Road to Emmaus, by Daniel Bonnell
Cleopas and their companion encounter the risen Christ later in the afternoon, as evening is approaching.
It seems clear that they prefer the 5:00pm liturgy at St. Paul’s.
It all lines up, when you look at it. They get together later in the day, as the sun is descending in the west. They are away from the center of things, which for them is Jerusalem, but for us at St. Paul’s, I suppose, is upstairs, in the bright morning. As they walk together, they talk and discuss, and they need a long walk for this discussion, because the news of Resurrection is always disorienting, always provoking not answers but questions, not a definite way forward, but a crossroads. Then, their encounter with the Risen One happens when they are circled around a Table, much like this one. And Cleopas and their companion are “journey, not destination” people: they are on the road back from Emmaus almost as quickly as they arrived, their steps motivated not by a firm plan, but by a desire to understand, a desire to be close to Christ, and a desire to share that Good News with others.
Yeah, these two hikers are 5:00pm liturgy people.
We follow their steps week by week: we gather down here when it is almost evening and the day is nearly over. When we gather, Christ appears beside us, though we may not always recognize him for who he is. Sometimes, when I’m sitting in this chair, turned away from the door, I don’t know who is making gentle noises behind me, coming through the door, conversing with a greeter, and scanning the room for an empty chair. But this community down here, this evening-time, Emmaus community, inspires me to assume that the guest is Christ.
Then, like the Emmaus hikers, we “walk together,” at least figuratively speaking, while Christ opens the scriptures to us. I’ve heard some of the best proclamations of scripture here at this liturgy, which over the years has made room for artists and actors, liturgists and theologians, and really all of us, to take our turn at the ambo – ambo, a fancy church word for reading stand – and proclaim the Word. And of course Christ inspires us as we open the scriptures together in this circle, sharing our reflections, our ideas, our questions – sometimes our laments, and occasionally even our rants.
And then, again with Christ warmly welcome to join us, we gather at the Table, this Table, where the bread is broken and it all comes together. The risen Christ is here, and we recognize him in the faces of one another, gathered in the glow of evening, gathered in anticipation but also, maybe, fear: fear about where Christ is leading us, who Christ is forming us to be, what Christ is doing to transform this clutch of evening disciples into his own Body. It’s a holy fear, really, not just anxiety or apprehension. It’s the kind of fear a person feels when their heart is burning.
And then we go from here, just as those hikers did, Cleopas and their unnamed companion – unnamed, perhaps, because she is us. It may be a literary device for Luke, the third evangelist, a way to elegantly insert you and me into the story. Cleopas is walking with an unnamed companion because we are that companion. We are there. Cleopas is here. Emmaus is now. And so the city we run back to in this very same hour is not Jerusalem. The city where we find the eleven and their companions gathered together is Seattle, this city, benighted by an endless winter-spring in-between time when the sun refuses to come out for weeks on end.
But the clouds and shadows are okay with us, because we are Emmaus walkers: we are evening people. We recognize Christ when the sun is diminished, when the evening shadows are lengthening. We may not be thrilled with the clouds of Seattle – the literal clouds, or the metaphorical ones, the clouds of housing shortages and low wages and crumbling infrastructure, the clouds of a modern American city suffering the effects of our troubled national political life, the clouds of climate anxiety and racialized violence and poor access to healthcare… That’s … not fun. But Christ is with us; we see Christ when we break the bread, and when we are sent from here as Christ’s broken-open people, eager to plunge back into the city to tell what had happened on the road, and how Christ was made known to us in the breaking of the bread.
And so I invite you, close friend of Cleopas, fellow hiker with me in the late afternoon, gathering at Table when the sun goes down – I invite you to evangelize me. Tell me: how do you recognize Christ in this room, around this Table, as evening comes and the day is now nearly over?
What has Christ revealed to you?
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This was preached as the prompt for a shared homily at the 5:00pm liturgy at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington, on the Third Sunday of Easter (Year A), April 23, 2023.
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35