This passage delights me. What Cleopas and the other disciple experience on the road to Emmaus is good beyond hope. When Jesus asks them what they’re talking about, Luke says “They stood still, looking sad” (24:17). This indicates to me they don’t really believe the resurrection reports. Later, when they realize who’d been with them, what they hadn’t dared to hope becomes a reality.

In addition to bursting with joy, this passage is comic. Of course, the entire incarnation is ironic, but in this appearing, Jesus plays it up—which is kind of mischievous of Him and, therefore, funny. It’s hard for me to imagine this scene without seeing a suppressed smile on Christ’s face.

“What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?” (Verse 17)

Cleopas heaves a sigh:

“Are You [excellent that they capitalize the second person pronoun in this instance] the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?”

Christ’s suppressed smile widens imperceptibly.

“What things?”

The two disciples stop in their tracks and look at one another with mouths half-open. Jesus’ brows rise half a millimeter and he loosens his smile, letting them interpret it as embarrassment.

“The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people…”

He knows what he’s about to do to them. He’s not only about to blow their minds with what has to be the most interesting sermon in history (which I fully expect to be on podcast in heaven); he’s also about to open their eyes—which further demonstrates God’s mischief. Verse 16 says, “Their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.” This is some artful cunning. One might even conclude from this episode that God has a flare for drama.

And once they explain to Jesus what they’re on about, He chides them:

“O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”

How would Cleopas and his companion have responded to this? I imagine a frown and parted lips. Jeeze, dude. You may be right, but uh…how about a little bedside manner?

The summary of the lecture he gives them cracks me up:

“And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (verse 27).

All the prophets and all the Scriptures. I imagine them walking as He talks, getting close to Emmaus before He finishes, and stopping, standing with crossed arms, leaning on one foot, frowning and nodding.

And then! When they near their destination, Jesus acts like he’s going on further—acts like he’s going on further. Mischief. But in addition to the mischief, He’s got a purpose: He wants them to invite Him in. He tells them everything they need to know, but then leaves it to them to respond. They choose well: they ask Him to stay.

I don’t know if Cleopas and his bro (Jesus calls them “foolish men,” so I’m assuming they’re both dudes), were there when He multiplied loaves and fishes, or at the Last Supper, but when they sit down and He blesses and breaks bread, it certainly evokes those two occasions. And that’s when “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight” (Verse 31).

I really want a Wes Anderson rendering of this moment–the whole scene, really, but this moment especially. I imagine Zero from Grand Budapest Hotel (Tony Revolori) as Cleopas and maybe the Jason Schwartzman of The Darjeeling Limited as the other guy… Okay, I wasn’t thinking about race when I thought of those two guys. But I didn’t say we had to put Adrian Brody in there, too–though he would do a great job. Just as long as Owen Wilson plays Jesus… Help me today, God. I’ve derailed this meditation, but do you see what I did? I started with an expression on Tony Revolori’s face at a certain point in a Wes Anderson film, wondered which Anderson associate would play the other guy, and realized there was a race thing going on. Gosh. Cleopas may have been Greek, for all I know—the name the story gives him certainly is (his name apparently means “glory of the father”). However, for better or worse, my immediate, first notion was to cast a Guatemalan man (no foul, I think), a Jewish-American (thin ice—or the only appropriate choice?), and a Scandinavian-American. I’ll let you guess which one I think would be an absurd choice. Come to think of it, what about Willem Defoe? He was in Budapest, too, and he’s already got some Jesus acting experience.

Goodness. My point was that the moment when Jesus disappears could be really comic—I read it that way almost automatically. I can’t remember the scene in which Zero makes the face I’m thinking of, but the timing here in Luke 24 can’t be far off from the timing in Step Brothers:

“Without thinking about it, name your favorite dinosaur”

In unison: “Velociraptor.”

“What!”

“Did we just become best friends?”

“Yep!”

“Do you want to go do karate in the garage?”

“Yep!”

Compare:

“And he vanished from their sight.

And they said to one another:

“Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”” (31-32)

Okay, the dialogic cadence diverges a little, but the moment of recognition, the timing, had to have been the same. But instead of doing karate in the garage, they get up and walk the seven miles back to Jerusalem—probably fist pumping and doing that thing where you walk around and kick out your stiffened legs, saying something like, “I knew it! Man!” Know what I’m saying?

But they go back to the eleven disciples, and find them saying—and here it’s a little unclear to me who says this, but I think it’s the eleven—“The Lord has really risen, and has appeared to Simon” (34). Cleopas and Co. then relate their encounter on the road, the lecture they got, and the vanishing act they witnessed.

“Did we just become best friends?”

“Yep!”

“Did Jesus show up to you guys, too?”

“Yep!”

Have you had an experience like this, when you realize that the Lord has really risen—and that, in time, at an actual point in history, in physical form, Jesus appeared to Peter and these other disciples—that he actually went stealth-mode on these guys on the road to Emmaus, and then disappeared before their eyes? When you do have it, it can be quite powerful.

In my own experience, as powerful as it is to have this awakening, it is easy to cool off and half-forget. This last Sunday, Easter Sunday (of all days—the day Jesus appeared to Cleopas and his bro), I had such an experience. My church made a video called “When God Has the Last Word,” and it consisted of Christ’s sayings from the cross, spoken in various languages. By the time they got to “It is finished,” in ancient Greek, I was in tears. Not to show you how devout I am, not to brag about how religious my affections are (not only those things), but (also) to communicate what it’s like to realize you really believe. Right after the video, the worship team sang a song (with really full instrumentation—with about seven voices singing Gospel harmony) called “Don’t Cry.” As the title came up on the screen, I did.

Don’t cry

Wipe your eyes

He’s not dead

I realized again, in that moment, that it was true. He had really risen. My eyes continued to well over as shivers coursed my spine through the whole song.

Honestly, I’m highly suspicious of Charismatic stuff (as in the denomination—not the technical term “charismatic,” which means the opposite of cessation), though I’ve nothing against Charismatics and little interest in arguing with them. I’ve been there, faked that. But I’m sure most Charismaniacs—Charismatics! Charismatics!–are more sincere than I was when I was one in my callow youth–not that there’s something essentially callow about being Charismatic. But! Emotion for emotion’s sake, feeling based on feeling, is not worth much to me. Emotion based on fact, however–on reality—that compels me. Religious experience for experience’s sake is likewise not worth much to me—but if it produces action and character, then, well…

I will inevitably cool off to the reality I felt on Sunday, the fact that lit me up–I know. But that only reminds me how essential it is to remain awake—if not to continually wake up.