“And they rose up … and returned to Jerusalem”
They were running away from Jerusalem in fear and perplexity about the events of the crucifixion, about everything, we might say “concerning Jesus of Nazareth”. The Resurrection changes everything. It literally turns us around. They rose up and returned to Jerusalem. How and why? Because Christ runs out after us.
The Passion of Christ is God’s suffering with us in our suffering world, God in the midst of our confusions, our sins, our fears, our tempers; in short, our evil and unloveliness. The whole of the Passion is about Christ in the midst. He is even crucified between two thieves. The Resurrection is the same. It is about Christ in the midst, making himself known in the radical truth of his being with the Father.
Easter Monday presents us with one of the classic stories of the Resurrection, the story of the Road to Emmaus. Two unnamed disciples are fleeing Jerusalem. Jesus runs out after them and “himself drew near, and went with them,” unrecognized by them. They were not, after all, expecting him. They were, after all, consumed and preoccupied in their confusions and uncertainties, not altogether unlike us in the face of Covid-19, clinging to our ‘technologies’, worshipping them in our idolatry even as they are at the heart of the problem of globalization, itself a technocratic artifice.
Jesus draws near and enters into their conversation. Why? To draw out of them precisely their confusion and perplexity. The two unnamed disciples give us a very complete account of the crucifixion, its immediate aftermath, their dashed hopes and expectations about Jesus, and their bewilderment about the empty tomb, about the testimony of angels, and even about the witness of the women! “We trusted,” they say, “that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” His crucifixion and death they were not expecting and cannot understand. The paradox is wonderful. It is precisely through his Passion and Death that Christ redeems Israel, the greater Israel, we may say, of our humanity, for such is the greater vocation and meaning of Israel.
“Foolish ones and slow of heart,” Jesus says to them and proceeds to unpack the radical meaning of his Passion and Death. He opens out to them “in all of the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” In a way, it is very much about how we read, how we think and understand God and his dealing with us. In a way, God has to break us in order to make us, to make us new. “Batter my heart, three-personed God,” as the poet/ preacher John Donne says, evoking the extravagant language of violence and even rape. It is not enough, it seems, for God simply to “knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend,” the gentler forms of some of the more sentimental biblical images of God’s care. No. “Break, blow, burn, and make me new,” the poet demands of God. For only so might we be able to stand. And if that were not troubling enough, he cries out “imprison me, for I except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.” Extravagant language, indeed, and yet language that complements the wonder of the story of the Road to Emmaus. Why?
Because they show the divine will to restore and redeem. They show us the love of God which breaks only to recreate and make us new. It can only happen through the disorders and sorrows of our hearts. Here Christ opens our hearts and hears our hearts’ lament. He provides us with a way of understanding the nature of God’s dealings with our humanity in its distress.
There is something profoundly comforting and strengthening in Christ’s walking and talking with us, and yet, we are slow to understand. Sometimes it takes more than words to make us understand. Sometimes it takes a word in motion, a word in action; in short, something sacramental, a sign which is what it signifies. “He took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.” He takes us back to the very night of his betrayal, to the Last Supper. In a wonderful economy of expression, Luke tells us “their eyes were opened, and they knew him.” And so for us.
It changes them. “They rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem,” returning to the scene of their disappointments and shattered hopes, changed in their outlook. They find the other disciples “gathered together” in fear and uncertainty. And they tell them “how he was known of them in the breaking of the bread.”
Word and sacrament are inseparable. They belong together. Out of the Passion of Christ comes Resurrection. It is literally about Christ running out after us in his love for us, a love which demands that we confront our sins in order to be awakened and renewed in our very being. The sacraments are nothing more than verba visibilia, words made visible, signs which are what they signify. What they signify is Christ in our midst. He is known to us in the breaking of the bread, not as something added on to what he has told us, but as its concrete expression, a word in action. Such is the redemption of our humanity. It can only happen through the body broken and the blood outpoured, only through the visible signs of divine love. That love is resurrection and it sets us in motion not away from one another but running towards one another, not in fear but in love. And all because he runs out after us to be in the midst of us, he in us and we in him. Such is the wonder of the Resurrection in the way it is made known to us and changes us.
“And they rose up … and returned to Jerusalem”
Fr. David Curry
Easter Monday, 2020
Posted not preached owing to the Covid-19 outbreak