It’s Sunday in Jerusalem, the Sunday at the end of Passover. In this last week the city has played host to a remarkable sequence of events. And they’ve all centred around one man, Jesus, a travelling preacher and teacher from the North, a carpenter by trade, with a rather unlikely bunch of friends who follow him around.
In recent months his teaching has found him increasingly out of favour with some of the more established religious leaders. Things came to a head during the annual Passover festival and, after twenty four hours of passing Jesus between them, the Roman and Jewish authorities decided to execute this man in the hope of preventing a popular uprising. It’s not often the two groups work together but on this occasion it seemed to be the only way to keep the peace in this increasingly fragile political situation.
And now Jesus’ friends are desperately trying to put their lives back together. For some that means hanging around in Jerusalem, working on the basis that several heads are better than one in the attempt to figure out what to do next. Others have decided to cut their losses and head home.
Two are on their way out of the city. They live in the suburbs and want to make it home before it gets dark. But it’s a difficult journey. They’re gutted. They’ve lost a mate and the hope of liberation that they’d found in Jesus.
And then a stranger joins them as they walk. It’s quite obvious that they’re miserable and the man asks what the problem is. The two are surprised – the man has clearly just come from Jerusalem and yet seems to be totally unaware of the uproar in the city that has surrounded the trial and execution of Jesus.
So they fill him in. They explain that they’ve spent the last three years with Jesus and shared some amazing experiences with him – the wedding, right at the beginning of it all, when Jesus turned water into wine, just to save the reputation of the bridegroom. The time on the hillside when, because the shops were shut, Jesus fed over 5000 men, women and children with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes. In fact, that was a particularly special day. There was something about that massive meal that led Peter, the most passionate and outspoken of Jesus’ friends, to state that he thought that Jesus was the Messiah. And Jesus didn’t deny it.
Then they shared with the stranger the events that had unfolded in Jerusalem that week. About Jesus’ arrival in the city on a donkey (odd, but then he did have a reputation for doing the thing you’d least expect). His outrage at the tradesmen and money lenders doing business in the temple (he seemed to have a bit of a thing about the temple – on a couple of occasions he claimed he’d destroy it and rebuild it in three days). The Passover meal he’d shared with his 12 closest friends – they’d heard from those that were there that during the meal he’d said more bizarre stuff, this time about the bread representing his body, and the wine his blood, before accusing one of the group of plotting to betray him. The whole thing seemed a little unlikely, but the others said that they’d got the impression he knew something they didn’t.
And then they tell the stranger about the day their world fell apart. Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane, his trial which, to the untrained eye, looked like a set up, his very public flogging and trek through the streets of Jerusalem, struggling under the weight of his cross, and finally the unbelievable sight of him pinned to a cross between two petty criminals. And there, watching on that hillside, it was impossible to imagine how anything positive could possibly come out of this mess.
And the disciples continue…
It’s now three days since Jesus died. The day that, as good Jews, they believed the soul left the body. If there had been a glimmer of hope before, it was now well and truly extinguished. But, bizarrely, some of the women who’d been close to Jesus went to the tomb this morning to anoint Jesus’ body, but found it empty and claimed to have seen angels who implied Jesus was alive. It’s amazing what people can be persuaded to think when they’re in an emotionally vulnerable state. The mind can play funny tricks on you.
The stranger just smiles.
But then the questions start. The stranger seems particularly interested in talking about what the scriptures have to say about the Messiah, starting with some confusing stuff about suffering and glory. In fact, the disciples are so confused that the stranger decides to share some of his thoughts with them. He goes right back to the beginning and starts with the events in the Garden of Eden that get everything else off on the wrong foot. Then he moves on to Abraham and the promise of a great nation, a people chosen by God, for God. Then into the Psalms and David’s idea of a greater king than him, a priest-king with authority over the temple and the nation. Then the prophets – Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant, written on hearts, not stone. And Isaiah. It’s here the stranger pauses – “Don’t you remember all that talk of the Messiah needing to suffer before he could enter his glory?” At that, the two men get the oddest sensation that there’s something weirdly familiar about this man. The tone of his voice, the slightest of smiles. No, don’t be ridiculous, you’re starting to suffer from the same delusions as those women this morning.
It’s all intriguing stuff, but it still feels slightly removed from the events of the last few days. The disciples are tired and emotionally drained, but the conversation’s been good, and for someone who claims to be ignorant of the events of the last few days, this bloke seems to have a pretty good grasp of some of the big issues they’ve been wrestling with.
It’s only now that the pair realise that they’re almost home. It’s getting dark and they ask the stranger how much further he has to travel tonight. He seems to have some way to go yet, so they invite him in for something to eat and a bed for the night. He’s been such good company under the circumstances – he’s definitely one of those people who you only have to know for three minutes and it’s like you’ve known them three years.
The three of them sit down to eat and the stranger offers to give thanks. He picks up the bread and… hang on, woh, that was a de ja vu moment. That sense of familiarity back but… No, it’s just tiredness. He gives thanks and breaks the bread. He reaches out… and suddenly the fog lifts. The man sitting at the table is no stranger. In fact, he knows more about these two men than either of them care to remember. And they’ve shared with this man experiences that beggar belief. The last time they say him was on a hill, just outside Jerusalem, beaten to within an inch of his life and caked in his own blood, almost unrecognisable. And yet he’s totally recognisable now. It’s no wonder this man could speak with such insight and authority about the Messiah, because the man at the table IS the Messiah. The stranger is Jesus!
But at the moment of recognition he disappears. Just vanishes. It’s enough to make the disciples think they’d dreamt it all. But no, the whole thing was so vivid, so unmistakably real. The two men look at each other. Suddenly all the weird stuff about angels and empty tombs begins to make sense. The stuff about dying and rising, the stuff about rebuilding the temple in three days.
There is only one response. It might be dark, but they have to get back to the rest of the disciples – they have to tell someone about who they’ve spent the day with and, they suspect, apologise to the women whose story they’d written off as the witterings of over-emotional females.
There’s not much conversation on the dash back to Jerusalem. Breathless and exhausted they crash into the house they’d left only hours earlier, full of grief and a deep sense of betrayal. But rather than finding a despondent group of desperate men, the place is buzzing and they’re met with a roar of excitement. One of the disciples in the room yells “Peter’s seen Jesus! All that stuff the women said this morning? It’s all true! Jesus is back!”
The next few minute are a whirlwind as the returning disciples recount their own encounter with Jesus, the sense that something was up, their almost supernatural inability to recognise Jesus, almost as if he knew that he needed to stay hidden if he was to have any chance to explain to these two who he really was.
And as they exchanged stories and reflected on the events of the past week, they all got the eerie sense that somehow this was only the beginning.
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