Seeing and Being Seen

The story of the road to Emmaus begins with two people leaving, walking away from Jerusalem, from everything that had just happened, away from what feels like a failed story.

“We had hoped…” they say. Past tense. It’s over.

And then Christ comes alongside them. He just starts walking with them, listening to them talk out all their confusion and disappointment. And they don’t recognize him. Which is strange, or at least it should be.

Luke says their eyes were “kept from recognizing him.” But it doesn’t feel like God is simply hiding the answer from them. It feels more like they aren’t yet able to comprehend what they are seeing.

So, Jesus takes the long way around. He walks them back through everything that they thought they understood. And still, they don’t get it. It’s only later, at the table, when he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, that something gives way. a moment, in the breaking of the bread, and then it slips from their grasp. But it has already done its work.

“Were not our hearts burning within us…” they say.

They begin to realize that something had been happening to them all along. Not just at the table, but on the road. And so they turn around. They go back to Jerusalem. Back to the same place with the same people. But they are not the same, they have been…interrupted, hich may be as close as this story gets to an answer.

The resurrection is about being pulled into something you don’t fully understand yet. Something that works on you before you can name it. It comes alongside. It works on us quietly. It opens something in us, often before we are aware of it.

The resurrection is about being pulled into something you don’t fully understand yet. Something that works on you before you can name it. It comes alongside. It works on us quietly. It opens something in us, often before we are aware of it. And only later do we begin to see. Not always clearly. Not all at once. Often, it’s only later, looking back, that something starts to come into focus. Perhaps a conversation that is sticking with you, or a feeling that you just can’t shake, bread broken.

The resurrection draws you in. Slowly. Sometimes against your better judgment. Until, at some point, you realize you were not walking alone. And maybe you still aren’t.