A stranger joins Cleopas and his companion on their flight from Jerusalem,
and it is an element of the miraculous, that they don’t recognise him. How
can the Evangelist represent a God on Earth whose name isn’t actually a
name but a simple evocation of his existence: “I am”, other than in a
miracle? Nothing has happened as yet; the stranger explains to them that
the Messiah had to endure all this to get into his Glory. They don’t want to let
him go, they want him to continue explaining and ask him to supper. The
story has now reached a point when some thing suddenly happens: The
event has reached the sudden point of insight when you can hear a crackling
sound: in the breaking of the bread.
How can the bread be
crackling? Normally bread is
elastic when you break it, this
one makes a cracking sound,
indicating that it isn’t normal
bread but the unleavened
bread. of the Pass-over. It
was the bread of the great
Exodus, which Israel
commemorates every year
with a festival of seven days, it was the bread of Israel’s release from
slavery, it was hard and holy. Those who fled from Egypt wrapped the
baking dishes with their bread dough in their clothes and left in a hurry, they
did not have the time to let it rise (sourdough or leavened bread takes time
and the right temperature to rise!) the Egyptians didn’t leave time to make
normal bread, but that made this kind of bread something special. And the
men at Emmaus recognised Him at the breaking, at the cracking of this
bread.
Jesus had celebrated the evening of the Cedar meal with his disciples,
where Cleopas and his companion also there that they remembered that
moment? Jesus had given the meal a new meaning, he changed the bread
cult of his people in something new for his followers. In the moment of
Emmaus, a new cult of remembrance is instituted: in this fraction, in this
fragile moment the invisible God becomes visible for his followers. And today
we can hear the crackling when the Priest breaks the bread saying: ‘Lord
unite us in that sign’.
The final point of the story is yet to follow. When they had recognised Jesus,
he disappeared from their sight, and yet remained present in that bread, of
which he had said: ‘That is my body’- Recognised, disappeared, - but
remaining.
Brigitte Williams
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