The Supper at Emmaus, Rembrandt, circa 1628.

(painted when the artist was 22 years old)

For many centuries, Christians have spoken of the season of Lent and then of Holy Week leading up to Easter as a journey, a road, a pilgrimage that we are walking by faith in the company of our fellow believers. But even as we approach this journey afresh each year, it is all too easy to think that we know the destination and have been there before, and thus to lose our sense of wonder and awe at what Jesus accomplished. Easter again—that’s nice. Ho hum…

Part of our lack of astonishment is because we live on the other side of the empty tomb and at some level believe and know that Jesus is risen. However, it can be salutary to put ourselves back in the mindset and emotions and footsteps of the disciples as they walked that first Holy Week. In the Gospels, as Jesus approaches Jerusalem, he shares with the disciples about the fact that he is going to suffer and die and then be raised from the dead on the third day. Although they know him as a great teacher and healer and have come to believe he is the Son of God, they still cannot get their head around this prediction, not only because it seems impossible in their understanding of the Messiah that such a thing should happen, but also because (very sensibly) they understand that people do NOT rise from the dead. Indeed, a typical response from the disciples is recorded in Mark 9:10: “So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean.” In their view, it clearly did not—could not—mean actually rising from the dead.

Once they walk the road to Jerusalem, and after the joyous triumphal entry of Palm Sunday, the disciples’ world takes a dramatic and dreadful turn when Jesus is arrested in Gethsemane and handed over to the Romans. In a world with no due process or habeas corpus, they were horrified and terrified at this world-shattering disaster.

Not only were they worried for Jesus, but they were also seeing all the hopes and dreams in which they had been invested for the past few years come crashing down. As Jesus’s closest followers, they now worried they would also be arrested; the Gospels record how they fled and left Jesus alone and denied even knowing him. When the nightmare of Jesus’s crucifixion happens on Good Friday, the disciples are all in hiding, except for John, Mary, and some of the women. These faithful few at the Cross see Jesus breathe his last and watch his lifeless body being taken down from the Cross. In abject sorrow and deep mourning, they await the end of the Sabbath so that they can go anoint Jesus’s dead body according to Jewish custom. When they set out early that Sunday morning, they fully expect to find his body in the tomb. They have no idea of anything else that could happen, and their immediate reaction when they see the stone rolled away is to think that their tragic circumstances have now worsened because Jesus’s body has been stolen. The idea of his rising from the dead is not even remotely on their minds.

Much in this same frame of mind are the disciples treading yet another dusty and long road from Jerusalem to Emmaus that same Sunday morning. Part of Jesus’s circle but not among the Twelve, they are well aware of what has happened, and their hopes and dreams about Jesus as the Messiah are crushed and torn in shredded tatters. As they walk the road to Emmaus, they are pouring out their despair to one another. This scene is poignantly captured in T.S Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland”:

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying.

These despondent travelers are then joined by a mysterious stranger who somehow seems to know nothing about the drama that has just played out in Jerusalem. They share their grief with this stranger, who astounds them with his knowledge of the Scriptures about the Messiah. Intrigued and strangely moved, they ask him to stay with them for dinner. As he breaks bread at dinner, the veil is removed from their sight and they recognize him as Jesus—raised from the dead and triumphantly alive! He then vanishes from among them. They are flabbergasted and overjoyed that Jesus has been raised and immediately leave their business in Emmaus behind and run all the way back to Jerusalem to share this amazing news. Finding the other disciples, they learn that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has appeared to Peter and that it is TRUE—the Resurrection has happened. When Jesus next joins the disciples and invites Thomas to touch his wounds, the Scriptures tell us the disciples disbelieved for Joy.

Their shock and wonder at the Resurrection is the only possible reaction because their world has turned upside down by the mighty power of God revealed in raising Jesus Christ from the dead. The disciples turn from cowering in hidden alleyways to shouting and proclaiming the news of Jesus’s resurrection in every street and square.

What keeps you from seeing Jesus this year? Cast off the veil of familiarity and enter the story once more with fresh eyes, walking in the disciples’ shoes, and prepare your heart for sorrow transformed to Wonder and Joy!

This article first appeared in the April 2025 edition of the Charleston Mercury.