EMMAUS: MAYBE NOT SUCH A GREAT PLACE?
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
April 26, 2020
Maybe among the most important unasked questions about this
very familiar gospel story – this tale of the journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus
on that first Easter day – the story that we hear every year on the third
Sunday of Easter here in church, maybe the most important question is why the
two disciples of Jesus were traveling there at all. Emmaus was never a tourist
or spiritual destination for anybody, and apart from this little piece of Luke’s
gospel, nobody had ever spoken of it before or after. Even today nobody is
really sure where it was – or is. If you travel to Israel today you have your
choice of three different small towns, all claiming to be the real Village of
Emmaus, and all with tourist mementos to sell to people who show up.
So what is the real significance of Emmaus? Why did St. Luke
bother to remember its name at all? We can’t be sure, but perhaps it’s intended
to be the name for that place where we all go in order to flee from events that
are too overwhelming for us to deal with in the moment. It’s not necessarily a
physical, geographical location (although it could be), but it’s a space to
which we retreat when we just don’t know what to do next, because the unfolding
of life is too bewildering. There was no reason for the disciples of Jesus to
be walking to Emmaus that afternoon, except for the fact that it was someplace
else – a “happy place”, if you will, in the midst of fear and danger. It was
that place that wasn’t Jerusalem, where real life was being played out.
Luke tells us that it was seven miles away. In the
Scriptures the number seven is a symbolic number for perfection or wholeness. Seven
miles away from the cross and grave of Jesus was the most excellent place for a
disciple to be: “perfectly” removed from the terrifying mystery of it all. The gospel
doesn’t tell us that that journey to Emmaus was a road trip for the cowardly,
but it doesn’t take much imagination to put those pieces together. The disciples
were all afraid on that first Easter, and the best defense against such fear
was to leave town, to a place where it was felt safe to merely “discuss and
debate” about what was taking place from a perfectly secure distance rather
than to actually experience what was going on. Emmaus was, and still is, the
name for that place where we imagine that we can avoid the actual
confrontations with the things that we cannot easily and entirely understand. It’s
that place to which we retreat as the alternative to facing the need to suffer.
Facing real life, that is. And there is no path to the true God without the
direct encounter with suffering. It’s Jesus who taught us that, even though his
closest followers were not inclined to believe it, and did their best to avoid
it – even on Easter Sunday.
Emmaus was that narcotic – their “getaway,” in the very
worst sense of that word. Emmaus was their destiny of denial, or their refusal
to lean in to real life. It was an imagined place of safety – seven miles away.
Perfect. And wrong.
And the beauty of this gospel is that Jesus wouldn’t let
them arrive there without interrupting their trip, first to speak with them
along the road, and then to eat with them once they arrived. Luke tells us that
the disciples didn’t recognize him – their friend and their master – because they
were in the very act of running away from the real gospel, from real life.
Emmaus was, for them, like Aruba or Key Largo – a place away from it all. But
Christians aren’t allowed to live there – not yet anyway. And Jesus will find
us there too!
In this season of our lives and of our Church, we are being
confronted with this awful pandemic, this damnable virus, and it is every bit
as tragic as was the death of Jesus in Jerusalem so long ago. And every bit as
confusing for the moment.
And we have the very same choice to make as the first
disciples did: namely to pretend to separate ourselves from what is happening
in our community and in our world, or to confront it honestly. Jesus will find
us either way, if we are open to looking.
It is significant that the end of the gospel story today has
the disciples deciding at once, having recognized the Lord at supper, to return
immediately again to Jerusalem, and to preach, and to be with the rest of them.
Real life. It turns out that Emmaus was never such an important place remain
after all, so it’s not so very important just where it is. Nobody of importance
ever spent the night there! In the end, Emmaus is the name for distraction, and
avoidance of Christian responsibility… it has 100 different names today – maybe
addictive behaviors, or the internet, or abuse of power, or the isolating of
ourselves, or the withdrawal from people who most need us. Emmaus is not a name
of honor. It is a summons to conversion.
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