A very short dinner with Jesus in Emmaus.

Luke 24.28-35.

Last week I wrote about Jesus meeting two of his followers enroute to Emmaus; most likely Emmaus Nicopolis, and most likely the followers were Jesus’s uncle Cleopas and cousin Simon. They didn’t recognize him, partly ’cause they were almost certain he was dead, partly ’cause he was unrecognizable; either veiled, or resurrection had changed what he looked like. If he now had white hair Rv 1.14 instead of the more common black, he might look very different.

They told him they expected Jesus the Nazarene to be Israel’s redeemer, but he was arrested and crucified. Lk 24.19-21 He told them Messiah was supposed to go through these things, and explained how the scriptures said so. Lk 24.26-27 They had a nice long walk ahead of them, so he had a few hours to go into great detail, although Luke doesn’t get into that. But after they reached Emmaus, this happened.

Luke 24.28-35 KWL

28 They come near the village where they’re going,

and Jesus makes like he’s going to go on further.

29 The students force Jesus to come with them, saying,

“Stay with us, for it’s near evening and the day’s already over.”

So he goes into the village and stays with them.

30 It happens while Jesus reclines with the students at dinner:

Taking the bread, he blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.

31 The students’ eyes are opened, and they recognize Jesus

—and he becomes invisible to them.

32 The students tell one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us

when he was speaking to us on the road?

when he was opening up the scriptures to us?”

33 Rising up that same hour, the students return to Jerusalem.

They find the Eleven and those with them, having gathered together,

34 and are saying this: “The Master is risen indeed,

and appeared to Simon!”

35 The students are telling the other students

what happened on the road,

and when they recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.

Every once in a while, some Christian balks at when Jesus προσεποιήσατο πορρώτερον πορεύεσθαι/prosepiísato porróteron porévesthe, “makes like he’s going to go on further,” which also gets translated as “acted” or “pretended” or “gave the impression.” They don’t like the idea Jesus behaved as if he was gonna do one thing, when really he was gonna do another. It strikes them as deceptive.

First of all, why wasn’t Jesus gonna go further? You recall in Matthew the angels, and soon after Jesus himself, told the women, “Tell the boys I’ll see them in the Galilee”? Mt 28.7, 10 He might’ve been headed for the Galilee right then for all we know.

But circumstances change. The students παρεβιάσαντο αὐτὸν/pareviásanto aftón, “force him” (or “urge him,” or “compel him”) to come home with them, and he changed his mind. You do realize Jesus can change his mind, right? He doesn’t have a foreordained cosmic plan which he’s obligated to rigidly, deterministically follow. If he did… then yeah, making like he’s going on without them when he really predestined they’d invite him to stay with them, is pure deception on his part. And every single other instance in the bible in which God changes his mind—in which Moses, David, Hezekiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and dozens of other folks talk him out of doing what he totally just said he was gonna do—is playacting. Pretense. Or to use the ancient Greek word for it, ὑπόκρισις/ypókrisis, from which we get our word hypocrisy.

I should also add Jesus has every right to test his followers; to tell them he’s gonna do one thing, but what he’s hoping is they’ll talk him out of it so he doesn’t have to do that. Just like when the LORD told the Hebrews that if they didn’t follow his Law, they’d be cursed. He didn’t wanna curse them! He didn’t wanna do any of that stuff to them. He wanted ’em to repent! But they failed his test. And if Jesus was just testing his students, to see whether they’d invite him into town, they passed—but he wasn’t kidding about going onwards. If they didn’t invite him into town, he’d just go somewhere else. (In fact, when he vanishes on them in verse 31, that might be where he vanished to; either way, that’s where he was going.)

Recognizing him at dinner.

The customs of middle eastern hospitality meant it was really likely Jesus’s students would invite him home anyway. They just made a new friend on the road; you don’t wanna travel the roads at night because highwaymen; it’s getting late; come have dinner. There’d be bread, at least. It’d be unleavened, ’cause the Feast of Unleavened Bread was still happening, but food is food.

Now they’d just had dinner with Jesus a few nights ago at Passover, at his Last Supper. In which Jesus did the very same thing he did here: Broke the bread and passed it around. During Passover, this was part of the haggadah, the ritual customs during the dinner that re-told the Exodus story. During every other meal, you didn’t break the bread and pass it around unless there was only one piece of bread and you had to share it. So I’m pretty sure Jesus did this on purpose, ’cause he wanted to be recognized. It was about time these guys realized their Master was alive.

There is some question a lot of Christians have about whether Jesus deliberately, supernaturally kept them from recognizing him on the road. I’ve heard it argued he had to do this, ’cause he wanted them to pay attention and listen to his teachings about who Messiah is and what he had to do—and if they knew it was Jesus, they’d be too busy doing happy dances to listen. Or they’d run away, ’cause they had to tell everybody! Or some other reason. Thing is, in the very next story, Jesus appears to the Eleven, makes ’em fully aware it’s really him and he’s really alive… Lk 24.36-43 then tells them who Messiah is and what he had to do. Lk 24.44-49 So it’s not like he had to keep his identity hidden from them along the road. Even the most attention-deficit, manic students could be made to calm down and pay attention. (Takes work, but it’s doable—I know from experience.)

I suspect it’s more like they weren’t expecting Jesus at all, and even the students thought throughout, “Man alive, this guy totally sounds like Jesus,” it still wouldn’t have occurred to them it actually is Jesus. Same as when Jesus appears to people nowadays, and they likewise don’t realize it’s him until he does something undeniably Jesus-like and they jolt awake: “Wait… are you…?” And—exactly the same as this story!—he tends to disappear fairly soon after.

I also suspect that’s most of the reason this story’s in the bible: Because it still happens. And though it’s gonna freak us out when it happens, don’t get the idea it’s without biblical precedent. It’s absolutely not. Happened right here.

Running to tell the others.

Most of the time when we retell this story, people describe these students as getting up immediately and running back to Jerusalem to tell the other students.

And you’ll notice this story doesn’t say they ran. Or that they left immediately. They got up and left αὐτῇ τῇ ὥρᾳ/aftí ti óra, “the same hour,” which means soon, not immediately. (Hours back then changed length depending on the time of year, but on the evening of 5 April 33, the night was 12 hours 30 minutes long, so the hours were only 62½ minutes long—if you wanna be anal-retentively literal about it.) Emmaus Nicopolis is 25 kilometers away, which is a five-hour walk or a two-hour run. I’m not a marathon runner; I’m not running for two straight hours; I’d get a horse. No, Luke says nothing about a horse… but neither does the book say they didn’t get horses.

The students got back to Jerusalem and found the Eleven, plus the other Jesus-followers, gathered together. So that gives us three options:

• They got horses, rode back to Jerusalem before 8, and met with the Eleven, who happened to be up late. (’Cause 8 o’clock was late back then.)
• They walked, got back to Jerusalem by about 11 or midnight, and the Eleven happened to be pulling an all-nighter.
• They walked, got to Jerusalem by about 11 or midnight, went to bed, and met with the Eleven in the morning.

The way Luke phrases verse 34, it could either mean the Eleven were saying, “The Master appeared to Simon,” or the two students from Emmaus were saying “The Master appeared to Simon.” Historically, Christians figured the Eleven were saying it, and the “Simon” in question was Peter. There seems to be some special appearance to Peter which Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 15.5, so fans of Peter think this is a reference to that—and they love the idea of Peter getting singled out by Jesus for important stuff. Hence the Christian myths about that appearance and what it looks like. But it’s all Christian fanfiction; none of it is historical.

My theory—but it’s purely a theory; take or leave it—is it’s the two students from Emmaus speaking, and they’re speaking of themselves. Jesus had appeared to them. But for whatever reason, they were emphasizing just the one of them, Simon: One of the students is identified as Cleopas, Lk 24.18 and if this is Jesus’s uncle Cleopas, he had a son named Simon, so the other student may very well have been Jesus’s cousin Simon. (Simon later became bishop of Jerusalem after Jesus’s brother James Ac 12.17, 15.13, 21.18 had died.) The discussion which followed was all about Jesus appearing on the road, Lk 24.35 with nothing about how “the Master appeared to Simon,” because the appearance on the road is the appearance to Simon. It’s the same Simon.

Anyway, other scholars have the same theory, but more people think the premise is weak: Referring to the two of themselves as just “Simon” seems odd. Then again, referring to a special appearance to Peter, yet not calling him Peter (to distinguish him from the other guys among them named Simon; the whole reason Judeans and Galileans used nicknames was because so many of ’em had the same names!), likewise seems odd. Shouldn’t there be a whole story about it in the gospels?—and yet there’s nothing about an appearance to Peter. So I’m gonna vote for this Simon being Simon bar Cleopas. We’ll sort it out precisely after the resurrection, I guess.

Ah, but this story isn’t over. Next, Jesus shows up.