Broken Open (Luke 24:13-35)

Of Broken Down Planes and Broken Down Plans

I haven’t been on a flight since the pandemic, but I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from people who have, everything from flights cancelled and not refunded to baggage lost and never returned. But these stories begin to blur together. If you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. The story that I remember most clearly is different. Someone was telling me about when their flight was delayed for hours. When the news initially broke that the plane was broken down and needed a repair, pandemonium ensued at the gate. A long line formed almost instantaneously, filled with angry people who were demanding their due, anxious people who were frantically seeking to make a tight connection, tired people who just wanted to be home already.

But toward the back of the line was a man whose face was unlike all the others. He wasn’t exactly cheerful, but there wasn’t a scowl or a frown or a worried look on his face either. He merely waited. Occasionally, his daughter, who was maybe five or six years old, would run up to him and whisper something in his ear, and he would smile. The daughter would run back to her mother and her siblings, who were sitting on the floor some distance from the gate, playing cards. After a while, the card game broke down as the youngest child began crying. Her mother stood up and gathered everyone into a caravan, took them on a trip to the nearby bathrooms, and then returned and sat down again. As the youngest child began to nod off in the mother’s lap, the others organized a game of charades, acting out various animals and characters for the mother to guess.

Finally, the father who was waiting in line made it to the front of the gate. The person who shared this story was within earshot of the conversation and was taken aback at the man’s demeanor. Everyone else in the line had spoken with some measure of resentment, feeling aggrieved at their inconvenience and insisting that they were owed something. But not this man. There was no story of grievance or hardship. No demands or justifications. Simply put, every person in front of him had brought their case against the airlines. But this man had no case. Instead, he began by commiserating with the gate clerk, acknowledging the strain that this situation must have put on him. He lamented broken down planes and broken down plans, but then he shrugged his shoulders and smiled, as though to say, “Here we are.” He then discussed options with the gate clerk and made alternate plans for his family’s flight home. What stood out to the observer who shared this story was the gate clerk’s face as the man thanked him and left. The clerk was smiling, the strain momentarily gone from his neck, his face relaxed. This conversation had somehow opened him back up from the closed, defensive posture he’d been holding. Was it a coincidence, the observer wondered, that the clerk’s posture resembled the man and his family, who had held themselves so openly?

A Broken Messiah

The two disciples who are walking the road to Emmaus are broken down. When the stranger approaches them, Luke tells us that “they [are standing] still, looking sad” (Luke 24:17). What has broken them? They share with the stranger that their expectations have met a bitter end. Jesus of Nazareth, whom they had hoped was the messiah, the one who would “redeem Israel,” the one who would make Israel great again, had been crucified (24:19-21). In their mind, the crucifixion settled the matter. No messiah of God would suffer such a fate. The messiah would be victorious over the unjust powers of the Roman empire and the temple elite, not their victim.

But the stranger has the strangest of responses. “Was it not necessary that the messiah should suffer these things?” (Luke 24:26). In other words, was it not necessary that the messiah be the victim rather than the victor?

This one question turns the entire scriptures upside down for the two disciples. In their mind, Yahweh is a conquering God, the victor not the victim, the one who had defeated the Egyptians and the Canaanites and all who opposed the faithful of Israel. A broken messiah makes no sense. Yet, for this stranger, it is a broken messiah that makes sense of everything. He goes on to show how a broken messiah breaks open “all the scriptures” (24:27).

Let’s just sit with that for a minute. How often do we hear that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament? That the Old Testament God is angry and vengeful and violent? And no doubt, there are depictions of such a God in the Old Testament. But this is not the God whom the stranger sees in the Old Testament. I can’t know for certain, but I think that Jesus must appreciate scripture as human witness to divine encounter, which means that sometimes it shows us the culture of its human authors as much as it shows us the character of the divine God. Sometimes it shows us violence and patriarchy and slavery. And sometimes, through these dark clouds, a divine light shines through. So, as this stranger on the road shows us, interpretation is crucial. For every depiction of violence and vengeance in the Old Testament, there is also the repeated declaration that God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex 34:6; cf. Num 14:18; Neh 9:17: Ps 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2). There’s no doubt which of these opposing images is foundational for the stranger’s interpretation of God.

According to the stranger, the God of the Old Testament is no different than the God of the New Testament. They are one and the same: a crucified God. That may be hard to imagine. It certainly was for the disciples on the road. But it is a curious exercise with surprising results. When I read the Old Testament looking for a crucified God, I begin to see him everywhere. In the suffering of the ancestral family, who must live for generations as sojourners in a foreign land. In the suffering of the Hebrews under Pharaoh in Egypt. In the suffering of the poor Israelites in the land, who are enslaved by their own kings and exploited by the rich. In the suffering of the psalmist, whose prayers regularly recount trouble. In the suffering of the exiled Israelites, who lose their temple and their family and their friends and must live in a foreign land. The Old Testament is a history of Israel’s deliverance, but it also a history of their suffering. Yes, God is a deliverer, but God is also a sufferer. Those two things are not contradictions, but counterparts of a single reality. A God who loves is a God who suffers, because love does not get its own way through force. It forgives, it heals, it declares peace, it welcomes. Love does all the things Jesus did, and it finds itself in the same place Jesus found himself. Suffering.

“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things?” the stranger asks. From his point of view, God has been suffering from the start, because God has been loving humanity from the start. It is only natural this would happen to God’s messiah.

Accepting Brokenness as an Opening

The stranger’s interpretation of God is indeed strange in a world that idolizes power and control. But what also strikes me as strange is that the stranger, who is in fact Jesus, bears no grievance toward the people who put him on the cross, toward the temple leaders or the Roman authorities. He breathes no resentments or threats against them. I think back to that airport, where many people bore what I would consider justifiable anger against the airline. How easily I can relate to their experience. It’s natural to feel owed something when you are wronged. Yet this man was wronged in an extraordinary way, and his response is, “Was it not necessary…?”

Again I find myself asking, “How was it necessary?” It’s just so difficult for me to wrap my head around the crucifixion as a necessity. To be clear, I don’t subscribe to an atonement theory that has a divine father demanding the blood sacrifice of his son. I expect a loving God to be at least as loving as a loving father or mother here on earth, who would never demand such a thing. So, I don’t think Jesus’ death was demanded by God in order to satisfy some metaphysical equation of salvation. But how else could Jesus who was so gravely wronged, insist that it was necessary?

Today’s passage concludes with the stranger breaking bread, and then the disciples’ eyes being opened. Those two words “break” and “open” jump off the page at me. Typically, I think of brokenness as an undesirable thing. I would rather avoid it, ignore it, pretend it’s not there. For me, “broken” means “broken down.” It is the end of things. It is a flight cancelled, plans ruined. But in this passage, “broken” means something else. The broken bread “opens” the disciples’ eyes (24:31). The idea of a broken messiah and a suffering God “opens” the scriptures to the disciples (24:32).  Here, “broken” means “broken open.” “Broken” is not the end, but the beginning of something new.

Perhaps it is necessary for Jesus to suffer because he enters into our brokenness to show us that it is not the end that we think it is. He shows us the way out. It’s not through control or force, by demanding our due. Rather, it is through our brokenness. As Jesus shows us throughout his life, and the man and his family show us at the airport, love accepts the brokenness of our world. It does not resent it or fight it. Rather, it finds that brokenness always has an opening that leads to new life. (As Leonard Cohen put it, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”)

To some, the idea of a crucified messiah or a weak God seems like utter foolishness. But for me, it is honest-to-goodness good news. God is with us precisely where the world and our lives are broken. And because of his love, what seemed “broken down” is in fact “broken open” with possibilities for new life.

Prayer

God of the cross,
Whose love bears all pain
And redeems it—
Meet us, please,
In the places where we are bitter
Or resentful
Or despairing
…
Open our eyes,
As you opened the disciples’ eyes,
To know brokenness
As the place where your love is revealed,
And to receive your life-giving embrace.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.