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We have come to our last Sunday in the Gospel of Luke for the next four years, mostly. Christmas Eve always comes back to Linus’ reading of Jesus’ birth.
We started with a genealogy that placed Jesus in the lineage of the Israelite people and Mary singing of the overturning of the systems, the poor and lowly being lifted up and the powerful being humbled. Those two ideas, themes, permeate this Gospel–Jesus’ deep rootedness in the law, history, and the prophets. Even though Luke didn’t write throughout, “this was to fulfill the scriptures…”, he seemed to give the readers, us, a lot of credit for knowing being able to see the connections.
Throughout the Gospel, Jesus challenges the rich, the powerful, the privilege to live lives of blessing to those with no money, power, privilege; the broken, wounded, isolated; and that challenge is often to us, that good news of the overturning of tables is often not for us, but for the benefit of those without, those on the margins, the most vulnerable; often at what it seems like as our expense. And we are supposed to rejoice over that the tables flipped, the blessing given, the challenge accepted, the love expressed.
When God showed up on earth, walked among God’s people again as the God of old had done in Genesis and with David, God did so with a young couple from the backwoods of nowhere, to unnamed and unwashed shepherds, to the oldest priest and old widow at the temple, to smelly fishermen, to sick women, to stigmatized men, to children, slaves. Jesus met them on roads, at ports, outside the synagogues, outside of community.
When we just read the story of Cleopus and his traveling companion walking to Emmaus and they being the ones the newly risen Jesus first shows up and interacts with, it doesn’t make sense. We’ve never seen Cleopus, heard his name in the story, know how he met Jesus. And to just have the other person go unnamed! Perhaps the second person was Cleopus’ wife, but this year, the silence of that person when Cleopus talks about “Some women said,” it sounds like he was talking about some women said some non-sense and I didn’t like that for his wife. My head cannon this year is that that Cleopus’ had gone with the women that morning to the tomb, saw the bedazzled men and the grave shroud, and stayed with the women in Jerusalem because Cleopus didn’t seem to believe her. Maybe it’s their son.
But, if we read the story of Cleopus and his unnamed companion in the light of the rest of the Gospel, maybe it’s exactly the way that it should be. And almost to reinforce how just like Jesus this is, and how unexpected, when Cleopus and friend return to Jerusalem to tell of their experience of the Risen Christ, the disciples are all: Peter saw him first!
There are so many reasons why the two travelers leaving Jerusalem might not have recognized Jesus. Some have suggested that maybe Jesus’ resurrected body was so changed but if we keep reading Jesus shows up and is recognized immediately. It could be he went the way of Clark Kent and put on a super extensive disguise.
But our story doesn’t say anything about that. It does say that the two travelers couldn’t see Jesus, their eyes were kept from seeing him, they were downcast in their soul, their face, maybe their eyes, they were slow of heart. Maybe their eyes were so full of tears that they couldn’t see clearly, just through the blur and soft edges of grief. Maybe it’s like running into someone you’ve only seen and talked to at the gym and you see them at the hardware store. You are certain they don’t live at the gym but they don’t belong in the world outside of it. Jesus was dead, they didn’t even think about looking for him in the world around them, even after the women had returned with their story, the story just meant they were more confused.
They did what many of us do when we’re not able to hold a moment, situation, feelings–they went for a walk, we might even assume they decided to go home because they must have thought there was nothing left for them in Jerusalem. They decided to do something, go somewhere, be elsewhere than in that room, in that waiting, in that uncomfortable uncertainty.
Slow of heart. We know that to have a heavy heart might be from grief or sad emotions. An empty heart–to be numb; to have a cold, black, dead heart is to be cruel. To have a slow heart is Bradycarida. It is a medical condition or it is found in this verse. So, as always, anyone who tells you this is exactly what it means… “of being hesitant, unwilling, or unable to grasp or accept a particular message or revelation,” is probably working off the same English translation with the same information we are.
In the time before I left Wisconsin for California in 2013. I had a plan, I was working at a church, my home was connected to the job, and things didn’t work out, not with the church, they were great, with the powers. But I had to work 6 more months, plan my next steps, help my congregation process and grieve, pack, and hold it together. I loved living in Berkeley, I get why it was so expensive in that part of California, it’s not fair but I get it. But when I got there that summer after driving across the country and the 6 months before, I didn’t feel like my heart had made the journey with me, like it had been left behind somewhere and needed to make its own journey to our new city.
I wonder if that’s what it felt like for Cleopus, like his heart had been left behind but he had to keep going because that was the only thing to do. But it’s hard to take in new information, hard to fully understand the new world around you, you hold on to what you know and what is comforting.
So maybe you don’t see that it’s Jesus on the way. Maybe the voice sounds vaguely like a song you heard but can’t remember the words. Maybe his walk is a little like a dance you once learned the steps to. But you don’t have the time, the energy, the patience, the breath to focus. Your heart is slow, your feet are walking, and your mind is speeding to the past of what happened, to the future you had hoped for, and to the future as you understand it now.
Maybe we can’t speed up our hearts to meet us, or to understand the new information coming in through our senses, or then to accept it as true. Maybe we can slow everything else down to wait for our heart to do all that.
Because slowing down is what they ultimately did, when they made it home and they sat around the table for a meal. When you sit down at a table with another, when you extend hospitality and compassion, when you engage in storytelling with someone, you cannot rush through it. It was in the slowing down, in the meal, in the story telling, that they heard the song of the one who had been telling them stories for years, saw the face of the one who they had followed, and saw the dance of the one they had walked alongside. They were able to accept it with the feeling in their guts and in their hearts.
We move through this world fast. It has been trained in us, instilled in us, and passed down through generations from long written letters to telegraphs to email to text messages. From one little store that can order you something like that to having anything at your door in the next hour. We run our lives on the calendar, the clock, the timer. We drive, 10 over the speed limit, and are pretty sure we can make that light because we’re going to be late!
I wonder if we have speed by Jesus. In need of care, on the side of the road, at the gas station, in the parking lot, with a sign, a dog, a coffee cup, broken English, no English. In the grocery store, with a screaming child, no children, bruised face, holding on by a thread, with headphones, wallet full, EBT card.
But you have to get where you’re going, you just have to get through the grocery shopping, you just have to… but your heart breaks, or burns, you hear a song of joy or a song of lament in their voice, you see in their movements and familiar dance. and your heart breaks, and your heart burns, and your heart sings along.
And when we move too fast, we can’t see what our sense are telling us, there is the Risen Christ in the face of the stranger, in the face of a friend, in the face of immigrant, in the face of a neighbor, in the face of the widow, in the face of one with who is waiting to be reminded that love doesn’t hurt, who is looking for love, in one who is lonely, in a crowd. In every person, every person in need, every person seeking, every person who is “different,” every person who is on the margins, on the cusp of something, everyone.
I think it’s perfect that we didn’t know anything about Cleopus or his traveling companion. We don’t know anything about Emmaus. There are somewhere between 3 and 9 sites that might be Emmaus, but also might not. The late Biblical scholar Marcus Borg talks about this story that the Emmaus and the road are nowhere, yet, and so, it happens everywhere.
The Risen Christ is still walking with us, still meeting us on the way whether we are speeding on our way to the next thing or we are slowly pacing up and down the halls. Christ is still showing up to reveal God to us, rooted in our history of love and in the prophets’ words calling for justice and the people who live that love and justice, who slow down to show hospitality, compassion, to hear a story, to break bread, to look each other in the eyes.
Christ is Risen in you, in me, in the stranger. Christ is Risen Indeed.