Revisiting Emmaus

By Paul Detterman, National Director –

This Sunday, followers of Jesus throughout the world will celebrate his resurrection. In the affluence of North American congregations, it’s not only the central celebration of the church year but it is also a great day for florists, department stores, and itinerant brass players. The trouble is, Monday morning (Tuesday in the case of some), we’ll be back to our old selves, re-working the business of the corporate church or returning to the realities of the secular world. Easter 2015—check.

There was only one empty tomb in one garden. Only a couple of women and a couple more men saw the place where Jesus’ body had been. All the lilies and trumpets in the world cannot recreate the unique moment when the news first penetrated the walls of the room in Jerusalem, “It’s true—the Lord has risen…!” Those were unique moments experienced by a privileged few. We can re-tell the story, but we’ll never be there in person—no matter how many times we sing the “Hallelujah” chorus.

What is available to every follower of Jesus is the Emmaus experience—encountering the risen Christ when we least expect (and sometimes don’t even recognize) him. What is available to us, time and time again, is the passion for Christ that begins in our “heart” as Scripture is opened, and bread is broken. This is the memory trace that comes when we encounter the living Lord in our midst. It was the experience of the disciples on the Emmaus road and, unlike many of the other Easter encounters, this experience is infinitely repeatable.

In the congregations I’ve served, we’ve expanded worship in Holy Week to include many opportunities beyond the current “norm,” the most spiritually significant of them being a quiet Eucharist on Easter evening designed around Luke 24:13-35. The power of this experience and of the Emmaus story itself was captured for me a few years ago by one young woman who said, “This morning’s (Easter) worship was fun—tonight’s worship is important.” I think she was on to something.

We are following Jesus through an increasing time of social exile in our culture and a time of dramatic change in our own denomination. Much of what we counted on as “just the way things are” we now understand to be “just the way things were—for a time.” There’s certainly nothing wrong with trumpets and lilies and pretty new outfits to celebrate new life in Christ. There’s certainly a crying need for “Hallelujah!” to be sung loudly and often amid the hatred and gluttonous boredom of our self-indulgent world. But the festivities of the Great Day will only last for a morning. Followers of Jesus are formed and faith is deepened over the next 364.5 days every year as we meet the rising Christ—the living Lord—in his Word, at his Table, in the community of others, and in ministries of care and compassion we can offer (because of our new life in Christ) to a hurting, broken, lonely, self-absorbed world.

This is the potential of revisiting Emmaus.

May the days following this year’s Resurrection celebrations find us running back to serve and love the people in our part of the world—transformed from the inside out—because He truly IS Risen.