I've already posted this mosaic of the walk to Emmaus. There are a good number of artistic alternatives that also portray one of the most poignant and powerful stories of the Christian Gospel. But I am currently staying with this one for the aesthetically uncritical reason that I like it - plain, simple, almost naive, muted in colour, but communicating the burning heart of the story.
It's often emphasised that the two disciples in their bewilderment, anxiety, disbelief at the turn of events, and pre-occupation with their own voices as they talked out their confusion, didn't recognise that the stranger who fell in step alongside was Jesus. What's not often remarked is that in their ignorance of who was there, in their non-recognition of Jesus the very one they discussed, missed and grieved over, one thing was obviously and persistently true. Despite their non-recognition, their closed eyes, their sense of being abandoned and left just to get on with the aftermath of disaster, the one they didn't recognise was the Risen Lord. They thought they were deserted, but he was closer to their hearts, and eyes, than they could possibly believe; they complained to the one they were sure was irrevocably gone, about the One who had failed their hopes. But they kept walking, and as they did the stranger helped them move from not knowing to discovery, from confusion to clarity, from eyes closed in the shocked trauma of grief, to eyes opened at the breaking of bread, and from lonely inner coldness of loss, to hearts burning again with hope.
And I wonder if at times what might restore some faith to tired sorrowing hearts is not the end of the story and the joy of recognition that He is Risen, but our privileged knowing as readers of the story, that in those dark empty moments and on those lonely unseeing miles, the One who comes alongside, though we don't recognise or see Him, is the same one who will stay with us when the day is far spent, and will be made known in the breaking of bread. Yes - the start of the story may well be about the dark night of the soul, and our chance to glimpse how, when we are least aware of it, the Risen Lord is nearer than we think - or believe. Or so it seems to me, on the Monday after Low Sunday, and the frost and snow persist, and the daffodils are still refusing to risk opening. But Spring is here, even if it doesn't seem like it - and they will flower, yes they will!
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