In reading this resurrection appearance to the disciples (Lk. 24:13-35) we need first to orient ourselves to the Gospel of Luke. Last week we reflected upon a resurrection appearance account from the Gospel of John. This week we have moved into another account from a very different Gospel narrative. The resurrection events in John and Luke are not entirely parallel and the timelines differ. For instance, in Luke’s Gospel, all the resurrection appearances take place in a single day. Biblical commentator, John Shea, sees the disciples trek out of Jerusalem as theologically symbolic and quite significant. In his view, Cleopas and the other un-named disciple, are intentionally moving away, distancing, avoiding the traumatic events of recent days in Jerusalem. But, as Shea points out: “The whole Gospel is a journey toward Jerusalem, the revelation of the cross takes place in Jerusalem, and the story ends in Jerusalem. They are not travelers, but deserters, not a people on a mission, but people walking away from a cause….. If they walk through the gates of Emmaus…. [t]hen the real failure would not be the death of Jesus but [the disciples] inability to comprehend the spiritual truth hidden in his social and political suffering and dying.” (Shea, Matt. Yr A, p. 166-7)
After spending the day with this man they perceive as a stranger Jesus’ identity is revealed only at the breaking and blessing of the bread. Upon this revelation, their eyes open, he departs from them. This wild revelation leads to a change of itinerary. They turn away from Emmaus and return to Jerusalem. There, when the eleven disciples were together, the risen Christ appears to them all, satisfies their disbelief, opens their eyes and minds to the scriptures, and names them as witnesses. Now they are a people with a story to tell. They are a small band, a remanent, but one with a Christ-centered identity. Communal identity that is borne from deep trauma is a powerful thing for shifting perspective and transforming whole cultures.
I thought about the effect deep trauma has on a community this week when I was reading Scott Momaday’s pulitzer prize winning book, House Made of Dawn. Momaday tells of the Bahkyula peoples who were saved from the brink of extinction by the generosity of a neighboring tribe. The story is almost biblical, certainly archetypal, in its telling. Though almost certainly fictional, it stands as a symbolic and important witness in its own right to the actual extinction of many hundreds of indigenous tribes as the one Momaday describes here.
“The Eagle Watchers Society was the sixth to go into the kiva [(a sacred place set apart for ceremony used by some indigenous tribes)] at the summer and autumn rain retreats. It was an important society, and it stood apart from the others in a certain way. This difference - this superiority - had come about a long time ago. Before the middle of the last century, there was received into the population of the town a small group of immigrants from the Tanoan city of Bahkyula, a distance of seventy or eighty miles to the east. These immigrants were a wretched people, for they had experienced great suffering. Their land bordered upon the Southern Plains, and for many years they had been an easy mark for marauding bands of buffalo hunters and thieves. They had endured every kind of persecution until one day they could stand no more and their spirit broke. They gave themselves up to despair and were then at the mercy of the first alien wind. But it was not a human enemy that overcame them at last; it was a plague. They were struck down by so deadly a disease that when the epidemic abated, there were fewer than twenty survivors in all. And this remainder, to, should surely have perished among the ruins of Bahkyula had it not been for these patrones, these distant relatives who took them in at the certain risk of their own lives and the lives of their children and grandchildren. It is said that the cacique himself went out to welcome and escort the visitors in. The people of the town must have looked narrowly at those stricken souls who walked slowly toward them, wild in their eyes with grief and desperation. The Bahkyula immigrants brought with them little more than the clothes on their backs, but even in this moment of deep hurt and humiliation they thought of themselves as a people. They carried four things that should serve thereafter to signal who they were: a sacred flute, the bull and horse masks of Pecos; and the little wooden statue of their patroness Maria de los Angeles, whom they called Porcingula. Now, after the intervening years and generations, the ancient blood of this forgotten tribe still ran in the veins of men. [All of the [Eagle] society’s] members were direct descendants of those old men and women who had made that journey along the edge of oblivion. There was a look about these men, even now. It was as if, conscious of having come so close to extinction, they had got a keener sense of humility than their benefactors, and paradoxically a greater sense of pride…. In their uttermost peril long ago, the Bahkyula had been fashioned into seers and soothsayers. They had acquired a tragic sense, which gave to them as a race so much dignity and bearing. They were medicine men; they were rainmakers and eagle hunters.”
In my mind I created a triangle joining three stories: on one point, the traumatized disciples having lost the hope of the promised messiah wandering along the road to Emmaus; on another point, the Bahkyula victimized by war and plague to the point of extinction; and on the final point, the global trauma of millions in this present pandemic. Each of the three points of the triangle informs the other even though one point is a story still in the telling. The small band of disciples and Bahkyula people carried forward their stories of despair, survival and hope moved to a transformative identity embedded with divine knowledge and grace. They weren’t just transformed in terms of their beliefs they were transformed in terms of their substance. The disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, became powerful preachers, teachers, and healers. Through them, as recorded in Luke’s Book of Acts, a worldwide faith tradition would be born carrying Christ forward in the world in both word and deed, in symbol and in substance. As for the Bahkyula, they became powerful medicine men, rainmakers and eagle hunters.
On the third tip of the triangle our story is still unfolding. Using the stories on the other two points of the triangle as a ballast there come many questions and thoughtful ways to approach our situation. These questions provide a framework for being in and moving out of a global crisis that affects not just one tribe but all the peoples of the earth.
Will we take on a collective identity that is strong enough to propel us into a respectful way of co-existing with each other and all our relations?
Will a new collective identity draw from humility or from the hollow victory declared at a cease fire?
How will social distancing affect how we view “our neighbor”? What does it mean to be clean and unclean?
Who are the people most open to victimization, stigmatization and brutalization? Who will shield them, protect them, shelter them?
What will be the lasting effects of this traumatic cultural event that will mark this generation? What memories will inform the next generation?
What symbols will carry us forward as a people? A video parody of “My Corona”? A t-shirt that says: “I survived Covid19”? or will some other symbols emerge that point to a deeper sense of transformation?
Who are the heroes of this story and what heroic stories will be told? How will those stories inform the history we are now making?
What stories from our sacred texts will we, do we, as a global, multi-faith worldwide community tie to this event?
Will our communal identity be symbolically relevant or are we undergoing a substantive change to our humanity?
And, most importantly, Where is the guidance of the Spirit showing up in this story? Where is the Spirit showing up in your story?
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