A Body Broken for a Broken People by Moloney Francis J.;

Author:Moloney, Francis J.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd LTD
Published: 2015-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS—AND THE RETURN TO JERUSALEM

The Gospels of Mark and Matthew both promise the reconstitution of a disbanded and failed group of disciples “on the other side” of Jesus’ death and resurrection. They do this within the context of the Last Supper: “I shall not drink again of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25; Matt 26:29). Neither Mark nor Matthew reports a scene after the resurrection where this promise is fulfilled. It was not needed as the prophecy points to the actual celebration of the Eucharist as it was practiced in both the Markan and the Matthean communities.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus makes such a prediction on two occasions (Luke 22:16 and 18). Luke, however, goes further than either Mark or Matthew by reporting two occasions when the risen Jesus shares a meal with his disciples. The first of these meal scenes is recorded in Luke 24:13-35: the journey to Emmaus. All the episodes of the resurrection account are linked by an insistence that everything took place on the one day. The account opens with the naming of a given day: “On the first day of the week” (24:1). The reader is next told, “That very same day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus” (v. 13). Toward the end of their journey, Jesus’ fellow-travelers say: “Stay with us for it is towards evening and the day is now far spent” (v. 29). After the breaking of the bread, “They rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem.” They make their report, but “as they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them” (v. 36). This is the final presence of Jesus to his disciples in the Gospel (see v. 51, where he leaves them).

The whole of Luke’s Gospel has been directed toward this “day.” As Jesus began his journey toward Jerusalem in 9:51, the narrator commented, “When the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” That “journey” comes to its close in Jerusalem through “the things that have happened there” (24:18). On this resurrection “day” we sense that we are at the end of a long journey. In fact, one of the most important themes of the Gospel of Luke and its companion work, the Acts of the Apostles, is the theme of a journey.59 Throughout the Gospel, a journey leads to Jerusalem, where the paschal events take place (see especially 9:51). At the beginning of Acts, the early Church is still in Jerusalem. The Spirit is given there, and it is from there that a second journey begins, reaching out to the ends of the earth.60 The center-point of Luke– Acts is the city of Jerusalem. The journey of Jesus leads him there. In Jerusalem the Paschal events take place, and he ascends to his Father from that city. Jerusalem is the end of the journey of Jesus; the journey of the apostles begins there.

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