Easter Wednesday vs. the Limits of Historicity

I catch myself trying to read the story of the Road to Emmaus as mere history, caught up like a good Gentile in Luke’s apparent effort to turn the Gospel into an historical account. Our conceit to literalize Easter founders when we relegate the Risen Christ’s self-revelation to only a mid-first-century encounter.

When did we decide that story was *less* than history? And myth was less than truth? The road to Emmaus is the story of Jesus walking with us, often unrecognized, reinterpreting our most closely held stories and histories as the eternal divine story of life and love conquering death and despair.

What if the Risen Christ is on the road of life with each and all of us together, not as an artifact of history, but right now? The love in our hearts as we ask those burning questions of one another? The tender compassion that greets us in a smile, in a supportive hand, in confronting us with the hard but wondrous truth that we are loved beyond all imagination?

Easter Wednesday is the day we are reminded to pray, "Be known to us, Jesus, in the breaking of the bread." That is not a historical moment, but an ever-present and eternally holy now; as we engage in relationship and share the nourishing bread of life with one another...

And find God closer than our breath, with us in the very fabric of our relationships with one another, the earth, and the whole cosmos.