The Road to and Supper at Emmaus 

Basic Info

Luke 24:13–35

The day after Jesus’ Resurrection, Luke tells of two disciples who set off for Emmaus, a town 7 miles from Jerusalem. On the road they encounter a man whom the Gospel reader or hearer knows to be Jesus, but something keeps their eyes from recognizing him. Of course, the two disciples have been processing all the events of the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, trying to make sense of it all. Jesus asks them what they’ve been talking about. They treat him a bit like an idiot, surprised that he’s the only guy in town who doesn’t know about the big events of the weekend. So they fill him in, explaining the events as best they understand them. Then Jesus turns the tables on them and acts like they are the clueless ones, challenging that they haven’t understood any of what Jesus taught them about the Scriptures, so he explains how Jesus’ teachings about the Scriptures relate to the weekend’s events. They still don’t get that it is Jesus, but like good disciples of Jesus’, they invite this “stranger” to join them for dinner when they get to Emmaus.

At dinner Jesus breaks the bread in blessing and in that instant, they recognize him. But in a flash, he vanishes. And of course they then realize that on the road he was trying to make them understand the events in relation to all the prophecies in the Scriptures. They exclaim that on the road they had felt the fire in their hearts implying that they should have recognized him from his teachings. The two disciples then rush back to Jerusalem to tell the others. As they are doing so, Jesus appears to the whole group.

The story is about discipleship. The walk on the road is about telling the Good News about Jesus as best one understands it but also about being open to applying the lessons of the Scriptures to interpretations of the events in the world. This latter task is obviously not an easy one, because the lessons Jesus had taught for years hadn’t sunk in to the disciples’ consciousness. The meal is about always recognizing Jesus in the breaking of the bread, and of not really needing more than that to “see” him. The story is understood as the model for Christian worship services in that it involves listening to the Scriptures, having those Scriptures broken open, and experiencing the presence of Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

What to Look For

• The road, the supper, or both
• Who is talking and who is listening on the road
• The disciples’ attitude toward Jesus
• Jesus’ attitude toward the disciples
• The disciples’ attitude toward Jesus when they recognize him at supper (surprise, joy, awe, etc.)

Questions to Focus a General Interpretation

Does the artwork focus on the listening (road), watching (supper), or doing (invitation to the stranger) aspect of discipleship?

Does the artwork indicate the rewards of discipleship (hearts afire, joy, etc.)?

Questions to Guide a Personal Interpretation

As a disciple, are you more attentive to your listening? your looking? your actions? What does the artwork call you to emphasize?

Questions to Suggest a Historical Interpretation

What was or might have been going on in the artist’s day that would have prompted an emphasis on one aspect of discipleship (one aspect of the story) or another (Scriptures heard only in Latin, seeing the bread which had become the Body of Christ held up at Mass as being more important than receiving it, people not welcoming migrants or refugees, etc.)?