Easter III 2020

Lelio Orsi -- Walk to Emmaus

• Acts 2:14a, 36-41  • 
• Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19  • 
• 1 Peter 1:17-23  • 
• Luke 24:13-35

The Gospel story for this Sunday recounts one of the best known and most intriguing of Christ’s Resurrection appearances. Commonly known as ‘The Road to Emmaus’, this brief story has inspired hundreds of artists, including great masters such as Duccio, Titian, Caravaggio, Velasquez and Rembrandt. In fact, its popularity among painters made it a perfect subject for the world’s most famous art forgery – a ‘Disciples at Emmaus’ ostensibly by the celebrated Vermeer, but in reality by the unknown van Meegeren.

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​The episode is unique to Luke’s Gospel, and what makes it so intriguing is its ordinariness. Last week’s Gospel (from John) related Christ’s appearance in an upper room behind locked doors. There is mysteriousness about this that provides the context for Thomas’s understandable doubts. Luke’s account of the Emmaus appearance is quite different. To begin with, these ‘disciples’ were not among the twelve, and though their sadness and puzzlement about the death of Jesus is palpable, the journey they are on seems to be for some practical purpose of everyday life. Most striking of all, unlike the disciples in the upper room, they do not recognize Jesus straight away. Instead, they walk along the road with him for quite some time, engaging in conversation and assuming he is just another traveller. The moment of recognition only comes when the journey ends. Then, quite suddenly, they recognize him by the characteristic gesture with he breaks a loaf of bread for supper.

Caravaggio - Supper at Emmaus

​The story of Christ’s appearance to these unnamed disciples has particular appeal because it resonates so well with the vast majority of Christians. People who are neither saints nor mystics, will think and wonder about Jesus from time to time, but for the most part they are just getting on with the business of life. The Road to Emmaus alerts us to the possibility that, alongside special ‘upper room’ experiences, the presence of Christ in the world can also be experienced in ordinary life -- suddenly, and surprisingly. He is revealed in the people and events of everyday, and sometimes in the most unexpected places. As Mother Theresa memorably said, Christ was to be found among dying and degraded human beings on the streets of Calcutta, albeit in ‘his most distressing disguise’.

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Vincent van Gogh -- A Village Street

​These little ‘epiphanies’ in everyday life invite us to repeat the same ‘question and answer’ that we find in this week's reading from Acts. “What should we do?”, Peter’s hearers asked him. His answer was: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven”. Those of us who were baptized long ago, often in infancy, obviously cannot respond in the same way as early converts. Yet as the practice of renewing baptismal vows implies, we can makes efforts to acknowledge again and again the reality of which this week's Epistle reminds us. We know that it is not by the ‘silver or gold’ we spend so much of our time securing that we ‘have been ransomed from futile ways of life’ inherited from our history, but by the ‘death of Jesus’. Fully grasping this deep truth requires regular spiritual renewal. The story of Emmaus provides a compelling model of how that can happen, how we can be spiritually surprised 'on the road'. With such renewal we are enabled once more to make the voice of this Sunday's Psalmist our own:  “O LORD, I am your servant. You have loosed my bonds.”

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