One of my favorite places to pray is Westwood Cemetery on Morgan Street. That might not seem to some a likely candidate for the “Top Ten Prayer Destinations in Oberlin,” but I commend it to you. Communing with the living Christ while surrounded by reminders of my mortality is truly profound. A larger sense of history and purpose captivates me, putting my own challenges into perspective. Sounds of life are everywhere, whether those of geese or birds, lawnmowers or dog-walkers. And then there’s the best part–it is quiet.

An elderly dog-walker once told me, “People think of the cemetery as a sad place, but I call it Cheers because I meet so many people and their dogs here.”

What we see depends on how we look.

Jesus is executed and his male disciples scatter in fear for their own lives. In the minds of these men, the gig is now up. They have followed the itinerant preacher for three years, a significant investment of their lives. They have believed with their whole hearts that Jesus would deliver Israel from the clutches of Roman occupation. And then he dies alongside criminals on a Roman cross.

The women who prepare spices for Jesus’ burial arrive to find the tomb empty. They come back to the men with this wild tale that Jesus is alive. What kind of craziness is this? Didn’t they stand at a distance and watch Jesus die that gruesome, awful, shameful death on a cross?

Without YouTube, texting, e-mail, telephones, or any of these means, the news of the past days travels like wildfire the ‘old fashioned’ way–by word of mouth. It seems as if everyone around Jerusalem is rehashing the shocking events, dissecting them, debating them, trying to make sense of them. So, too, are Cleopas and his traveling companion—is it his wife, Mary, as some sources suggest? Or is it another male disciple? We don’t really know.

What we do know, from Luke’s account of the story, is that the male disciples roundly dismiss the women’s story that Jesus is risen. For them, the resurrection is what we might describe as a “category error.” It defies all logic and reason. It fits neither their political and religious expectations nor their personal ambitions.

As Cleopas and his companion travel along, deep in conversation, another traveler joins them and inquires about their sad and perplexed demeanor. As the two unload their hearts, the stranger responds by opening the scriptures to them. He begins with Moses and continues through the prophets, de-constructing and reconstructing their way of seeing.

As the three arrive in Emmaus, the stranger seems poised to continue his journey, but Cleopas and his companion urge him to stop with them and rest. In the breaking of the bread that night, the two suddenly realize that the stranger is none other than Jesus. The instant they recognize him, he vanishes from their sight. Looking back, they remember how their hearts “burned” within them when he opened the scriptures to them.

As a fairly new Christian decades ago, I had a lot of questions about this story. I didn’t understand why Cleopas and his traveling companion couldn’t recognize Jesus right off the bat. Others more seasoned in the faith would remind me of the Apostle Paul’s discussion of the physical body that dies and the spiritual body that is raised, found in I Corinthians 15:42-44. How could Cleopas and his companion possibly correctly identify a “spiritual body”? I still wasn’t fully satisfied. “Surely, one would at least notice that the person next to them wasn’t a physical body or spoke with a familiar voice...”

While Paul offers powerful insights around bodily death and resurrection, such connections only nibble at the edges of this remarkable and puzzling story. As I study this text thirty-seven years later, two particular insights seem significant. First, the disciples on the road are clearly stuck in their way of interpreting scripture. “Don’t confuse me with the facts!” people sometimes argue.

Cleopas and his companion have understood scripture in one way for so long and have had these views reinforced by their faith tradition for so many generations that a new way of seeing is too dangerous and difficult to pursue. The women’s story doesn’t fit with their view of things, so it has to be abandoned as fiction. No wonder it is so hard to recognize Jesus! His presence is a “category error” of the highest dimension!

Secondly, Cleopas and his companion are perplexed, grief-stricken, and surely feeling abandoned. They have just endured the public execution of one they love. It is a turn of events they never, ever anticipated. Where is God in all of that?

Don’t we all ask ourselves this question at times when we have had the rug pulled out from under us just when we least expected it? Haven’t I wandered Westwood Cemetery, praying fervently in times of distress, as if the One whom I seek is nowhere near me to be found? Haven’t I at times neglected to notice that the Lord is right beside me, eager to de-construct and reconstruct my way of seeing, yearning to get me “unstuck,” much like Cleopas and his companion?

Recently, I got a letter from Cynthia. This was a real surprise. A graduate of Oberlin College over two decades ago, Cynthia hasn’t stayed in touch very regularly over the years. This was a form letter of sorts, a report from a mission trip she took with a Christian group to the rural areas of India, a trip focused on a ministry of healing and evangelism.

Like many of us who have seen instantaneous faith healings primarily in flashy television entertainment format, Cynthia confessed that she previously bore her own skepticism about such ministries. But there, in India, God used her as an instrument of just that kind of healing, and God used others on the trip in the same way.

Cynthia came back and wrote about her experiences, sending pictures and stories of her journey. The big question at the beginning of her letter was, “What does this mean for us, here in the United States, if God has done such work through us in India?”

Cynthia’s faith life was turned upside-down by this trip. Didn’t her heart burn within her as she touched and prayed with these destitute people hundreds of miles from any medical care? Didn’t Jesus appear on these dusty, rural roads in ways she never previously imagined? Cynthia is still de-constructing and reconstructing her understanding in light of this experience with the living and resurrected Christ.

Close to the time of receiving Cynthia’s letter, I heard from Karla in Zambia. She is working with the International Justice Mission, which helps destitute widows whose husbands have died of AIDS keep their property. Karla helps organize ancillary social support services. Two or three times in her letter, she uses the word “miracle” to refer to obstacles that dissolve through the prayers of the workers, opportunities for ministry that arise out of those same prayers. Once again, Jesus travels incognito.

Here we are, in Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.A., in 2008. Where do we miss the Lord because his very presence, or way of acting, is relegated to a “category error” that doesn’t fit our ways of seeing? Where do we miss the Lord, because we dismiss the testimony of others who bear witness to his presence in ways unfamiliar to us?

It seems appropriate that we would re-tell this story on Communion Sunday. 2000 years ago, in the breaking of the bread, Cleopas and his companion recognize Jesus, and then he vanishes from their sight. How brief is this moment of clarity and “knowing”! How long are the moments of dogged faith, of believing without seeing!

Here, in the breaking of the bread, we, too, recognize that we are in the presence of the Lord. He has not left. He is working powerfully throughout the world. He is working deeply in our own hearts and minds. I wager a guess that each of us will take the road to Emmaus many times over during our lives...yet, each time when we look back, our hearts will burn like a wildfire within us. And we will say to ourselves, “Ah, it is the Lord.” Amen.