Abide With Us

Two people walking home on a Sunday afternoon, seven miles, talking about the worst week of their lives. A stranger falls in beside them and asks what they are talking about, and one of them says, more or less, where have you been? It is the gentlest resurrection story in the Gospels, and it turns on a table, and a loaf of bread, and a sentence about a burning heart.

Threescore furlongs

"And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened" (Luke 24:13-14). That same day: Easter. The women have already been to the tomb and come back with a story about angels; Peter has run there and found the grave-clothes and gone away wondering. These two are not staying for it. They are going home. One is named Cleopas; the other is never named, and some have thought she was his wife, since they share a house. They are leaving the city where their hope died, and they are talking it over the way you do.

"And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him" (24:15-16). Held. Not that He was disguised; their eyes were kept. And He does what He always did: He asks a question. "What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?" (24:17). They stop walking. Luke says they stood still, looking sad. And Cleopas says the thing that makes the whole scene: "Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?" (24:18). He is explaining the crucifixion to the crucified.

We trusted

"What things?" (24:19). And they tell Him. Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in deed and word, handed over and crucified, and then the sentence that carries all their grief in the tense of the verb: "But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done" (24:21). We trusted. Past tense. And today is the third day, they say, not because they expect anything, but because three days is when you stop expecting.

And He, still unrecognised, says the one hard thing in the story: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" (24:25-26). Ought not. It was supposed to happen this way. It was written. "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself" (24:27). Seven miles of the best Bible study ever given, by the Subject of it, and neither of them knew who was talking. What they knew was that something was happening in their chests, and they would only name it afterward.

Abide with us

"And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further" (24:28). He would have walked on. He does not push in; He never does. It was theirs to ask. "But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them" (24:29). Abide with us. It is the word from John 15, and it is a hymn now, and it was first said by two tired people at a door at dusk to a stranger they did not want to lose. They did not know why. And He went in.

It was their house and their bread, and He took the place of the host. Took, blessed, broke, gave: the four verbs of the feeding of the five thousand, the four verbs of the upper room three nights before. And their eyes were opened. Whether it was the gesture, or the hands, which now had marks in them, Luke does not say; only that at the breaking of the bread they knew Him, and He was gone. Augustine could not read that verse without hearing another one:

The eyes of them both were opened, in the garden, at a tree, and what they saw was their own shame. The eyes of them both were opened, at a table, at a loaf, and what they saw was Him. The first opening sent two people hiding. The second sent two people running.

Did not our heart burn

"And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (24:32). Now they can name it. It had been burning the whole seven miles, while they thought they were sad, while they were explaining things to Him. He had been opening the Scriptures, and the Scriptures had been opening them, and the recognition at the table was only the last thing to catch up. "And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem" (24:33). Seven miles back, in the dark, at a run, to the city they had given up on that morning, "and they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread" (24:35).

Where this lands

He walks up beside people who are walking away. That is the story, and it is worth sitting with, because it is the opposite of what a risen Lord might be expected to do. He does not appear in the temple. He does not appear to Pilate. He catches up with two nobodies on a back road who have concluded that it is over, and He asks them what they are talking about, and He lets them tell Him, and then He shows them from Moses onward that the thing that broke their hearts was the thing that was always going to happen, and He stops at their door and waits to be asked in.

And He is known in the breaking of bread. Not in the argument on the road, though the argument mattered and the heart was burning through all of it. At the table, when He does the thing He did the night before He died. That is where the church has looked for Him ever since, and where He has said He would be. If you are on the road out of Jerusalem this week, with the past tense in your mouth, He is not behind you. He is beside you, asking what things, and He will go as far as your door and no further unless you say it. Abide with us. He does.

Related: The Vine, Communion, The Resurrection Body, and The Second Fire. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.