Emmaus once again

Posted: May 2, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Bible, Easter | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

I briefly considered skipping church this last Sunday. Fr. Rob, our interim rector, was away, so we had Morning Prayer rather than the Eucharist. However Sunday was Easter 3 in Year A. Those of you who have been reading my blog for several years will know what that means. It is the only time in the three year Sunday morning lectionary cycle that we have the Emmaus Road story. This is odd, because Emmaus is found only in Luke, and Year A is the year of Matthew. But it is what the lectionary elves have decreed.

The Emmaus story has long been one of my two or three favorite Bible passages. It gained additional meaning when the chaplain chose it as the scripture reading for my grandmother’s funeral in 2006. The only time I have ever opened up a Gideon Bible in a motel was that evening in order to revisit the passage.

Emmaus stained glass windowEach week at church I sit next to this stained glass window. The window lists who it is in memory of and who donated it, but it does not offer a scripture reference. It must, however, be the Emmaus story. I can’t think of any other passage in the Bible that it could represent. Note the figure on the left is a woman. In the passage only one of the two travelers on the road is given a name: Cleopas. The other is left unnamed. Given the norms of first century Near Eastern society this suggests that the other traveler may have been a woman. Of course in that society a woman would only travel with her husband or a close male relative. So perhaps the other traveler was Cleopas’ wife.

Often this scene is depicted with two men, so I love that the stained glass artist depicted one of the people as a woman for our window. And I love having this window sitting over my shoulder each Sunday. While it is unlikely that the story is historically true, it is a reminder of Christ’s presence with us.

As John Dominic Crossan wrote, “Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”

Emmaus in Summer

Posted: July 29, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Bible, Faith | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

“Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”
— John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

I have written much about Emmaus, though I normally reserve my comments for Easter. However, as I’ve mentioned, I have been taking the online course Soelle in Summer focusing on the work of Dorothee Soelle and facilitated by the marvelous Jane Redmont. Jane posted a poem by Soelle on Emmaus, which I reproduce below. It triggered a strong response from me, as the Emmaus story usually does. Here are the comments I made on the post, slightly edited.

EmmausThe Emmaus story touches and moves me at more levels and in more ways than any other passage in the Bible. I have blogged about it many times. I’m always disappointed that it shows up in the Lectionary for Sunday morning only once in the 3-year cycle (Year A – Matthew, which is odd). Yes, I know it’s there for Easter evening every year.

So I was struck by Soelle’s taking that passage and interweaving it with images of social justice denied, and then suggesting that Cleopas and companion (probably his wife) were walking away from the “city of their hope” to where, as we might say today, the grass is (or rather, seems) greener. Yet they turn back to Jerusalem, their “city of their hope” when the meet the Christ.

Powerful.

I need to come back to this poem and spend some more time with it.

Here is the poem:

Song on the road to emmaus

So long we have been walking
away from the city of our hope
to a village where life is said to be better

   Hadn’t we thought
   we could overcome fear
   the fear of the old pieceworker
   that she’ll have to take sick leave
   the fear of the turkish girl
   that she’ll be deported
   the fear of the haunted neurotic
   that he’ll be committed
   forever

So long we have been walking
in the same wrong direction
away from the city of our hope
to the village where there’s supposed to be water

   Hadn’t we thought
   we were free and could liberate
   all those poor devils
   the working man’s child held back and punished
   in school
   the adolescent on his motorbike
   sent to the wrong work
   for life
   the deaf and dumb
   in the wrong country
   at the wrong time
   silenced by working
   a lifetime
   for bread alone

So long we have been walking
in the same direction
away from the city
where our hope is still buried

   Then we met someone
   who shared his bread with us
   who showed us the new water
   here in the city of our hope
   I am the water
   you are the water
   he is the water
   she is the water

Then we turned around and went
back to the city of our buried hope
up to jerusalem

   He who brought water is with us
   he who brought bread is with us
   we shall find the water
   we shall be the water

   I am the water of life
   you are the water of life
   we are the water of life
   we shall find the water
   we shall be the water

Dorothee Soelle
Revolutionary Patience (Orbis, 1977)
pp. 46-48