Events unroll very quickly in the last few chapters of the Gospels. The Sunday readings are going backwards slightly, as the Emmaus story happens about a week before Jesus’ reappearance in the upper room and his discussion with Thomas, but it’s worth looking closely at this story.
Two men journeying to a village called Emmaus
We have two unnamed disciples (we learn later that one is called Cleopas, but he’s not someone we have come across before), heading out of Jerusalem. They are talking sadly about recent events. It’s so easy to imagine this conversation, just going round and round in miserable circles, the sort of conversation you can’t seem to stop having after someone has died, especially if it has been traumatic.
Encounter with a stranger
Jesus, unrecognised, draws near and falls into step with them, and asks an open question: what are they talking about? They are so startled that they stop walking and just stand there looking sad. Then they ask him how come he doesn’t know what the whole city has been buzzing with the last few days, and they give him a pretty good summary of events (including the women’s testimony, still being discounted). Then Jesus says,’O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe,’ but he must have said it very gently, because there are two of them and they don’t just push him over and walk off, they listen as he explains to them how it was foretold ‘in all the scriptures’.
Explaining the Scriptures
And here I have a confession to make. For years I thought this meant that he showed them, using something like the blue RSV New Testament that we used in RE classes at school, how it all made sense, and I was very envious of anyone who had the main character of the story there to explain it all. Then ‘the scales fell from my eyes’, and I realised that the New Testament had not been written at this point, not any of it. Anyway, people didn’t walk around in those days carrying handy one-volume Bibles. Maybe this is totally obvious to everyone else, but it wasn’t to me. Jesus explains the relevant bits of the Scriptures to them, and he does it by talking about the passages which they are all familiar with (and much of it will have been out of the Psalms). And it will all have been Old Testament.
Messiah libretto from the same Scriptures
The comparable experience for us is listening to Handel’s Messiah, I think. It is exactly what Handel’s librettist did, but of course he also had the New Testament to choose from. Charles Jennens took different bits out of (both parts of) our sacred Scriptures, and put them together to shed light on the story of Jesus. We Catholics tend not to be as well-versed in the OT as our Protestant friends, so we often don’t know where the bits come from, but their relevance is shocking and immediate. They are so poignantly relevant (‘All they that see him laugh him to scorn’, ‘He was despised’,‘Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows‘) that we assume that it is Jesus they were written about. Of course, they were; but not directly, not while it was going on, although that is how it feels, like a live commentary on the Passion. Any decent score of Messiah will give you the references, and Wikipedia helpfully also lists them. What is striking is how much is out of only two books: Isaiah, and the Psalms.
Recognition at the breaking of the bread
To finish the story: they all reach the inn together and go in to have supper (after a seven-mile walk), and they recognise him ‘in the breaking of the bread’. Then he vanishes. Why did they not recognise him before? There are various possible factors: they are part of a very loose group and may not have known him too well by sight, since they aren’t in the inner circle; they are too tired and sad to be paying very much attention; they aren’t expecting him; he must look totally different from the last time they saw him, if they were in Jerusalem until today; he chooses not to be recognised — but none of these reasons is at all significant. The point is that eventually they realise; and then, although the day is now even farther spent than it was when they used that as an excuse to keep him with them, they get up and walk all the way back to tell the apostles.
Enough witnesses, and a more informed group
Their testimony is added to that of others, the weight of evidence is growing and everyone begins to feel that it is true and they can perhaps let themselves believe it. Then the Lord appears again and lets everyone touch him (this may or not be the same event as when Thomas meets the Lord), and now ‘they still disbelieved for joy’, but everything has changed and life is transformed. The Lord explains the Scriptures all over again, and he actually refers specifically to the psalms (Luke 24, v44), which pleases me very much. Just as we use the Psalms as a rich source of prayers and solace, so did he. You are never the first person to find a psalm illuminating, apt, or comforting; and one of the people who has done so before you is Jesus himself.
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