Hope Soap
My wife is an artist. When we began dating one of the many ways I wooed her was to sneak into the art department after hours, while she was burning the midnight oil in the graphic design studio, bringing her snacks. For most of the people in my life, the way to their heart is through their stomach. I would bring Allison an Arizona iced tea and some form of salty snack. We’d sit for a few moments and when it was painfully obvious I was irritating more than I was wooing I would leave, head back to my dorm, and go to sleep. Artists work at all hours of the day because like writing a sermon the creative juices will begin flowing and there’s little the artist (preacher) can do but create.
One of the earliest memories I have of observing Allison’s art-making was a bottle of hand soap she drew using Adobe Illustrator. Students were not permitted to import a photograph and then trace the photograph using computer software. From scratch, turning straight-boxy lines into the curves of a soap dispenser, students had to recreate the object. One night, after driving to the nearby convenience store and getting Allison’s wooing juice I sat next to Allison in the graphic design studio as she was working.
“What in the world are you making,” I blurted out.
“What are you talking about, the bottle is sitting right there,” Allison responded.
Knowing I was in it now and hoping the wooing juice I had procured before arriving would do its job I responded, “That doesn’t much look like a bottle of soap.”
“It’s a bottle of hand soap,” Allison calmingly but obviously irritated responded.
“I guess I just don’t see it,” I said.
At that point I knew I had overstayed my welcome as her classmates were beginning to look at us, a few with eyes piercing through my soul and others with a sympathetic “at least you tried” glance.
Hours after Mary discovered the empty tomb and rushed to tell the other disciples two followers of Jesus – Cleopas and an unnamed man – were traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus.
Exhausted and weary after the highs and lows of Holy Week – Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem and the sorrow of the cross – these men were headed home.
They weren’t unaware of what had occurred. They spoke to one another about everything that had transpired and when they were joined by a stranger, they told the stranger everything they had experienced.
They told the stranger events of the past week with detail. They looked back and told the stranger about the one whom they had been following. The disciples shared the Easter news yet it was not enough to convince them to stay. Even in their description of who Jesus was to the mystery traveler, they let out key details. The details the disciples omitted make the Easter news Good News for those who were hoping that Jesus of Nazareth would be the one to rescue and redeem Israel. A mentor of mine points out that what the disciples said to the stranger was true but not entirely sufficient.
“Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God,” they told the stranger. True enough, but not sufficient.
“We had hoped he would be the one to liberate Israel,” they told the stranger, “we had hoped he was the revolutionary who would finally free us from our oppressors.” Again, true enough, but not sufficient.
Their answers aren’t wrong; their answers just weren’t big enough.
It was not until the stranger gave them an impromptu Bible study, the Bible study to end all Bible studies – connecting and interpreting all things about the stranger (Jesus himself) to the “scriptures, starting with Moses and going through all the Prophets,”[1] and then joined them at the table, “took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”[2]
The next evening, after I had time to remove my uncultured foot from my mouth, I again snuck into the West Virginia Wesleyan Art Department and to deliver Allison’s wooing juice. The bottle of soap looked like what it was supposed to look like.
“How’d you do that,” I asked her. “Just last night it looked nothing like that.
“Last night I was working on the bubbles. I was zoomed in,” Allison replied with a snide smirk.
The portion of the illustration Allison was working on the prior night had been zoomed in. Allison was working on the details, the parts of a piece of art I overlook today when we are at the Hirschhorn or National Gallery, only to notice them after Allison points them out to Camden.
For the two disciples traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus, it was not until the wholeness of Christ was revealed to them, right in front of their face that they knew who was standing before them.
In the middle of the night, the two men ran back to Jerusalem, seven miles in the direction they had just come from and declare to the disciples who remained in the city they had seen Jesus.
When they arrived in Jerusalem they didn’t refer to Jesus as a prophet.
They didn’t rush back to Jerusalem to report “God has raised Jesus, the prophet, from the dead.”
They didn’t call Jesus a liberator or revolutionary.
They didn’t even call him a savior or a substitute.
They didn’t rush back to Jerusalem to report, “The Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world has come back.”
Instead, after the Risen Jesus interprets Moses and the prophets for them (ie, the Old Testament; ie, the only Bible they knew) they took off to herald the return of Jesus the Kurios.
They confess their faith in Jesus as Kurios.
“The Kurios,” the returning disciples proclaim to Peter, “is risen indeed!”.
Kurios, Lord.
The culmination of the Emmaus story is found in the disciples being able to see the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread, but they are unable to see the Risen Lord without Jesus’ Bible study to end all Bible studies – explaining how the entire Old Testament is actually about him. For us, as followers of Christ, we believe God’s Plan A has always been Jesus and the revelation of the coming Messiah, now present in our Risen Lord, is everywhere in the Old Testament.
Jesus as Lord is the Big Picture we miss when we, like the disciples on their way to Emmaus, hone in on a detail of the story and when that detail does not suffice we, as a failing art critic would attempt to do, make sense of the story of the person of Jesus that fails to show the bigger picture – that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ Sin and Death no longer hold their boot to the throat of what God created and Jesus reigns over.
While we may be hunkered down, like a teenager grounded and unable to leave the house, and wondering what we are supposed to do or where God is this Emmaus story, the entire story – not just the disciples’ failure to see Jesus, the breaking of bread, or their rush back to Jerusalem – shows us that not only is Jesus at work but that he’s been at work since the beginning.
Before Moses, way back when the Word was God and the Word was with God, God has been present, and God is present with us now. God is reigning now.
While we may be grounded at home and feel as though our grounding is shifting, Christ remains the same. Christ - the One the scriptures were pointing to, the one who overcame the power of Sind and Death, and the one who continues to reign as Lord over all of creation – is our grounding, our sure foundation.
Our Risen Lord is among us. He is present when we pray when we study when we break bread, but more importantly, he has always been present, he has always been Lord.
[1] Luke 24:27, CEB
[2] Luke 24:30-31, CEB
