I have great sympathy for Cleopas and his companion. There they were, walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the first day of the week…. Yesterday was the Sabbath; the day before that was the crucifixion. Here, on the third day, it was time for them to go home.
As they were traveling, Jesus comes near them – Jesus himself! – and starts walking with them. And get this: they do not recognize him.
I sympathize with them, because that is a pastor’s worst nightmare: “Hi, welcome to Bixby Knolls Christian Church, is this your first visit?”
“Uh, no, I was here last week. Don’t you recognize me?”
Just take my size 9 ½ and shove it in my mouth right now, ‘cause I’m done.
Some years ago I was asked to meet with a family to plan the funeral of their mother. I may have told you this before. The daughter, who I would say was maybe around 60, showed up to the meeting in jeans and tennis shoes, which was fine. And we talked for awhile, shared memories, and planned the service.
A few days later I was at the church for the funeral, and a woman walks in, and she looks perfect: very dressed up, very formal, with beautiful clothes, makeup just right, and not one hair out of place. I was about to walk up to her and introduce myself, welcome her, and possibly ask how she knew the person who had died when, just in time, I recognized her as the daughter I had met with just a few days ago.
I tell you, that was a close one. One mistake like that can incite a whole flock of wrath. Entire ministries have fallen over lesser sins than that.
Cleopas and his companion did not recognize Jesus. Apparently they had been two of Jesus’ followers. They had listened to his teachings. Probably they had dined with Jesus on one or more occasion. And yet, after all this, they did not recognize him.
The scripture says that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” By what? By God? Did God keep their eyes from recognizing Jesus?
Could it be that their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus by their own confusion and disillusionment following the crucifixion?
What was it that kept their eyes from recognizing Jesus?
Before Jesus, it was believed that God’s messiah would be one who would rule with power and might. Jesus did not fit that description, not in the way that people expected the messiah to; he exercised power and might in a very different way. Many, many people did not recognize Jesus because of that.
Cleopas and his companion: could it be that their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus by their own preconceived ideas about what God was like?
This man walking alongside them looked like Jesus, but Jesus had been crucified, and people who had been crucified don’t walk with you along a road. Maybe they saw Jesus with their eyes but not with their minds, and seeing really is a function of the mind more than it is of the eyes.
I heard a story once about how, when the first ship arrived in the New World from Europe, many of the Native Americans could not see it. It was right there in front of them, just offshore, but it was so different from anything they had ever seen or imagined, that the mind refused to accept the image that was coming to it from the eyes. To the mind, it was simply unbelievable, so the mind erased the image, and replaced the image of white sails with something that made more sense: white clouds. And that’s all the Native Americans could see: white clouds over an empty sea.
The eyes of Cleopas and his companion saw this man with the same features as Jesus, the same voice as Jesus, but their minds knew that that was impossible. And so, their “eyes” were kept from recognizing him.
That’s what I think, anyway.
By the way, if you ask me later, I will show you a little demonstration that will have your mind see something that your eyes do not. It’s really cool. Ask me.
Anyway, I think that Cleopas and his companion could not see Jesus because what they were seeing conflicted with what they thought was possible, and because Jesus himself was not all that they had imaged the messiah to be. What they thought God was like got in the way of what God was really like.
In this, they are not alone. In describing what happened at the crucifixion, Luke’s gospel reports that Jesus prayed that those who crucified him would be forgiven. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
In most translations, this verse has a footnote that mentions that this verse, in which Jesus prays for forgiveness, is not present in many of the ancient copies of Luke’s gospel. Some have this verse; others do not.
Well, what happened is that many of the scribes who copied those ancient documents lived in situations of severe persecutions by Romans and even by non-believing Jews, and they could not imagine a God who would forgive Romans and Jews. They could not imagine a God who would forgive those who crucified Jesus. They could not imagine a God who would forgive those who persecuted them so ruthlessly. Where’s the justice in that?
So they left that verse out. Jesus said it; but they did not recognize it as something he would say. They could not recognize it as something that was of God. They could not imagine a God who forgives so generously.
Those who take seriously a journey of spiritual growth find that, at many places on that journey, their ideas about who God is and what God is like are challenged. We each have our own image of what God is like. There really is no getting around that. And none of these images that we have are completely true. We are limited by our own imagination.
Anne Lamott has written that you know you’ve created God in your own image when God hates all the same people you hate. Those ancient scribes, whose God hated the Romans and the Jews the same as they did, had created for themselves an image of God that was at least partly of their own making. Those who expected the messiah to come with a certain type of might and power had created a God in their own image.
Elijah waited for God to come in a great windstorm; after all, in all those movies, whenever God is near, the wind is blowing. Cecil B. DeMille, right? When God is present, you cue the offscreen fans to blow the hair and ruffle the clothes so that they flap in the wind. Elijah also waited for God to come in the midst of a great earthquake. You see that in the movies, too. So Elijah had an image of God that involved windstorms and earthquakes.
But God did not conform to Elijah’s preconceived notions. God through Elijah for a loop by coming in the midst of calm and silence.
We create God in our own image whenever we believe that God hates all the same people we hate, whenever we assume that God is always on our team. We create God in our own image when we assume that God is a republican like us … or a democrat like us … We create God in our own image when we assume that God condemns gays and lesbians to hell just because they make us uncomfortable.
We create God in our own image when we assume that God rejoice with us over the death of Osama bin Laden.
Yes, all of a sudden the struggle of Cleopas and his companion is our struggle, too. It is my struggle, as a theologian and a preacher, because this week one of the things I’ve been pondering is this: if Jesus were crucified on the Twin Towers instead of at Calvary, would he have prayed of those terrorists: “Father, forgive them…?”
I think he would have.
And if someone were to record those words, would someone else try to take those words out from the record, remove them, saying “How could God possibly forgive those who could commit such evil?”
Difficult questions, I know. And on Mother’s Day, no less. What was I thinking?
The eyes of Cleopas and his companion were kept from recognizing Jesus. I guess it was just too much. And yet there must have been some sort of opening there, because they invited him to accompany them, and they listened with open hearts to all he had to say. It stretched their imagination. It expanded their minds. It challenged their own way of thinking about God, to listen to Jesus. But still, they listened.
Upon reaching their destination, they even invited him to stay with them. Apparently, they wanted to hear more, to learn more, to have their established ways of thinking about God be challenged further.
And then, in the breaking of the bread, their eyes were finally opened, and they recognized him. They recognized God in their midst.
As soon as they recognized Jesus, he vanished, which is a strange thing. How could he do that? I don’t know. It stretches my imagination!
All I know is that if I keep my eyes and my mind open, God will continue stretching my imagination. I have my own ways of imagining God, but God is always bigger than that. Which means that there are times when I fail to recognize God in my midst. There is still much within me that keeps me from recognizing God, but every day, I’m learning…
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