In the Breaking of the Bread

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

And he said to them, "What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?" And they stood still, looking sad.

Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?" And he said to them, "What things?"

And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

"Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see."

And he said to them, "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent." So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?"

And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
—Luke 24:13-35

Perhaps one way we can describe Christian life is to say that it is the continual rediscovery of the face of Jesus in those around us. Suddenly, very often when we least expect it, a word is said, an expression alters in an unexplored face, we glimpse a grief in someone whom we thought too petrified to contain grief, and the idea we had of that other person is demolished. We find ourselves in the presence of a huge mystery. That face seemed so easily mapped, so safely flat, a kind of dull wallpaper. Yet suddenly a seam is revealed, a door swings open, and we are in Christ's presence.

We know how those two disciples felt as they made their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus. What sorrow it is to discover someone who means so much to you is not the person you had thought. You discover, for example, that someone whose books have shifted the foundations of your life, who has helped shape your faith and your vocation, is actually extraordinarily vain and superficial, a vacuum cleaner sucking in whatever he can get from those around him. At his typewriter his great subject is God, but in person his great subject is himself. And the discovery is deeply wounding. Our heroes aren't as different from ourselves as we want them to be.

Certainly the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Christ, certainly he was an immense disappointment to most of his disciples. He was very human. He was a prophet, as they told the stranger who joined them on the road, "a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people," and yet he proved to be as vulnerable as any of Israel's countless dissenters, as easily made to bleed as any Jew. The religious leaders and secular overlords had condemned him to death and, without the intervention of legions of angels, the sentence had been carried out with the Romans' familiar grim efficiency.

"But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." We had hoped that, through his mighty power, we would be liberated at last from our humiliations, from the Roman occupation, the ruthless Roman presence, liberated from tax collectors and collaborators and executioners.

But now he is dead. Three days have passed and the world is unchanged. The executioners are still in charge. The wicked prosper. The moneychangers have repaired their tables, and it's business as usual both in the marketplace and in the cathedral.

The stranger on the road seemed to be a fool. He didn't know what was going on. "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem," they asked, "who hasn't heard?" His response wasn't notably tactful. It was they who were the foolish ones, he said. Not only slow of brain, he said, but slow of heart. They didn't understand, in fact they didn't believe, all that the sacred texts had promised from ancient times: a wounded healer, a man whose bones would be crushed as if in the jaw of a lion.

NOT ONLY DID THEY disbelieve the prophecies, they didn't even believe the testimony of those in their own community who came running back from the empty tomb. It was the women, unlike the male disciples (John being the only exception we know of), who had the courage to stand by Jesus in the hours of his suffering and death. It was women who had gone to the tomb and met "angels"—messengers of God.

"Some women of our company amazed us." They were amazed, but not at all convinced.

The women had said that Jesus was alive. But the men couldn't believe it. Mark also writes about this. Mary Magdalene, he says, actually saw Jesus and then went to tell "those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept ... but they would not believe" (Mark 16:10,11). Even Mary Magdalene, says John, had been slow to recognize Jesus. In one of those heart-stopping details John occasionally offers, he writes that she thought the man was a gardener. It was only when he spoke her name—"Mary!"—that she suddenly knew who it was and recognized him whose feet she had once washed in her own tears and dried with her own hair. Perhaps at the tomb, crying again, tears had blurred her vision.

As the stranger on the road talked with the two heartbroken refugees of the events of this tragic Passover, their hearts "began to burn within them." The fire in their hearts that had blazed at least from the day Jesus arrived in Jerusalem—greeted by crowds crying "Hosanna!"—had gone out with the crucifixion. Their hearts and hopes had perished with his body. They were bitter, despairing, dead men as they walked toward Emmaus. So withdrawn, so lost in grief were they that far from recognizing Jesus, they didn't even invite him to walk with them. "While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them." He initiated the contact in their time of utter collapse.

But then as they reached Emmaus, it was they who pressed him to stay, they who initiated the time—but not yet knowing the unblinding that was about to happen—of Eucharist, the thanksgiving that gives true sight. "Jesus appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, 'Stay with us ...'"

On the road "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." In fact the Greek says, "their eyes were forbidden to know him." But at the table in Emmaus, after reigniting their hearts with his unraveling of the prophets as they walked, "He took the bread and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him ..." They knew him in the breaking of bread.

Then "he vanished out of their sight." One tends to think of some magician's trick. Puff, Jesus was gone. More likely the two men were in the joy of tears, weeping out their gratitude on the table, weeping out a new repentance and a new joy all wrapped together, and in that time Jesus slipped away. When they recovered, he had gone on.

They made no search for him. In what they had experienced, there was no need for that. He had sought them out on the road, told them what they needed to know, prayed with them, broken bread with them, revealed himself to them. Afterward they had no need to seize his company. They were evangelists. They ran back to Jerusalem, free of the fear and despair that had pushed them away that morning, and told the disciples what had happened to them. In that time of telling, says Luke, Jesus returned to their company. They saw his wounds, and they ate fish together.

ENOUGH OF LUKE and the other gospel authors. What about ourselves? We know these stories by heart, just as the two disciples knew the law and the prophets. But how often do we recognize Jesus in the stranger?

We know that he has never left us. Would we but know it, we are in his presence no matter where we turn our eyes. Again and again Jesus identified some of the ports of meeting. I am never further than your table, he said. I am bread and wine. I am in your eating and drinking—if you will open your eyes. I am present in your children. We see his words in Matthew's Gospel, "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me" (Matthew 18:5). I am in those around you, especially those who are being made to walk the way of the cross: the hungry and thirsty, the naked and homeless, the sick and the imprisoned. "Whatever you did to the least person, you did to me."

Yet in fact, each of us can well remember walking past him, not in a state of recognition and gratitude, but rather in annoyance, if not contempt, if not fear, if not disgust, if not horror and hatred. Thus we have said, in our actions, "I do not know the man." We thought he was an enemy, a threat to us personally or a threat to the way we want to live. Thus Jesus gives a special emphasis, in both teaching and example, on treatment of enemies—that astonishing commandment that we are to love our enemies. Love means to value their lives and take steps to protect them. The enemy sows tares in our field of wheat, but we sow wheat in his field of tares. And thus we confess our faith.

Can you imagine how shocked listeners in Jerusalem were when Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan? In our translation, in the NATO countries, we ought to speak of the Parable of the Good Communist, or whatever other group we can identify as someone we feel free to despise and whose life we feel free to ignore or even destroy. The "Samaritan" is whichever group or person you can think of who has wrong or evil ideas. And yet it was the Samaritan, Jesus insisted, who was able to do the will of God, able to recognize another person, even his enemy, as if he were a relative. Thus he takes responsibility for the life of a stranger, even though he has every reason to think that this stranger might hate him, if he weren't busy dying in a ditch along the road, where his need was ignored by those with all the correct ideas, the best theology.

IF I CANNOT find the face of Jesus in the face of those who are my enemies, if I cannot find him in the unbeautiful, if I cannot find him in those who have the "wrong ideas," if I cannot find him in the poor and the defeated, then I will not find him in the bread or the wine.

If I do not reach out in this world to those with whom he has identified himself, why do I imagine that I want to be with him, and them, in heaven? Why do I think I want to be for all eternity in the company of those whose companionship I avoided every day of my life?

Therefore let us pray:

Lord, you are with us always and everywhere. Thank you for remaining with us. We cannot avoid your company, for you are wherever there is suffering, loneliness, a person in need, wherever there are enemies. Thank you. Please free us from all that blinds us—our fears, our prejudices, our hatred—so that our eyes will open to your face, and we will meet you in your mercy and your way of mercy, your welcome and your way of welcome, your peace and your way of peace. Amen.

Jim Forest was general secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) in Alkmaar, Holland, and a Sojourners contributing editor when this article appeared.