Any of you who have heard me preach before know that I love historical biblical criticism. I love considering archaeological, anthropological, etymological and even geological evidence when imagining what a biblical story might mean to us. Historical biblical criticism was the stuff of family dinner table conversations from my earliest memories. So I was thoroughly delighted the other day to learn from Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies in the Episcopal Church, that the divinity school that educated me, when I was well into my adulthood, the Episcopal Divinity School, was the first seminary in the Episcopal Church to teach historical critical analysis of scripture in the 1880’s. Not surprisingly, the House of Bishops at the time condemned historical biblical criticism. (1) (They later reconsidered.) And you may know that the ever-courageous Episcopal Theological School, as it was then known, was founded by Benjamin Tyler Reed while he was senior warden of the ever-courageous Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston!

As much as I love historical biblical criticism, I also love bible narratives whose deep truth defies historical biblical criticism. Today’s Gospel story from Luke is one of those. Perhaps because it is a prototypical story for Eucharistic worship and an archetypal story for Christian praxis, Biblical scholars have gone to great lengths to locate a place that might have been the Emmaus to which Cleopas and his companion were traveling on Sunday, the day of resurrection, according to Luke. Scholars have argued on behalf of at least six different locations near Jerusalem for Emmaus. In their arguments, they lay out possible time tables and distances, traditional sites and evidence of shrines, extra-biblical citations, archaeological evidence, etymological hypotheses, human walking speeds, even the possibility of (and I quote) “responsive donkeys” that might have allowed the two on the road to Emmaus to cover greater distance in the available time than they could have by simply walking away from and then back to the rest of Jesus’ disciples before and after a shared meal, when it was almost evening and the third day after Jesus’ death was nearly over.

The historical-critical problem is that the traditional place considered Emmaus is twenty miles away from Jerusalem, not seven. Furthermore, there are discrepancies in the ancient copies of the text about the citation of distance – 60 stadia or 160 stadia. The arguments all focus on what a plausible distance would have been – what a plausible location would be. The argument’s funny to me – a little Monty Python-esque. (Do you know the scenes from the Quest for the Holy Grail where the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow is being debated through the movie?) It’s funny and fascinating that the plausibility of the existence of Emmaus is debated as if the geographical distance is what is completely unrealistic about this story.

This passage of the Gospel of Luke starts with a word that doesn’t get translated and included in our English rendering – the New Revised Standard Version: idou, which means “pay attention.” (2) Rather than the more benign “now on that same day,” the Gospel of Luke says, “and pay attention, listen up! On that same day, two of them were going to a place called Emmaus.” Do you know that Emmaus means warm bath? After the events of the frightening arrest and gruesome and shameful crucifixion of Jesus, and the perplexing reports of a tomb where Jesus corpse had been laid being found empty, in other words, after the worst week of their lives, Cleopas and his companion were headed for a place called warm bath.  And who could blame them?

I’m sure that I heard dozens of sermons preached about the road to Emmaus, given my churchy upbringing. But the only sermon about the road to Emmaus that I remember was delivered by the great Verna Dozier, many years ago, in which she opened my eyes to the idea that if Cleopas’ companion was not named, that meant that the companion must have been a woman.

As Cleopas and his companion went, they were conversing and disputing, Luke says. They were examining their recent experiences and debating about all the things that had happened. Into that conversation – in Greek, that homileo – came a stranger, who went the distance with them, listening to their story and interpreting all of scripture to them along the way.  When the stranger asks what they are talking about, they come to a standstill and are described as sad – but the word can also be translated as angry-looking, sullen, gloomy. They did not recognize the stranger as the risen Lord. They did not know that this was how it was going to be with the risen Lord – showing up at odd times and in odd places. They did not identify the stranger in the course of their creed-like recitation of what had happened to Jesus. The story goes that it was after, in the breaking of the bread that they recognized him and then he vanished. My guess is that it was long after. My guess is that this Sunday spiritual journey that these two were on didn’t happen on one day any more than the vegetation of every kind appeared on the third day according to one of the Genesis creation narratives. To John Dominic Crossan’s famous question, “how many years was Easter?” I would answer, almost 2,000 to date.

So pay attention. What is completely implausible in this story is not the physical distance that Cleopas and his companion could travel in one afternoon and after supper, with or without a responsive donkey. It is the spiritual distance they had to go to imagine that someone who had been crucified could actually turn out to be the savior they had been hoping for. What is entirely unrealistic is that new life could come from a most humiliating death. What is utter nonsense is that these two travelers have experienced the horrifying violent death of their beloved teacher in whom they had placed their whole hope for the redemption of their people. Their journey has been through military and political oppression, through government and religious corruption, through grief and hopelessness, and into offering hospitality to a stranger. Cleopas and his companion are travelers who need a place to stay. They are grief-struck people who need comfort. And yet they offer hospitality to a stranger. They offer comfort and food and wine to a fellow traveler.

What is even more implausible in this story is that sharing a little bread and a little wine with the risen Lord could rekindle the flame in the hearts of two who were in desperate need of courage and compassion, and that with hearts set on fire, they could set back out to change the world.  Having recognized the risen Lord in the breaking of bread, they returned to the scene of the crime – to Jerusalem -- to tell the others. They were inspired to live into what long-time Witness magazine editor Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann called “obedience to our Lord’s perverse ethic of vulnerability and gain through loss.” (3)

It is courage and compassion that we need to return over and over again to a discipline of openness and exposure when the stakes are high. And when we are truly following Jesus the stakes are always high. Discipleship of Jesus lived out is costly. It’s demanding to relentlessly advocate on behalf of those who are lost, and least, and left out. It is expensive to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive. It is pricey to publicly mourn the death of one’s notorious and dangerous enemy rather than to rejoice. It is costly to repent of our sins, to redistribute our wealth, to restore what is lost, to reconcile what has been shattered.

You know, unlike followers of other messianic leaders, “the Jesus movement [folks] neither disbanded nor looked for a new messiah when its leader was violently executed.” (4) We have here a story about how they sustained their life together. So pay attention.  Here in the Gospel of Luke is a story about how to afford this costly discipleship. Offer hospitality to strangers along your spiritual journey and receive their wisdom. Recognize the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread and find food for your soul. And then get back out there with hearts ablaze with the love of God and change the world!