Christ Incognito: The Third Sunday in Paschaltide

St. Luke 24:35-48

Duccio, "On the Road to Emmaus"

            When Jesus came walking, the people didn’t notice. Maybe this was because Jesus was concealing his presence (St. Luke 24:15-16). After all, Jesus had just pulled a “hell” of a joke on the Devil; it wouldn’t be out of reason for the Lord to follow up with a little prank to prove a point. Maybe it was that the faith of the people was so little at this point, there was only room for road-talk on the Emmaus way. Jesus certainly chastises his fellow travelers about this very thing. 

            Should Cleopas and company have recognized Jesus at once? We might be tempted to think that, following the pattern of the Apostles, these pilgrims had some great failing which clouded their eyes. But from their lack of seeing, we come to learn so much about the presence of Christ in this post-resurrection world; I can’t help but think the Great Teacher was plying his trade a bit. 

            Jesus comes in the form of an average person, a fellow believer, a brother. He asks simple questions, and provides child-like corrections (St. Luke 24:17-27). Their hearts burned. The believers did well, inviting this brother into their resting place for the night (v. 29). Perhaps the story of Abraham inviting in the angels was playing in the back of their minds. Regardless, it is only in the breaking of the bread that Jesus becomes revealed, or perhaps magnified, in his glory. (v. 30-31)

            Before the revelation, Christ was still fully present, fully embodied, fully God and fully Man. There is something particular and important that the resurrection did not make Christ super-human; if anything, it made Him infinitely more and more deeply human. This glorification was in some respects so earthy, so much in the fundamental bits of day-to-day life that Jesus’ followers could not discriminate between Christ glorified and any old average Joshua. 

Rembrandt, "Christ at Emmaus" (1648)
Because Carrie says I use too much Caravaggio

 

            I sit inside a subway car in downtown Moscow, trying to listen for Christ. First comes the sobering reality that most of my prayers are a lot of me talking without pause. Sometimes I’m a little afraid that God won’t answer if I shut up; other times I’m afraid He will. But today, I’m wondering what would happen if I listened for Christ the same way I might listen for the voice of a dear friend sitting nearby, or for a faint snatch of music coming from somebody’s earbuds. To listen, as if the conversation is not really controlled by me, and it is mine only to respond.

            It doesn’t take long to realize that the people around me could very well be angels in disguise (Heb. 13:2). I begin to listen to those who I eat and teach and talk with, waiting to hear if there’s some bit of Christ speaking behind and through their words. In the metro, I’m suspicious that I can hear the echoes of God; by the time I get to Church, I’m nearly certain. Before the Host, all doubt is taken away for a brief, precious kiss of union. This presence is not only in the bread and wine, but enmeshed in the faces, voices, and hands of each believer come to have their eyes unclouded. But, in the moment the bread is broken, just as it was broken two thousand years ago before Cleopas and company, a special grace is given, to taste and see that the Lord is good.

            Editor’s Note: Today’s Gospel lesson borrows a theme from the Old Testament which James Kugel calls the “moment of confusion.” Repeatedly, when God or an angel appears in the lives of biblical figures, they are confused at first. Think of Joshua and the “commander of the armies of the Lord,” Abraham and the two angels, or Lot and the same two angels. Each time there is a kind of disoriented moment when the vision or understanding of the human characters is clouded.

Then God is suddenly revealed, in the story of Lot by a show of power, in the story of Sampson’s parents by a miraculous ascent, or when Jacob is at Beth-El, by displacing his hip. The veil is taken off human perception by divine intervention, by a miracle. It appears that, in the Bible, the naked presence of God is disorienting, and it is revealed through a miraculous transformation combined with a divine word.

This theme even appears earlier in the gospels. After the Resurrection, Mary encounters Christ outside of the tomb, and mistakes him for a gardener (St. John 20:15-16). Christ then reveals himself to her by calling her by her name. A moment of confusion, then the revelation of God by means of a miracle: the Resurrection, and a divine word: “Mary.”