffused with mystery. To begin with, the identity of the disciples is confusing. One, of course, goes unnamed. And the one named Cleopas is mentioned nowhere else in the Gospels, unless he is the “Clopas” in John.
⁷
Further adding to the mystery is, as George and I discovered, the controverted location of the town itself.

But the main mystery is this: Why couldn't the two disciples recognize Jesus, of all people? Luke has already attempted an explanation: “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” In Greek, their eyes were “held” from recognizing him.

What could this mean? It strains credulity to imagine that Cleopas and his friend, who are obviously distraught about the death of Jesus, wouldn't notice the person who was the subject of their conversation. Presumably they had spent months following their master, watching him perform miracles, and listening carefully to his words, probably concentrating on his face as he spoke. Obviously they knew what he looked like.

Two explanations suggest themselves. The first is a “natural” explanation, the second a more “supernatural” one.

The natural explanation is that Jesus might have purposely hidden his face with a hood or similar covering. Perhaps he wanted to conceal himself to avoid frightening them. After all, Jesus is supposed to be dead, and it would terrify people if he suddenly emerged in the dusky evening.

But it's hard to believe a disguise would work. When the stranger started explaining Scripture to Cleopas and his friend, they probably stared at him in disbelief, as if to say, “Who
is
this guy?” And while at table, it's even less likely that his face could be concealed. An even less plausible (but common) explanation is that because the disciples were traveling into the sunset, the dazzling sun prevented them from seeing him. But that hoary explanation fails as soon as they enter the inn.