I come from a family of walkers. My grandparents never drove anywhere. Oma walked to the village to do her shopping, and if she had to go to the city, she walked to the bus stop. Opa walked to work at the leather factory, he walked to choir practice, and on Sundays he walked to church. He walked to his apple orchard on the other side of the valley, and he walked in the forest, be it to get firewood, or just for the pleasure of walking. He never drove a vehicle, and the only thing with wheels he ever operated on the street was a rattly handcart he used to haul sacks of apples for cider or chicken feed.
My dad drove to work in the city every day, and my mom got her driver’s license in her thirties. One day she backed into another car in a parking lot, nothing big, just a broken tail light, but that was the end of it. She never drove anywhere again. She walked to do her shopping, she walked to church, and when she needed to go to the city, she walked to the tram stop. She’s 89, and while she walks much less than she used to, she feels most like herself when she does.
I come from a family of walkers. My siblings and I walked to school every day until fourth grade, and then we walked to the tram stop to get to school in the city. We walked to church, to youth group, to the pool in summer, or to visit friends. One of my friends lived one valley over, on the other side of the hill, about six or seven miles away, and I loved the short hike through the woods I took when I went to spend time with him. I rode my bike a lot as well, but I had discovered that there’s nothing better than walking to think about stuff; something about the rhythm of simply putting one foot in front of the other and letting your thoughts wander.
When I heard about veterans hiking the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Cress Trail, or the entire U.S. from coast to coast, I wasn’t surprised. They seek healing for their souls, hiking by themselves or in groups, processing the stuff they couldn’t just leave behind or forget when they returned from the battle field. “We are eternally perplexed by how to move toward forgiveness or healing or truth,” writes Rebecca Solnit, “but we know how to walk from here to there, however arduous the journey.”[1]
Jesus walked everywhere he went, except for that short ride into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey. And for his followers, walking with Jesus was not just a matter of getting from Capernaum to Bethsaida, or from Jericho up to Jerusalem. It’s how they learned that following was about more than their minds absorbing his teachings; following him was something they they did with their feet, with their whole bodies. It was a way of being in the world. It was a particular walk defined by his pace, his direction, his attention, his goals. They followed him all the way to Jerusalem, full of expectation, and then things just fell apart: the temple leadership, the Romans, the crowds, betrayal and arrest, fear and denial, and the horror of the cross.
And then, on the third day, early in the morning, rumors of resurrection. Some of the women returned from the tomb with words they had received in a vision of angels, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” Well, if he was risen, why didn’t he show himself? Why didn’t he enter the city in triumph? Why didn’t he restore the kingdom to Israel? They waited, remembering his words about rising on the third day, but then they set out on the long walk back.
We don’t know where exactly to look for Emmaus on the map, but we know the road. It’s where we walk when we can’t tell if we’re sad, furious, or tired; when our hope has shrunk from cosmic dimensions to a mere glimmer. “Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go,” Frederick Buechner wrote, “to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that [human beings] have had – ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish [people] for selfish ends.”[2] The road to Emmaus is where you walk when faith is little more than a memory. When you have no idea who you might become now or what might become of the world. Walking gives you something to do; it helps you sort things out; it gives rhythm to the waves of thoughts and feelings washing over you. “I walk a lonely road, my shadow’s the only one that walks beside me” Green Day sing in Boulevard of Broken Dreams. “Sometimes I wish someone out there will find me. Till then I walk alone.” Sometimes you walk alone. Sometimes you wish you had somebody to walk with you.
Cleopas and the other disciple were on the road together. They were talking: the joy of Jesus’ arrival in the city, the shock of his arrest, the guilt they had to bear for abandoning him, the trauma of his execution, and then, earlier that day, the astounding story the women had shared with them. It was all too much, too confusing, and so they walked. A stranger came near and was going with them. It was Jesus, Luke tells us, but they didn’t know it. All they knew were the brutal facts of Friday and the numbness of Saturday and the story the women had told them. Friday had weight. Friday was verifiable. Betrayal, fear, torture, death, hope shattered and silenced – there was a record of Friday, engraved on their hearts. Resurrection was a rumor. Some said, an idle tale.
“What are you talking about?” the stranger asked. They told him about Jesus and how they had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. And the stranger walked them through the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and all the prophets. He taught them to see how what had taken place in Jerusalem was at the heart of God’s story with the world, and how it revealed the full depth of Israel’s witness to the faithfulness of God. In the stranger’s words, the promises of scripture opened up like blossoms, and the two companions opened up along with them. “Stay with us,” they urged him when they reached the village and he was walking ahead as if he were going on. “Stay with us; it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. And at the table, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. That’s when they recognized him. That’s when the resurrection was no longer a rumor, but their life, their world renewed.
“The sacred moments,” wrote Fred Buechner, “the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only… the gardener, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all of our … imagination … what we may see is Jesus himself.”[3] The risen Christ subverts our ways of knowing, making an ordinary moment shine and opening to us a horizon of hope we cannot perceive with our minds alone. At first, we struggle to squeeze what we are told happened on the third day into our frame of understanding of how the world works. But then, suddenly or gradually, we begin to see how the world with all its wonders and its horrors is not only being reframed, but remade, in the new creation where the Crucified One is risen. Resurrection is no longer the odd event we can’t quite square with our knowledge of the world, but rather the horizon that allows us to see all things surrounded and held by God’s mercy.
On Friday, the Tennessee General Assembly adjourned from its 2023 session. Voices for a Safer Tennessee, the group that organized the human chain in support of common-sense gun laws, in a statement commended Governor Bill Lee “for his leadership and courage in urging our lawmakers to ‘set aside politics and personal pride [and] to do the right thing,’ and for proposing new gun safety bill language for the legislature to consider. This was an important first step.” Yes, indeed, an important first step. The statement continued with an echo of today’s Gospel reading where the two disciples are able to speak of hope only in the past perfect sense, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The statement says,
While we had hoped the General Assembly would act more quickly and discuss the proposed legislation during its regularly scheduled session, we respect that many of our legislators need and want more time to educate themselves on how other states have conservatively, but successfully, protected Second Amendment rights while also protecting citizens.
We had hoped, but because something has noticeably shifted in Tennessee, we continue to hope that the first step was indeed the beginning of a new walk. Governor Lee has already called a special session to discuss firearm safety legislation.[4] A date hasn’t been set yet, but there’s movement, and there’s more time for our elected officials “to hear from their constituents - including the majority of Tennessee Republicans who polled as supporting extreme risk laws (71%), closing background check loopholes (73%), and safe storage laws (68%).”[5]
Imagine some of our elected officials hearing the Gospel reading in their home churches this morning. Imagine some of them calling a colleague, “Let’s go for a walk.” Imagine them walking together, listening to each other. And imagine them listening to the stranger who walks with them, the stranger who holds the power to let them see the world in a whole new light.
[1] Wanderlust, 50.
[2] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, 85-86.
[3] Ibid., 87-88.
[4] https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2023/04/21/tennessee-gov-bill-lee-calls-a-special-session-on-gun-reform/70140521007/
[5] https://www.instagram.com/p/CrUiRL6suab/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D