Jesus

by James Martin

  This may be similar to what happens in the wake of the murder of a beloved political or spiritual leader, like Martin Luther King, Jr., or Archbishop Oscar Romero, the slain Salvadoran leader, or Dorothy Stang, the American sister who worked with the landless poor in Brazil before her martyrdom in 2005. In reflecting together on the words and deeds of the charismatic leader, their followers are filled with a renewed sense of purpose and are empowered to carry on his or her mission.

  Thus, in a sense, the person “lives.”

  This theological approach to the Risen Christ may be an attempt to make the incredible events of the Resurrection more credible to a modern audience, who would presumably have less trouble accepting this explanation than the notion that someone physically rose from the dead, as the Gospels report. And indeed, in the story of the Road to Emmaus the disciples gather at the end of the story to share their experiences of the Risen Lord. So “shared memory” is important for the community of believers.

  But particularly when we look at the disciples, the idea of a shared memory doesn’t seem a credible explanation of the Resurrection at all. Remember that the Gospel of John notes that the disciples were so frightened that they barricaded themselves behind locked doors, “for fear of the Jews.” They had good reason to be fearful. If the Romans and Jewish authorities dealt that way with the man whom the crowd wanted to make king, they must have thought, what will they do to us? Even before the Crucifixion Peter shrank in fear from being identified as one of Jesus’s followers. Imagine how their fears would have intensified after witnessing the Romans’ brutal execution of their master.

  With only one exception, all of Jesus’s male followers were so fearful that they shrank from standing at the foot of the cross, unable to accompany Jesus during his final hours. Some of their reluctance might have stemmed from an inability to watch the agonizing death of their friend, but more likely it was out of fear of being identified as a follower of a condemned criminal, an enemy of Rome. (The women showed no such fear, though the situation may have posed less danger for them.)

  The disciples, then, were terrified. Does it seem credible that something as simple as sitting around and remembering Jesus would snap them out of this fear? Not to me. Something incontrovertible, something dramatic, something undeniable, something visible, something tangible was needed to transform them from fearful to fearless. To me, this is one of the strongest “proofs” for the Resurrection. The appearance of the Risen Christ was so dramatic, so unmistakable, so obvious—in a word, so real—that it transformed the formerly terrified disciples into courageous proclaimers of the message of Jesus. In John’s Gospel, the disciples move from cowering behind locked doors to boldly preaching the Resurrection even in the face of their own death. To my mind, only a physical experience of the Risen Christ, something they could actually see and hear (and in the case of Thomas, touch) can possibly account for such a dramatic conversion.

  Doubtful fishermen and quarreling disciples simply talking about Jesus and sharing their memories, no matter how vivid, would not effect that kind of dramatic change. Certainly the idea of shared memory, whereby the disciples recalled together what Jesus had said and done, would have aided their faith, but it wouldn’t have convinced them of the unmistakable reality of the Resurrection. The men and women of first-century Palestine needed to experience something—see something—they would never forget: something that would sustain them through years of ministry, suffering, and in some cases martyrdom.

  And what they saw was Jesus, raised from the dead.

  BUT WHAT HE LOOKED like is hard to pin down. Some of the Gospel stories are confusing on this point, seemingly at odds with one another. In some post-Resurrection stories, Jesus seems distinctly physical. In one instance, he asks for something to eat.8 In another, as we have seen, he shows Thomas his wounds: “Put your finger here and see my hands,” he says.9 Therefore can we conclude that the Risen Christ had a body, and so it was easy for the disciples to recognize him?

  Not exactly—because in other Gospel passages the disciples have a hard time identifying him at all. As we just saw, on Easter morning Mary Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener, until he says her name. Then suddenly, like the disciples en route to Emmaus, she recognizes him and says, “Rabbouni!” In another appearance the disciples are fishing on the Sea of Galilee and even when Jesus calls to them from the shore, they seem not to know him (or recognize his voice), until they draw closer to the shore. Then suddenly the Beloved Disciple grasps who this is and says to Peter, “It is the Lord!”10 In these cases, it seems that Jesus has a body, but not a recognizable one.

  But in still other stories Jesus seems distinctly unphysical. He suddenly appears in a locked room (i.e., he walks through walls) or, as in the story of Emmaus, he simply vanishes in front of their eyes. What’s going on?

  Here we tread on mysterious territory. As we’ve seen, many parts of the Gospel story are familiar to us and can be more or less understood two thousand years after they occurred. Even though none of us lives in first-century Galilee, we know what it feels like to be sick, what a farmer does, and what a lily looks like. Most of us have seen a sheep, been on a boat, and had a sick relative. Many of us have been fishing. We’ve all seen violent storms, maybe even over a lake. Many parts of the Gospels are part of our experience.

  But the story of Road to Emmaus poses an unanswerable question: What does someone look like after rising from the dead? None of us can say. We are walking on unknown ground, and what we say about his appearance is mere speculation.

  Only those who saw the Risen Christ could say what he looked like, and their descriptions, passed along through the Gospels, indicate that, above all, it was hard to describe. Theologians sometimes refer to Jesus’s appearance in his “glorified body,” a state that is both physical (he still has a body) and wonderfully transformed (his new body is unlike other bodies and is difficult to recognize). It’s a helpful way of thinking about it: there is a body, but it is glorified, created anew by God. And remember that Jesus wasn’t simply “revived,” as if he had been unconscious: this new body will never die.

  For me, the seemingly contradictory descriptions (physical/spiritual, recognizable/unrecognizable, natural/supernatural) indicate two things: the difficulty of describing the most profound of all spiritual experiences and the unprecedented and non-repeatable quality of what the disciples witnessed.11

  In the first case, you need only speak with someone who has gone through a life-altering experience to grasp the difficulty in describing what happened. Imagine speaking with a woman who has just given birth. “What was it like?” you might say. “Well, it was wonderful!” she says. So it was joyful. “But also frightening,” she might say. So was it joyful or frightening? “Well . . . both.” Just as I was writing this chapter a friend wrote to say that her niece had sent her an e-mail after the birth of her first child. It read: “Full of unexplainable love. And exhausted to the bone.”

  Some things are difficult to describe, even for the most articulate, and sometimes the descriptions seem contradictory. It’s hard to put big experiences into words.

  How much harder it must have been for those who were the first ones—the only ones—to experience the Resurrection firsthand to describe the greatest event in history. At least in the case of giving birth, there is some precedent. Other mothers can say, “Yes, I know just what you mean,” even if their own experiences differ. But to whom could the disciples appeal when describing Jesus’s appearance?

  Their experience of the Risen Christ was unique. So it’s not surprising that the descriptions seem at once convincing and confusing.

  Here, at least for me, is another sign of the authenticity of the Gospels. Had the evangelists been concerned with providing airtight evidence, rather than trying to report what the disciples saw, they would have paid more attention to ensuring that their stories matched. But the evangelists, as I see it, were more concerned with preserving the authentic experiences of those who
saw the Risen Christ, confusing as they might sound to us.

  LET’S STEP BACK ON the road to Emmaus. Maybe now it’s easier to understand how the disciples could not know Jesus in his “glorified body.” They could not recognize him until “the breaking of the bread,” when his identity became manifest.

  There are many reasons for own our inability to recognize God. Like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, we might be too focused on the past. Perhaps the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus (apart from the strangeness of his glorified body), because they were stuck on the events of a few days before. Rather than paying attention to what the stranger was telling them, or looking at what was in front of them, or listening to the Living Word, they were focused on death. They may have been stuck in the past.

  When I hear stories about people who are unable to forgive, I often think of the Road to Emmaus. A friend of mine once described another person who was unwilling to forgive someone as “unable to climb out of the hole he is in.” It’s easy to feel consumed with past hurts; but when we’re mired in it, we may not recognize the new things that God has in store for us. Ironically, it is at such times when we are most in need of God’s help.

  The disciples’ inability to recognize Jesus is understandable. Cleopas and the other disciple accompanied Jesus during his ministry and saw how the crowds responded to his preaching. They might have started to think, almost despite their better judgment, “Could this be the one?” Perhaps when they saw Jesus perform his first miracle, they allowed themselves to think, first tentatively, then with growing confidence, that this was indeed the Messiah. Their expectations rose as they spent time with him, witnessed more of his miracles, and noticed his growing fame. Finally, when Jesus entered Jerusalem, they probably thought that surely this was the final stage in the coming of the Messiah.

  But then disaster strikes. Jesus is executed like a common criminal. Shame. Confusion. Terror. Everything stops. How hard it must have been for them to talk with the stranger about all the good things Jesus had done, now that it was all for nothing.

  “We had hoped” are words of total dejection. Not only have things gone badly, but the months they spent with Jesus now seem a waste of time. The two disciples might be leaving Jerusalem because things turned out so disastrously. Barclay says, “They are the words of people whose hopes are dead and buried.”12

  So the sadness of Cleopas and his friend is natural. Yet a certain hopelessness may be preventing them from seeing Christ. And the fact that Jesus has not met their expectations leads them to conclude that his mission has failed. Their sadness and their sense of what should have happened may prevent them from seeing who walked beside them and from fully accepting the story of the women who reported his resurrection. They are stuck.

  The disciples understand what it means to feel loss. But here is something we often forget: the Risen Christ understands it too. It is quite possible that, as he died on the Cross, he thought, But Father, I had hoped that my ministry would be a success. I had hoped. After the Resurrection, Jesus does not forget his human experiences; he carries them with him. And he is still human.

  And so the Risen Christ tells the two disciples that hope is never dead and nothing is impossible with God. Then he shows them this by revealing himself fully. Seeing this, they are filled with joy. Hope has been rekindled and so their hearts burn. Their first impulse, as always in the Gospels and with us, is to announce the Good News.

  The Resurrection shows us that there is always hope. Whether or not we can see it, it is there. Or, more precisely, he is there.

  YEARS AGO ON A retreat, my spiritual director asked me to pray about this passage. The past few months had marked a difficult time in my Jesuit life, and I felt beset by problems in my ministry. It was easy to imagine myself as Cleopas’s companion, dejected and forlorn.

  In my prayer, the road to Emmaus was sandy, bordered by a high, grassy embankment on our left side. Cleopas and I tramped along silently. Presently Jesus approached us. He wore a dark hood; his face was down, obscured as he greeted us. When he asked what we were talking about, I gave the answer from Luke, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”

  But when he asked, “What things?” I was surprised to find myself sharing the pain that I was facing in my ministry and how focused I had been on my worries. I could feel some of Cleopas’s anger when he responded to Jesus. He may have even vented some anger: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place?” In other words, “How could you not know this, God? Where have you been?”

  “I had hoped,” I told Jesus sadly, “that this ministry would be more life-giving.”

  In my prayer, Jesus sat down by the roadside. As he placed his hands on his knees, his sleeves slipped back, and I suddenly saw the wounds from the Crucifixion. As he drew back his hood, I saw that he was still wearing a crown of thorns. The man walking beside us still carried the signs of his suffering. I felt an urge to remove the thorns, but realized that this would hurt him. So I simply sat with him.

  Then I noticed his hands, dry and dust-covered. His thin wrists stuck out of the frayed cuffs of his tunic. “Why is it like this?” I asked him. His look seemed to answer me: trying to do good often leads to suffering—in my case, a little bit of suffering, in Jesus’s case far more.

  Later on, Jesus joined us for dinner. The inn was crowded; Cleopas and I were seated in front of a fireplace, surrounded by other diners, who seemed not to notice us.13 When Jesus broke the bread, I imagined him vanishing before our eyes. And I was conscious of my desire for him to stay behind. My eye was drawn to the bread, the Eucharist, which remained. But I was also conscious of a desire to look for God even amid the sadnesses of life. With a start, I realized that I had not been doing as much as I could: I had not been seeking him actively. My problems in ministry had been so distracting that I failed to look for Jesus elsewhere.

  It was a somber prayer. Typically, when praying with this favorite passage, I am reminded of places in which I have overlooked the presence of God—in friendships, in my family, in my community, in nature, in prayer, in the world around me—and I am filled with a sense of gratitude. Thus, it is usually a passage that leads to happiness. This time, however, I was reminded not only that suffering is part of everyone’s life, but also that I hadn’t been seeking God as attentively as I could have been. I wasn’t paying attention.

  Experiences in prayer aren’t always joyful. Often they can point out an area that needs some attention. On that particular retreat, it seemed that Jesus was asking me to turn my gaze to other parts of my life.

  But I also had to ask myself: Why don’t we find God more in the midst of our daily life?

  SOMETIMES WE DON’T FIND God because we are miserable. Life is often filled with suffering. We should not minimize the desolation of the two disciples, who seem on the brink of walking away (they are literally walking away from Jerusalem) from all that they have experienced with Jesus. Yet God has not given up on them. God appears to them, in the midst of their desolation, and helps to reconcile them to what has happened.

  If we are patient, sometimes we are afforded a glimpse of a new way of looking at suffering; over time we can find meaning in its midst. But we must work hard at it. One of the Greek words used in this story provides a clue about how to do this. Cleopas and his friend are described by Luke as “talking and discussing.” The Greek word for discussing is syzetein, which can also mean “inquiring” or “examining.” Luke Timothy Johnson says, “We are to picture the two disciples trying to figure out the meaning of the events.”14 All of us are invited to inquire and examine during times of suffering, though our eyes may be kept from seeing God, if only for a time.

  So perhaps I’m being too hard on Cleopas and his companion. Perhaps in their “talking with each other about all these things that had happened,” they tried to make sense of things, even as they dealt with the evaporat
ion of their hope. Though they feel distant from God, they are still struggling to be in relationship with God. Maybe we need to be more generous with them—and with all who struggle or question or doubt in the Gospels.

  The disciples’ eyes are fully open to seeing Jesus only after they offer him hospitality. “Stay with us,” they say. Remember, they still believe that they are offering hospitality to a stranger. Freed from their focus on self, the two begin to listen to the stranger, to turn outward, and then invite him to dine with them. The attentive reader sees that Cleopas and his friend, even in their grief, imitate Jesus through hospitality and table fellowship. Notice also that Jesus waits to be invited; just as God often awaits an invitation to accompany us.

  Cleopas and his friend move from their own sadness to a willingness to care for someone else. And in doing so they recognize God.15

  ANOTHER REASON WE OVERLOOK God’s presence is that we don’t bother to look. Finding God is often a matter of paying attention, but sometimes we’re spiritually lazy.

  In the Jesuit novitiate, we were taught a simple daily prayer called the examination of conscience, also known as the examen. Popularized by St. Ignatius Loyola, it consists of five steps. First, you recall things for which you’re grateful and give thanks for them; second, you review the day, looking for signs of God’s presence; third, you call to mind things for which you are sorry; fourth, you ask for forgiveness from God (or decide to reconcile with the person you have harmed or seek forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation); fifth, you ask for the grace to see God in the following day.

  In this prayer we are invited to work against natural laziness. Noticing takes work. If you think about your relationship with God in terms of a close friendship, it is an invitation to pay attention to your friend when he or she is talking to you about an important matter. Noticing also helps you find God in times of difficulty, when you might be tempted to focus only on the painful parts of life. Either way, it is an invitation to do what Cleopas and his companion finally realized that they had to do: pay attention.