“Christ is risen, Alleluia!”
“Just as the women told us! Alleluia!”
If you haven’t heard, this is the newer version of the traditional call-and-response Easter shout exchanged with great joy among members of the Eastern churches, and increasingly Western churches:
“Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!”
The Gospel account of the journey to Emmaus is unique to Luke and was skillfully designed as a story. The opening scene shows two of Jesus’ friends, a man named Cleopas and an unnamed person, possibly his wife. They were walking from Jerusalem to a town not on the map today called Emmaus.
The disappointment weighed heavily upon them, crushing their spirits.
“We used to hope…”
is how they spoke to the stranger walking beside them of their deep pain and loss that Jesus of Nazareth, who had seemed a great prophet and miraculous healer, had been executed.
“We had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel,”
a hero who would vanquish their people’s enemies. They weren’t cautious about protecting their own safety. They spoke freely, apparently not afraid the stranger might be a spy for the Roman forces.
They had heard the report of the empty tomb before leaving Jerusalem and mentioned it in passing. Luke writes that Mary of Magdala, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women with them told the apostles they had found the tomb empty. “Men in dazzling clothes” announced that Jesus had risen, just as he had told them while in Galilee. But to Jesus’ inner circle of eleven men
“these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”
Granted this was extraordinary news. But an idle tale, told by women? Typical, in a time and culture when women were not legally allowed as witnesses in court.
This reminds me of a comedy sketch from the 1960’s TV program “Hee Haw.” Several country women are standing around a big laundry tub, bobbing back and forth, vigourously scrubbing their wet clothes against ribbed washboards, and singing,
“Oh you’ll never hear one of us repeatin’ gossip. So you better be sure an’ listen close the first time.”
When you can’t believe your eyes, or your ears, you tend to assume you’ve got it wrong. And there’s some logic in this initial reaction. We struggle to reconcile impossible opposites. Oh no, it couldn’t have happened like this. It’s not real.
Just an idle tale. Just them silly ol’ women repeatin’ gossip.
And part of the wonderful irony in the way Luke tells this story is that the two friends of Jesus still don’t get it, even when the stranger goes through the Scriptures they know well and points out all the indications that this Jesus was indeed the Messiah they had hoped for. A different sort of Messiah.
They heard it all, still didn’t put the pieces together, and didn’t even recognize who the stranger was. Luke was writing for ancient people who knew of other stories where angels appear in disguise to humans, like the angels in the tomb. Or divine figures appear in ways that are not immediately recognizable.
So when did it come together? At table, when the stranger blessed and broke the bread.
Luke’s people would have picked up right away on the allegory with their own gatherings: reading and explaining the Word, followed by a breaking of the Bread. And what followed after that? Mission.
Although it was growing dark the two scurried back to the city to find the other friends of Jesus to tell what they had seen and heard, inexplicable as it was. They too became missionaries of the risen, cosmic Christ.
Just as the women told us. Alleluia.
© Susan K. Roll
*Edited from the Reflection of April 23, 2023
Susan Roll retired from the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, in 2018, where she served as Director of the Sophia Research Centre. Her research and publications are centred in the fields of liturgy, sacraments, and feminist theology. She holds a Ph.D. from the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, and has been involved with international academic societies in liturgy and theology, as well as university chaplaincy, Indigenous ministry and church reform projects.
Excellent way to explain the movement from hope lost to hope found. Thank you for reaffirming what our gospel tells us. You make it so much more understandable.