We Had Hoped

It’s Easter evening when we meet Cleopas and his unnamed companion walking to Emmaus. Neither are really known characters in the Gospel of Luke, but they seem to have some sort of insider knowledge. And it seems that they have waited as long as they could to make their journey back home to Emmaus.

A New Creation by Hannah Garrity, A Sanctified Art

As they walk, Cleopas and his unnamed companion talk about all the things that had happened when suddenly a stranger joined them, and he began to walk with them. He asked, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”

They look at each other before Cleopas answers with another question, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” And the stranger asks them, “What things?” And then they begin to tell their story, to recount all that had taken place. They talked about his man named Jesus, about his crucifixion, about the empty tomb, about their confusion.

You can hear the grief and pain and confusion in their words. As far as they know, Jesus is dead. The man they had come to know and trust, the Lord they had staked their lives on, the Messiah they thought would change the world, died the most humiliating death imaginable. And worse, Jesus’ tomb is empty, his body is missing, and the women who loved and followed him have been telling “idle tales” of empty tombs.

In a matter of days everything seemed to have fallen apart.

“But we had hoped,” they said.

It’s an imperfect tense verb. The imperfect tense describes a past action or state, which is incomplete or unfinished. We don’t really like imperfect tense verbs, probably because we don’t like things that are incomplete or unfinished.

We much prefer the future tense, an action that has not yet happened or a state that does not yet exist but can still come true. It would be much more comfortable if Cleopas said something like, “But we hope that Jesus will appear to us soon.”

We like it when people say that everything will be okay, that they will go on, that everything will get back to normal. We like future tenses so much that we reward people in deep grief for reassuring us that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that life will go on.

But in this unguarded moment, these two followers of Jesus give voice to a reality that we all share: very often, we find ourselves speaking of matters in the imperfect tense.

“But we had hoped.” But we had hoped things would be different. But we had hoped something else would happen.

And yet, this is the Easter story. The Emmaus Road, the road of pain and disillusionment, of destroyed dreams, and lost hope, is in fact an Easter story. Because it is the very place where Jesus shows up.

Grace and peace,

Kimmy