Acts 2:14, 22–28; 1 Peter 1:17–21 Luke 24:13–35
The hope of the two men on the road to Emmaus was that Jesus would set Israel free. Luke does not specify just what freedom they had in mind but more than likely it was about Israel’s freedom from the Roman yoke, leading to the reestablishment of the Israelite state. But the freedom that Jesus brings is something at once more particular and more universal. It is freedom from the yoke of sin that troubles everyone, whether Jew or Gentile, and that turns us into oppressors driven by fear of the other. In order to be free, we need to ‘see’ our liberator and the kind of liberation that he brings. Luke’s wonderful story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus unfolds key stages in this liberating experience.
The story begins in a way that reminds one of the defeat of a cause: the former community of believers is now fragmented and leaving Jerusalem, the scene of Jesus’ brutal end. The two disciples are no doubt part of a much larger group that had followed him to Jerusalem—Lk 29:37 speaks of a whole multitude. They now return home in dribs and drabs. There is a sense that it is all past tense (‘our hope had been’, but not any more). Jesus seeks out those trapped in hopelessness.
The women’s report that angels have told them Jesus is alive has astounded them (NRSV; the verb can mean ‘disturb’) but not changed them. Why? A clue is that there is no report of anyone seeing Jesus ‘alive’. The disciples, both those in Jerusalem and those on the way, think of resuscitation not resurrection; it would mean that Jesus has in some way cheated death and come back to them again. We take the doctrine of the resurrection so much for granted that we tend to forget what a revolution in thinking it really is. Perhaps we, like them, tend to think of it in some sense ‘like’ resuscitation. To grasp something of the resurrection, one’s horizons need to be transformed; the revelation that is the resurrection is itself a liberation, an opening of our eyes by God.
How are the eyes of faithful yet blind disciples to be opened? We all think within a context and these men have been operating within the context of their understanding of the Scriptures (for them of course the Old Testament) and how they linked Jesus, ‘a great prophet’, to the great prophets of the Scriptures. Jesus challenges them to look at the Scriptures again, this time through his eyes, and see that the passage of the Christ through suffering and death to glory is in reality the fulfillment of the Scriptures. In fulfilling the Scriptures Jesus transforms their meaning: the claim of the gospel is that he is the only one who can reveal the full meaning of the Scriptures.
The climactic moment of freedom from hopelessness, from a reluctance to believe the message of the women, from a limited understanding of Scripture, comes in the breaking of the bread. It is well recognised that Luke is here alluding to the Eucharist. As the breaking of the bread in this story is the moment when the resurrected one reveals himself by ‘opening their eyes’, so the presence of the Lord Jesus is ‘revealed’ to the eyes of faith in the Eucharist. It is the same Christ who suffered, died and entered into glory who is present to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and to any community celebrating the Eucharist.
The final scene in this story touches a central aspect of the freedom that Jesus brings—the freedom from sin in all its forms. In a sign of the reestablishment of the fragmented community of Jesus, the two disciples return to the others in Jerusalem and there are told that Jesus ‘has risen and has appeared to Simon’. Note the change in terminology from the disciples’ earlier words about Jesus being reported to be ‘alive’ to ‘he has risen’. A transformation of faith has occurred; the past is seen in a new light and in being seen in this way it can be embraced with all its faults and failings. But the point that particularly strikes me in the context of Luke’s Gospel is the focus here on Simon/Peter. Luke alone of the Evangelists reports how, after Peter had denied his Lord three times, Jesus turned and looked at him. Peter turned away and wept. Jesus has now come to free Peter from a burden too heavy to bear: the realisation that he had betrayed his saviour.