This Sunday, Jesus, the ‘Undercover Boss,’ Is Seeking You Out, Too

The Gospel reading at Mass takes us back to the very first Easter Sunday, where two disciples are joined by Jesus “in disguise”as they are headed out of town as soon as they can after the crucifixion. We are on the same journey, and Jesus is talking to us, too — whether or not we notice.

Here are five takeaways from the readings for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year A, drawn from Sunday Readings columns at this site and the Extraordinary Story podcast.

First: Luke takes pains to make this story both particular and universal.

The Gospel of Luke takes pains to present the Emmaus story as something that actually happened, naming one of its two disciples — Cleopas — and naming their destination, Emmaus. But Luke also clearly wants us to see the story as representing a larger lesson — thus, he leaves the other disciple unnamed, a stand-in for us, and doesn’t explain the importance of “Emmaus,” a town we know almost nothing about. This helps us see ourselves in these two disciples, and forces us to focus on the place they are leaving, Jerusalem, after the passion and death of Our Lord, rather than the place they are going.

We have already heard the counterexamples of how the faithful friends of Jesus spent that day. The women went to the tomb to honor the body of Jesus. John and Peter, upon hearing the report of the Resurrection, spent the morning running to the empty tomb and then gathering the apostles. Mary Magdalene spent the morning weeping — then spoke to Jesus himself.

And what are our two stand-ins doing? Heading the heck out of town. They are doing the opposite of what disciples have done throughout the Gospels. They aren’t dropping their normal routine for Jesus — they are dropping Jesus for their normal routine. And that decision seems to draw Jesus to their side.

The Gospel says: he “walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.” This is also meaningful. It’s almost as if Jesus wants us to see him in everyone we meet. He comes as a stranger so that we will look at strangers as if they are him.

Second: Then comes the greatest “undercover boss” moment of all time.

Undercover Boss is the Reality TV show where high-level corporate execs take entry-level jobs in their own companies to see what employees think of the company — and them.

Jesus does exactly that, and asks, “What are you discussing as you walk along?” and they reveal their true feelings about him and his passion.

They tell the stranger who Jesus was and how great Jesus had been, and how it all turned out to be a false hope. They had expected so much from him, but he had been killed. They reveal that they have even heard about the Resurrection — but that their response was to dismiss the claim without investigating it. They have chosen close-minded discouragement over open-minded hope.

And they begin to reveal to this stranger what they really believed about their erstwhile Messiah. Jesus had revealed himself to them to be the son of God — but they call him “a prophet.” They knew Jesus had claimed to be something radical and new and total, whose death gives life a new meaning. But they don’t mention that now.

“The chief priests and rulers both handed him over,” they say. They don’t mention that Jesus had said this had to happen and that he consented to it, let alone that it has anything to do with sin, their own or anybody else’s. They also don’t mention that he had explicitly told them to pick up their own crosses and follow him.

They reveal their lack of faith to Jesus in what they say to this stranger. We face the same test. Jesus Christ has told us that what we do for the least among us, or refuse to do, we do to him. It stands to reason that the same goes for Spiritual Works of Mercy — and that what we say, or not, to others is what we say, or refuse to say, to him.

The true state of faith for the disciples is expressed in their self-pitying message, “we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.” He didn’t act according to their preconceptions, so they gave up on him. Are we the same way? I know I tend to be.

Third: What Jesus says next is something we should take to heart. Literally.

“Oh, how foolish you are!” Jesus says, then calls the disciples “slow of heart to believe.” He ties their foolishness to their hearts, not just their heads.

This is the Gospel of Luke, where we learn that John the Baptist was sent to turn hearts, where Mary ponders truths in her heart; and where “A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

The problem isn’t in their intellect; it’s in their heart, the center of their being. They are slow to see what is going on because they are not generous, open and loving. Jesus goes on to explain the law and prophets to them, such that their hearts begin “burning within them.” That is what it feels like when your heart is pried open and exposes its stony cold interior to the light of Christ.

He explains how all of the Scriptures point to him. He tells them that God the Father, from the moment he lost his people, has been working to bring us back.

Pope Benedict XVI said Jesus wants to repeat this process with each of us. He wrote:

“The story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus presents this journeying, talking and searching together as the process by which the soul’s darkness is gradually illumined by walking with Jesus. It becomes clear that Moses and the Prophets — ‘all the Scriptures’ —had spoken of the events of Christ’s Passion … meaning triumphs over the power of destruction and evil.”

We all can have the same experience of prayerfully journeying through the Scriptures, discovering new meaning that enlightens our lives.

Fourth: And then, as the story is ending, something astonishing happens.

Then this very odd thing happens — one of the strangest miracles in Jesus’s life. As Jesus breaks bread with the disciples, he simply disappears.

This used to bother me, a lot — from the first time I read the Gospel of Luke, and for years after. His other miracles seemed a lot more fitting to me. I loved that the miracles of Jesus were extraordinary versions of ordinary things God does all the time. Jesus cures someone in a moment, rather than in the usual way, over a long period of sickness and recovery. He turns water into wine immediately, instead of running it through a grape plant first. I liked that Christian miracles were different in kind from mythology — they were not wild and illogical like Ovid’s metamorphoses.

Jesus disappearing like this struck me as inorganic; like a Las Vegas magician trick. But then it dawned on me what it means, and how brilliant it is. He is sending a message in as clear a way that he can. After he described the Real Presence in John 6, instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper, now, in Emmaus, he demonstrates exactly what it means: He will no longer be with us in his incarnate human body, but he will stay with us in the Blessed Sacrament.

The disciples urge him to “Stay with us,” and he does, permanently — in the Eucharist, where he stays with us still. And in every case, the Eucharist is a strange and mysterious miracle, where he disappears into a host which becomes his Real Presence.

Fifth: It is often pointed out how much like a Mass this whole story is.

The Mass calls us to attention first by asking us to repent of our sins, beating our foolish, slow hearts into attention with a “my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault.”

Then in the Mass’s Liturgy of the Word we hear how all Scripture points to Jesus. For instance, this Sunday, in the First Reading, from Acts, St. Peter’s sermon shows how Christ fulfills the covenant with David; and in the Second Reading, from St. Peter’s First Letter, he describes how the “spotless unblemished lamb” of the Old Testament is Christ, who “was known before the foundation of the world.”

So Jesus literally does for us at Mass what he did for the disciples on the road. He comes alongside us and tells us who he is. He is invisible except in the Eucharist on the altar. Then he unites with us in communion and sends us on our way.

There, out in the world, we continue our journey through life, like the Emmaus disciples at the end of this Sunday’s Gospel, heading to Jerusalem to tell those we meet how he was made known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Image: Alamy; Emmaus by
Fritz von Uhde Der Gang Nach 

By Tom Hoopes