In today’s scripture we find ourselves transported back once again to Easter Sunday as we hear about yet another experience of encounter with the resurrected Christ.  This story, which has become known as “The Road to Emmaus” begins in the aftermath of the death of Jesus of Nazareth. Two disciples are traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Why they are traveling to Emmaus is not quite clear, but on some level it seems to fit with a human instinct that sometimes causes us to retreat after a shocking incident.  The act of retreating allows us to take space, be it is psychological, emotional, or physical and that space can offer us an opportunity to wrap our heads and hearts around whatever has just occurred.  That is just where we find these two disciples; they are trying to process with each other all that has taken place in the last few days.

Jesus, incognito, joins these two travelers on the road and he listens to their interpretation of the events that have just transpired and hears them voice their disappointment when they say “we were hoping he was the One who would set Israel free.”  He hears their fears and doubts when they tell him of the astonishing news of the empty tomb and their hesitation to believe the reports because a risen Jesus had not yet been seen by any others.  After listening, Jesus, remaining anonymous, calls them back to themselves and reminds them, through scripture, of the hope that still exists, of the promises of God and of God’s enduring and unexpected ways of relating to God’s people.

Something of what this stranger is telling them resonates with these two disciples and when they reach Emmaus they invite him to stay with them.  Jesus accepts invitations.  He joins them and it is in the gathering around the table and in the breaking of the bread that his true identity is revealed to them.  While immediately following the revelation, Jesus vanishes from sight, the revelation breaks open the vision of these two disciples in a new way and they began to see and understand the presence of the living Christ in all they had just experienced saying to each other, “weren’t our hearts burning inside us as this one talked to us on the road?”

This story of the road to Emmaus has been portrayed often in paintings and understandably so. It is a dramatic story – full of moments of mystery, contemplation, conversation, and then a shocking revelation. Probably the most traditional and well known image of the road to Emmaus is a painting that was done by Robert Zund in 1877 showing three men walking down a dirt path through a forest engaged in animated conversation.  A large reproduction of this painting hung in the family room of my parents’ house for many of my growing up years.  It was a fixture in my visual world and became almost mundane as I would glance over it when passing through the room without giving it much thought and certainly not pondering the scriptural story that inspired the painting.  In seminary I re-encountered this painting and this story and found connection with it in new ways that have inspired moments of my faith journey ever since.

When I was in seminary I took an arts practicum course which was, for the most part, an independent study where those of us in the class were each exploring our own specific topic of study in relation to art and theology and creating an art project in relation to our studies.  Each week we would gather together as a group to talk about how our projects were developing; we engaged in critical conversations about what we were learning and options for moving forward.  One of my classmates was doing a study of the road to Emmaus story and her project was focused around re-envisioning Zund’s famous painting.  She took a reproduction of the painting and overlaid it with an active, almost graffiti like sketch of flames swooping around the travelers and their companion as they walked down this road.

I remember the moment when I saw her piece of art. There I was, face to face with a familiar painting that I had been around all my life and yet here it was reinvented. I was encountering the familiar and the mundane in a new way, it was fresh and active and it made me look at the world around me with renewed vision.  A vision that seemed to point out that those flames of spirit, truth and love were swirling around these three all along as they walked and the disciples just failed to see it till their walk was over. In that moment I was reminded that part of living a life of faith is to keep a look out for the swirling flames of God’s presence surrounding all aspects of life, something that is often easier to see in retrospect. Looking back on events and reflecting on how pieces came together and seeing connections that were present but that we missed at the time is often powerful and that kind of reflection can open us up to meaningful encounters with God’s presence.  But in other moments God’s active presence is revealed to us in ‘real-time’ and in those moments we are walking with the divine and we know it; our hearts burn within us.

As I was pondering this scripture over the past couple of weeks the story of another moment of encounter floated to the surface of my tank of memories.  Like the road to Emmaus story, it is a story of living in the aftermath of an unexpected event, it is a story of gathering around a table while the Spirit swirled around, and it is a story of eye opening revelation that allowed for an encounter with the Holy.

My grandparents, Fred and Carolyn Augsburger, worked as church planters in Youngstown Ohio from the mid-1950s till their retirement in the early 1980s.  Their efforts to build interracial churches during the 60s and 70s were somewhat successful, but the relationships that were built with people in the communities around 2Youngstown during those years left a lasting legacy.  After their official retirement from their Youngstown ministry in 1982 they served as interim ministers in several places including churches in Jamaica, Oregon, and Ohio.

All of this came to a crashing halt in 1995 when my grandmother had a stroke that left her paralyzed on the right side of her body and unable to communicate with words other than a slurred yes or no.  A life-long singer, occasionally she could join in a verse or two of old hymns who’s long known lyrics seemed to be able to make their way to the surface or at the very least she would be able hum along to the tune. Needless to say this event was life altering for my grandparents and for the entire family, all of a sudden, this woman who was a powerful partner in ministry with my grandfather and at times an overly outspoken individual could not communicate – it was very clear to us that her thoughts and memories where coherent and intact, but she had few tools left to express them.

After her stroke, my grandmother spent several weeks at a rehabilitation hospital.  One weekend my parents and I travelled to Ohio to visit and check in on her progress.  During that time it had become standard practice for my grandfather to go to the hospital on Sunday mornings to attend the worship service offered in the chapel there with my grandmother. That particular Sunday morning, my cousin was being baptized at a church a few miles away and my grandfather was torn, he didn’t want to leave grandma on her own, but he also deeply wanted to be present at the baptism.  After communicating with my grandmother his plans and assuring her that we would all come straight to the hospital after church to eat lunch with her, my grandfather joined the rest of the family at my cousin’s baptism service instead of going to the hospital service.

As promised, after church we made our way to the hospital and gathered together in the cafeteria to eat lunch with my grandmother and celebrate my cousin’s baptism.  As we gathered around the table it quickly became clear that my grandmother wanted to communicate something about the morning service at the hospital chapel.  She kept holding out the program from the chapel service and when we asked her if it was a good service, she would nod vigorously.  The meal went on and we told her about the baptism and she kept going back to the program from the service she had attended – Grandpa took a look at it and saw that it had been led by an African-American Pentecostal group and again we asked if it was a good service and she nodded again but clearly wanted to communicate something more about what she had experienced.  We couldn’t get it, we knew she was trying to tell us something but through all of our questions and in her lack of ability to respond, we just couldn’t piece together what she wanted to communicate.

She began to weep.  As we tried to console her and continued to work at figuring out what she was trying to say, a group of people a few tables away from us in the cafeteria got up and were starting to gather their coats to leave and my grandmother was looking at them, her weeping became inconsolable.  My grandfather went over to the group of people preparing to leave and spoke with them trying to put the pieces together.  The people were from the choir that had led the morning service and he asked them about the service saying that his wife had been moved by something that had happened and that we were trying to figure out what it was.  One woman came over and put her arm around my grandmother and said she had shared a testimony about her experiences surrounding the death of her son and that perhaps that was what had moved her.

While the woman was chatting with those of us at the table, some of the other members of the Pentecostal group asked my grandfather who he was and he said, “I’m Fred Augsburger and I ministered at Youngstown for many years.” At that, a woman who had stepped away to get her coat and had just returned said, “Did you say Fred Augsburger?” and she threw her arms around him saying “I’m Sophia Brooks!”  Sophia Brooks was a dear friend of my grandmother’s from college and was a well-known soprano soloist in Youngstown during the years of their ministry. Incidentally, Sophia sang at my parent’s wedding, a fact I had learned only a few weeks prior to this incident when we just happened to decide to listen to the recording of my parents wedding on their 23^rd anniversary and had heard her singing.

Sophia, after hugging my grandfather, asked “what are you doing here?” When he said that his wife was here recovering from a stroke Sophia ran over to the table where my grandmother was sitting in her wheelchair and threw her arms around my grandmother’s neck and held her in a tight embrace and my grandmother’s tears turned from tears of frustrated desperation to tears of deep joy. This is what my grandmother had been trying desperately to communicate to us – she had recognized her friend from many years past in the morning service and we had come within moments of missing this encounter.

With our eyes wide open to the connection my grandmother had wanted to make and share with us – we all reveled in the joy of the moment and spent time singing together since Sophia was a singer and singing was one of the few means of communication left to my grandmother.  There in that hospital cafeteria sat my grandparents, who had spent so much of their lives ministering to others and yet were in a desperate moment of needing support themselves, receiving ministry from the most unexpected of encounters. And in that moment we all felt the heart warming flames of the Spirit swirling all around us.

After the disciples’ eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread, their vision and understanding energized them and they were moved to immediately go back to Jerusalem and share their story of encounter with the living Christ with the other disciples. They were no longer slogging through the initial aftermath of Jesus’ death, but were learning to see the living presence of Christ all around all the time.  I looked up the definition of aftermath this week and was surprised to learn that aftermath does not just refer to the consequences of a disastrous event, aftermath is also a second growth of a crop in the same season after it has been mowed down – for instance grass has an aftermath – it grows back after being cut down.  When we step into encounters with Christ, this is the state in which we live, not in the devastating aftermath of Jesus’ death, but in the growing aftermath of the resurrection where life is persistent, hope continuously springs forth, and the swirling flames of the Spirit surround us.