I'm having a lot of fun thinking about today's story on the road to Emmaus while I'm traveling by plane, train, and automobile to Wisconsin for a retreat called "Dreams and Visions." It all fits the Gospel story like baby bear's porridge: just right. I'm seeing people I haven't sat down with in years, we are sharing stories and meals and while it's not just like old times, it comes pretty close. Riding the train from Midway airport in Chicago, the automatic voice of the announcer saying 'in the direction of travel, doors open on the left,' very nearly got me choked up. Four good years I spent in this 'second city,' and while I don't know it like the back of my hand, there are quirks about it, certain streets and neighborhoods, full of memories, of good times, times spent with people who are now so very dear to me I can't imagine what life was like before I knew them, which makes living so far from them, though all of us are scattered, bittersweet. We've most of us gotten where we were aiming to go, but that means we are no longer with each other.
When Cleopas and his companion were leaving the Passover festivities in Jerusalem to head back home to Emmaus, was it a road they had traveled every year, or had this been their first visit, out of excitement to see this new Rabbi? Had they first walked that road as younger men, off to do their religious duty and worship at the central temple, growing up a little more each year as they traveled, to remember with the whole community the great works of God who had brought them forth out of slavery in Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm? Had they celebrated that story while under Roman occupation for their whole lives, praying and hoping God would send another miracle of freedom so they would no longer have to live under suspicion from the great military force which threatened and mocked their every tradition and holy place? What were their joys and hopes on that road between the great city and their hometown?
They tell their fellow traveler, though a stranger to them, that they had hoped for the redemption of Israel, some kind of freedom, to be bought back from their oppressors, maybe even reunited again into one kingdom. They had set their hearts on this one man and then seen him tortured and killed by their own religious leaders, in cahoots with the Roman authorities. So much for separation of church and state. What betrayal! What tragedy! What a mess! What did they have any more to trust in and hope for if their own chief priests and scribes had handed their hope over to the government for crucifixion?
No wonder they were looking sad when Jesus caught up with them. No wonder they could not recognize their shepherd walking with them through the valley of the shadow of death. So Jesus has to take them by baby steps through the story they just celebrated, that great Exodus from slavery into freedom, the way we might tell stories at the Easter Vigil, huddled up in the dark of Good Friday waiting for our own resurrection. Beginning with Moses and the prophets, he opened to them the scriptures, reminding them of God's promises, God's faithfulness, God's history with God's own chosen people through generations of wandering and fighting and wandering some more. God's people are always a bit unsettled, it seems. We walk the margins between here and there, between life and death, between belonging to each other and bearing witness as a light to the nations who do not know God as intimately. We have been brought into this story as a gift, and now the story is also ours, so we tell it over and over again to remind us of the God to whom we belong.
We tell this story on the road, between here and there, between life and life, and Jesus himself is in the story, in the telling of it, in the space between us as we are drawn together by it. We may not recognize him on the road. We may be caught up in memories of days gone by, in hopes we have not seen realized, in whatever fears and distractions that keep us awake at night, but Jesus is there walking along the road with us, reminding us of the resurrection which is more true than anything we could have hoped for. It may not look or feel like anything fancy, for Cleopas and his companion it was simply the prayer of thanksgiving and the breaking of bread together, which we share, too, every time we gather at the table for communion. But whether we are on a road we have traveled many times before, or starting off for someplace new, Jesus walks with us, hidden in plain sight, sharing with us God's faithfulness to the promise of freedom.
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