When King David brought the ark of God up to the shrine he had prepared for it in Jerusalem, we read that the procession was enlivened with songs and dancing. I want to speak to you about David and how to the horror of his young wife and in a blare of strange, wild music the ancient king got the rhythm of God under his skin and danced away himself with all his might and became what he became.

I want to set David dancing before you now, and in your mind’s eye I want you to try to see him dancing way off through the dimness of three thousand years. The music he’s dancing to, if we could hear it, would be an offense to our ears I suppose — the harps and castanets, the tambourines and cymbals — but we can’t hear it, of course. We can only see that he hears it, or hears something through it, beyond it, because it is plain even at the distance of thirty centuries that more than just his body is caught up in more than just the music, his whole being is caught up and he abandons himself to the dancing. That is why his wife, who is the daughter of a king as well as the wife of a king, is so horrified, because the king her husband has forgotten himself. He has forgotten himself and his kingly dignity, and to make matters worse he has done it in the presence of the servants. That is why the queen, who in no sense forgets herself, despises him in her heart.

She wants him to be a king not so much for his sake as for her own sake, so she can be a queen. But instead he becomes a dancer, and his body glistens with the fury and the joy of it, and his bare feet beat the wild rhythms of it into the earth in front of the Holy Ark where Yahweh the King of Glory dwells. David is not interested in being what Michal wants him to be, and when she berates him afterwards he answers her out of the fury that is still upon him with, “I will make myself more contemptible than this and I will be abased in your eyes.” David isn’t primarily interested in the music the musicians are playing. What really interests him, what he is really dancing to, comes out when he says, “I will make merry before the Lord.”

He is not dancing simply to the music that comes from without. He is dancing to the music of his wild gladness that wells up from within him in the presence of the ark. He is dancing his religion. He forgets himself, forgets to be a king, forgets to live up to the image that his wife has of him or his servants have of him. But in forgetting himself, he happens also to become himself.

I don’t know what it’s like to be inside your skin, but I am the world’s leading authority on what it’s like to be inside my skin, so let me generalize from my experience and if it doesn’t match yours there’s no great harm done.

I think that for people like us, it can be hard to forget ourselves and to be ourselves at a dance. And of course it’s especially hard to be yourself if you’re not quite sure who you are. This explains why you and I were uncomfortable at the middle school dances and at the prom. A young person, and to some extent, every person, is a person who is still looking for a self to be. When you are looking for a self to be, the temptation is always very great to be a self that you think other people are going to like.

David had his Queen Michal with her own ideas of what a king should be and at a dance you have someone like her too, the partner you’re dancing with and the friends who are there dancing, and they all have their ideas of the kind of person you should be. So very often that’s the person you try to be. You put on the face you think they will find admissible and dance their way not only because you want their approval and want to be popular with them but because in a real way you need their approval as something to give you security in a world where God knows there is much cause to be insecure, just as they need your approval and are wearing a face to please you.

When I say you I mean me too because to some degree for all of us life is a masked ball. To some degree for all of us life consists of trying on many masks until at last, by God’s grace, we find the one that fits who we really are and it becomes our face so that the whole process turns out to have been a process of self-discovery. But unfortunately it can also be a process of self-concealment and self-deceit and eventual self-loss whereby in our efforts to endear ourselves to each other we wear masks so foreign to our natures that when we meet, we meet not on the basis of who we are but instead we meet solely on the basis of who we want others to think that we are. And when that is true we don’t really meet each other at all.

The sound of a dance, the sound of our society in general, is often the sound not of human beings meeting other human beings, but the sound of masks clattering up against masks. And this is so because just as we were afraid at dances when we were young, we’re afraid still. You’re afraid to open yourself to another’s knowing for fear that in knowing you the other will reject you. You don’t speak your mind truly for fear that you’ll sound like a fool, and beneath that fear is the darker fear that maybe you are a fool. You’re afraid the world will dish out more to you than you are able to take. You’re afraid that someone very important will ask more of you than you feel you have in you to give.

Not all of the truth, thank God, and not all of the time, but part of the truth at least part of the time is that we are afraid of each other, you and I, and afraid of our lives. A sadder truth still is that the way this world works, part of the time our fears are not unwarranted. So it is that the dance we end up going to with our lives is not really a dance after all, but a masquerade.

But Christ calls us to the Dance, as the poet T. S. Eliot called it. At the still point of the turning world / There the Dance is / And there is only the Dance. It is why Saint John’s has been here for 126 years, and why you are here this morning. You believe it. Some Christians do not associate Christ with dancing, but the primitive Christians, Christians of the earliest Christian centuries, in the clumsy art of the catacombs, depicted Christ as Orpheus, the fabulous musician of Greek mythology whose rhythm none could resist, who danced the fawns out of the forest and the fir trees down from the hills. And they had warrant for it, after all, for what else did Jesus say of himself? Speaking of the unresponsiveness of the Jews to his mission, and to that of John the Baptist before him, “You are like children,” he said, “sitting in the street complaining to one another: we have piped to you and you have not danced, we have mourned and you have not lamented.” Mourned, that was John calling to repentance. Piped, that was Jesus dancing them into the kingdom of God with the music of everlasting joy.

A little over a year ago at the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles, there was great merriment and dancing for the wedding reception of Evan and Kristin Ellsworth. What is it that released us — that set us off? Music played by The Cowling Band, one of the best bands in the City of Angels. That is what released us: songs to dance to. But what was it that controlled us? The same thing: we danced to the music. The control is the release. The music held us. The music let us go.

This is why the lyres and cymbals that David dances to in our text and writes about in the Psalms are illuminating parables of true religion. For the whole mystery of Christian faith comes down to a phrase of one of the great collects in the Book of Common Prayer: “whose service is perfect freedom.” God our control and God our release. Listen to what John Milton says of his Lycidas in heaven: “There entertain him all the saints above / in solemn troops and sweet societies / that sing, and singing in their glory move / and wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.”

Let me end where I began, with the young King David dancing. For as long at least as the moment lasted he was not afraid to be himself no matter what the queen might think or the servants or all Israel. The reason he wasn’t afraid to be himself was that he was dancing in the presence of the Most High by whom he found himself not rejected but accepted, not threatened but blessed. David wasn’t afraid to be himself because he found himself in the presence of the King of Glory with whom he felt not fear finally but a gladness and oneness that rose up in him like music. He wasn’t afraid of life because the source of life itself had gotten under his skin, calling forth his true self in all its nakedness, setting it free to be made whole and real.

When you come right down to it, what I stand here in the name of the King of Glory to do is to invite you to join this strange dance, to invite you to listen to the music that Jesus of Nazareth heard who in this sense was indeed the Son of David. In the rhythm and pattern of Jesus’ life you can see what human life was made to be, a life where we meet one another not as strangers of whom we are afraid, but as friends in whom we delight. A life where we meet God not as an unappeasable tyrant but as the leader of the Dance, the Lord in whose service is the freedom to become fully human and fully alive. Amen.

BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

Prayer, the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days’-world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices, something understood.

When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other? 
What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together
To make money from each other’? or ‘This is a community’?
And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.
O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose the lions all get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

_______________________________________________________

T. S. Eliot, the end of Little Gidding (No. 4 of ‘Four Quartets’)

Gabriel Ellsworth
English 125: Major English Poets
Professor Linda Peterson
1st May 2009

T. S. Eliot and the Spiritual State of Society:

The Propagation of the Christian Faith in “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service”

Throughout his career, Thomas Stearns Eliot was concerned with the spiritual depth, or lack thereof, in the life of the modern man. Often in Eliot’s poetry, an everyday scene inspires reflection on the part of the speaker about his own spiritual state and that of those he observes. In “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” Eliot describes his experience at a church service.¹ The images and the theological concepts that he considers while at church lead him to the realization that for the worshippers at church, and more broadly for the society of Eliot and his contemporaries, the Christian faith has lost the meaning and relevance that it once had and should have. In “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” Eliot suggests that Christianity has become static in modern society and no longer produces its once characteristic sense of ongoing, self-renewing fulfillment; moderns do not know the vital, self-propagating power of Christian revelation.

At first, Eliot’s surroundings at church suggest the generative power of the Christian faith. Eliot opens the poem with what appears to be a description of the stained glass windows of the church: “Polyphiloprogenitive / The sapient sutlers of the Lord / Drift across the window-panes” (1-3).² Presumably, the “sutlers” are the saints depicted in the stained glass. A sutler is a supplier of an army; by describing the saints as sutlers, Eliot attributes a very active role to them. Eliot draws on the traditional Christian metaphor of spiritual warfare as the cause that animates the faith. He suggests that the saints in the stained glass are involved in this conflict even now, long after they died. These great figures of the faith are supporting those who should currently be fighting the battle, namely those in the pews where Eliot finds himself. The verb that Eliot attributes to the sutlers is also noticeably active. Rather than being confined to one spot, the saints are, as Eliot experiences them, drifting and thus drawing the worshippers’ attention to the models of active Christian behavior that they represent. The saints are not simply moving about for show; Eliot hints that their movement is generative with the opening word of the poem. “Polyphiloprogenitive” may or may not technically be a neologism, but even if there are uses of it recorded in the 19^th century, they are surely few enough that Eliot’s use of the word is no less striking for their existence. Because the word itself is original, it suggests that the saints propound a faith that is fundamentally renewing and transformative.

Eliot further suggests the active propagation of the Christian faith with his Biblical allusion. After describing the drifting of the sutlers, he declares, “In the beginning was the Word” (4). Eliot quotes the famous opening words of the Gospel according to Saint John. In this passage, John describes the Incarnation in very august terms that lay the ground for the rest of the story of Jesus. This passage is familiar enough to the Christian ear that Eliot can expect many of his readers to know what follows it.³ Eliot demonstrates an important function of his allusions with this reference: by the mere fact that John’s words are so recognizable, Eliot invites the reader to complete the sentence whose beginning he quotes. Eliot evokes the awe-inspiring language of John’s opening verses with only one line; his ability to do so shows the power that this passage of Scripture commands over the members of a culture with Christian heritage, such as Eliot’s. The reference, by reminding the reader of how influential John’s words have been, shows the power of the Christian message to be passed down and experienced actively through the ages.

In the second stanza, Eliot’s reference to Origen hints at a disjunction between Christianity’s essential message and its practice. After repeating the allusion to the Gospel of John, Eliot writes, “Superfetation of to en, / And at the mensual turn of time / Produced enervate Origen” (6-8). He continues to associate the revelation of Christian truth, especially the Incarnation, with fertility. This association is threatened, if not broken down entirely, when Eliot refers to Origen of Alexandria. Origen interpreted Christ’s words about “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matthew 19:12) literally and castrated himself. In the context of “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” in which Christian truth inspires generation, Origen’s self-emasculation seems questionable, if not thoroughly inappropriate. In the first stanza of the poem, the saints in the window and a passage from Scripture testify to the power of the Christian faith to propagate itself, which Origen literally prevents himself from doing. Eliot’s reference to Origen’s castration depends on an obsolete usage of “enervate.” In modern usage, the word generally means “weakened” or “lacking vigor.” Thus, Origen’s epithet suggests that, regardless of his intentions, Origen weakens the Christian faith because he cannot pass it on to progeny.⁴

Eliot further complicates the question of how and whether the Christian faith can retain its vitality with his description of a painting. At first, when he introduces the image, Eliot describes it almost as an art historian might: “A painter of the Umbrian school / Designed upon a gesso ground / The nimbus of the Baptized God” (9-11). He identifies the artist by a particular style known to connoisseurs of art, and he names the material on which the image is painted.⁵ This suggests that Eliot is at first removed from the painting, viewing it with an almost academic detachment. He is conscious of the fact that the nimbus was created within the context of a specific work of art by a historical painter. However, Eliot goes on to say, “The wilderness is cracked and browned. / But through the water pale and thin / Still shine the unoffending feet” (12-14). Eliot shifts to the present tense, which suggests that he is entering into a direct experience of the painting. It is as though he is watching Christ’s baptism directly with his own eyes. However, this experience is only momentary. Eliot finishes his description of the poem by completing the Trinity in the past tense: “And there above the painter set / The Father and the Paraclete” (15-16). Eliot is once again conscious of the fact that he is viewing a work of art created by a human being. He sees the Father and the Paraclete where he does because of a decision made by the painter, not necessarily because of any divine truth about the presence of the Trinity in Christ’s baptism. The scene of Christ’s baptism begins and ends in Eliot’s experience as an artifact to be viewed at a temporal distance.

The Christian faith has lost its immediacy for the other worshippers at the church service as well as for Eliot in his viewing of the painting. He writes, “The sable presbyters approach / The avenue of penitence; / The young are red and pustular / Clutching piaculative pence” (17-20). Eliot describes the priests going through the motions of the service and the young people holding offerings for the collection plate. Both of these groups are performing actions that could be part of authentic Christian practice. However, Eliot does not describe the spiritual benefits that should flow from these actions; rather, they seem static and unfulfilling. The presbyters “approach” the avenue of penitence, but Eliot never confirms that they in fact reach it. The priests come close to walking the Christian path of true repentance, but Eliot does not show them actually participating in this essential part of the Christian life. The young people, for their part, are described with a neologism: “piaculative.” Unlike the saints in the stained glass, however, the youth do not seem more generative or awe-inspiring because of the use of an unfamiliar word. Eliot never describes the pence achieving any sort of redemption or renewal for the youth. Beginning in the second stanza, Eliot has suggested the failure of the Christian message to be passed on and carried out in the fullness of its essential vitality. In its context within the poem, the neologism “piaculative” suggests a lack of real meaning in the clutching of the pence; it does not correspond to true spiritual sacrifice or pardon. Eliot seems to confirm over the course of the rest of poem that neither the presbyters nor the youth achieve any meaningful spiritual result from their actions. The only further description of the worshippers is in the next stanza. Eliot describes them standing “[u]nder the penitential gates” (21) but never indicates that they pass through the gates or that they experience any kind of true penitence.

At the end of the poem, Eliot suggests that it is not just the worshippers in the particular church where Eliot finds himself who fail to see the profound implications of the Christian message; rather, this failure is societal. The bees of the penultimate stanza perform a “[b]lest office of the epicene” (28) by fertilizing the flowers in the garden. The bees serve as a reminder of the importance of propagation in the natural life cycle; Eliot likely describes their work as “[b]lest” because it contributes to propagation, which he associates with the continued presence and relevance of Christian revelation at the beginning of the poem. Sweeney is the first of two figures in the final stanza of the poem who contrast with the bees. Eliot writes, “Sweeney shifts from ham to ham / Stirring the water in his bath” (29-30). Whereas the bees’ motion serves to generate new life, Sweeney’s motion seems merely self-indulgent; he moves to make himself comfortable. The stirring of the water contrasts with the description of Christ’s baptism earlier in the poem, where Christ’s feet “through the water pale and thin / Still shine” (13-14). Jesus retains his radiance even when covered with water because the water of baptism is a sign of something greater: that his life has been consecrated to a purpose. Sweeney, on the other hand, seems comfortably ensconced in his bathwater, in which he moves for his own comfort. The image of Sweeney bathing is, by comparison to the painting, the image of a modern man failing to look beyond himself to the truth expressed in the mysteries of Christian tradition.

Eliot concludes the poem with a rather cryptic couplet that further suggests that modern society overlooks the importance of Christian truth. After describing Sweeney in the bath, he writes, “The masters of the subtle schools / Are controversial, polymath” (31-32). Eliot recognizes that the masters do know a great deal by calling them “polymath,” but he provides no indication that they are any more aware than the other figures in the poem of the continuing relevance of the Christian message. “Polymath,” in designating what the masters have learned, also calls attention to the knowledge that is missing for most of the poem, beginning perhaps as early as the mention of Origen. Eliot as he considers the painting, the worshippers at church, and Sweeney all contribute to the impression that society does not know the transforming power of Christian truth. They lack this knowledge because the process of self-propagation that characterizes this truth at the beginning of the poem has for some reason been halted. The masters may know much about specific fields with which polymaths are familiar, but they have not received the revelation of God in the Christian story. “Controversy” comes from a Latin word meaning “turned against.” Perhaps the masters are “controversial” in this etymological sense; for all that they know, they seem only to confirm that modern society’s attitude towards religion has turned against the nature of Christian truth, relegating it to the past rather than recognizing its continuing power for the present and promise for the future. Insofar as the masters presumably represent the highest levels of knowledge in society, they help Eliot advance a broader societal diagnosis, for they show that Eliot’s modern society as a whole lacks an appropriate awareness of the transformative, regenerative power of the true essence of the Christian faith.

1. For the purposes of my analysis, I will assume that Eliot himself is the speaker of this poem. The title suggests that Eliot is in fact describing his own experience. In any case, spiritual barrenness, a common theme in Eliot’s work, seems to be a general trend that he observes in modern society, and thus my analysis does not depend on the speaker’s having any exact identity.

2. T. S. Eliot, “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” from Poems, 1920, in The Waste Land and Other Poems, ed. Frank Kermode (New York: Penguin, 2003), pp. 49-50. Some details about the text are drawn from Kermode’s notes to the poem, p. 95.

3. “… and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1b-2, King James Version)

4. Whether Eliot is casting a judgment on the historical figure of Origen for the act of self-castration is a question that I have neither time nor space to treat here. At the very least, though, Origen in the context of the poem reminds the reader that Christians may find it difficult to live out and carry forward their faith authentically.

5. This painting is probably not in the church whose service Eliot is attending. Nevertheless, it is relevant for his analysis of the Sunday morning service, because it inspires reflection on Eliot’s part about a story and concepts that he might consider while sitting in the pews.

                                          If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

_______________________________________________________

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding, I, lines 41 – 50

PERSEVERANCE

My God, the poor expressions of my Love

Which warm these lines, and serve them up to thee

Are so, as for the present, I did move

    Or rather as thou movedst me.

But what shall issue, whither these my words

Shall help another, but my judgment be;

As a burst fouling-piece doth save the birds

    But kill the man, is seal’d with thee.

For who can tell, though thou hast died to win

And wed my soul in glorious paradise;

Whether my many crimes and use of sin

    May yet forbid the banes and bliss.

Only my soul hangs on thy promises

With face and hands clinging unto thy breast,

Clinging and crying, crying without cease

    Thou art my rock, thou art my rest.

My proposal to you is that we should not be frightened of the postmodern critique. It had to come. It is, I believe, a necessary judgment on the arrogance of modernity, and it is essentially a judgment from within. Our task is to reflect on this moment of despair within our culture and, reflecting biblically and Christianly, to see our way through the moment of despair and out the other side. That is why I want to talk to you about the resurrection and about the Emmaus Road story; that is why I want to do so through the lens of the poem that we call Psalms 42 and 43, which (despite its customary division in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles) is actually a single poem, with its refrain:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God. (42:11)

This psalm contains a magnificent prayer, which we do well to echo as we consider our own calling:

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill.

and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy;

and I will praise you with the harp,

O God, my God. (43:3-4)

Let me take you quickly through this poem, so that we see its shape and its thrust. The whole is about being in the presence of God. At its most obvious level, it is about someone who has experienced the presence of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. The poet remembers the excitement of being close to God and feels a deep ache and a sense of loss because he is not there any more.

So, in verses 1 to 5, he is in a state of what we might call depression. He is thirsty for God, like a deer in the desert longing for cool water. He finds himself in tears twenty-four hours a day. His memories of happier times only make him feel worse. All he can do is engage in an inner dialogue: Why are you so heavy? Hope in God—I shall again worship him.

Then, in 42:6-11, he remembers what it was actually like, being in the presence of God. He is a long way away from Jerusalem, in the land of Jordan or up on Mount Herman. He knows that in theory YHWH is there with him, even in exile, and he can pray to YHWH, but still the poet feels as if he is a very long way off, that his enemies oppress him and people taunt him, “‘Where is your God?” There is no evidence of the presence of YHWH. So the poet longs to be back in Jerusalem, where one could sense God’s presence and grace where everyone was caught up with worship and adorations again the poet reminds himself that he must hope. (Telling yourself to hope is not, incidentally, the same as hoping; but if it is all you can manage, it is a good deal better than nothing.)

Then, in what we call Psalm 43, but which is actually the third and last stanza of the same poem, the problem comes more into focus. The psalmist is not just geographically distant from the home of God, he is surrounded by people whose whole way of life is radically opposed to God. They are ungodly, deceitful, and unjust. He is powerless before them, and God seems to have abandoned him. It is at this point, the low point in the whole poem, that he prays:

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill

and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy;

and I will praise you with the harp,

O God, my God. (43:3-4)

He is far away from Jerusalem and needs to be led back with joy, like Israel in the wilderness being led by the pillar of cloud and fire, the strange symbolic presence the living God. “Light and truth” are what you need, not just when your intellect is curious and needs stimulating, but when your whole being is lost, downcast, depressed, and thirsty for God. Then he returns once again to the refrain:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God. (43: 5)

I want you now to hold this poem in your minds as we turn to the New Testament. We will use the language and imagery the poem supplies as the visual backdrop, or perhaps the musical accompaniment, to the story we are now going to examine, the story of the two disciples, on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35.

I should like first to consider the background to the events that Luke describes here. It is the afternoon of the first Easter Day. All sorts of strange things have happened in the morning—rumors of visions and of an empty tomb-and the disciples still have not a clue as to what is really going on. As the day wears on, two of them set off to go home to Emmaus. They are joined by a mysterious stranger, who engages them in conversation about the new events. If we are to understand this section historically, it is vital that we grasp the central point stated in verse 21. “We had hoped,” they say, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

Where were they coming from? What was their problem?

They had been living out of a story, a controlling narrative, a “metanarrative,” as we might say. This story was built up from historical precedents, prophetic promises and of course from the songs of the Psalter. The Exodus was the backdrop. God’s subsequent liberations of his people from various foreign power, formed successive native layers all pointing in the same direction. When pagan oppression was at its height, Israel’s God would step in and deliver her once more.

Why are you cast down, O my soul

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.

In particular—and this is perhaps the most important point to grasp—most first-century Jews believed that the Exile was not yet really over. Yes, they had come back from Babylon, geographically. But the pagans were still on top: first Persia, then Greece, then Syria, and now Rome. No sensitive or intelligent Jew would have dreamed of asserting that the promises of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the rest had been fulfilled in the various paltry “returns” that had taken place. Israel still needed “redeeming”—which, in their language, was an obvious code for the Exodus. The Exodus was the great covenant moment; what they now needed was covenant renewal. So we may imagine that when they prayed Psalm 43, they had this situation in view and some very clear notions as to what they were hoping for: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from those who are deceitful and unjust deliver me? … O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; … Why are you cast down, O my soul … Hope in God!

The Hebrew Scriptures thus offered to Jesus and his contemporaries a story in search of an ending. Jesus’ followers had thought that the ending was going to happen with Jesus. And clearly, it had not.

How had they thought it would happen? The pattern of messianic and prophetic movements in the centuries either side or Jesus gives a fairly clear and consistent picture. The method and the means would be quite simple: holiness, zeal for God and the Law, and military revolt. The holy remnant, with God on its side would defeat the pagan hordes. Thus it had always been in scripture, and thus, they believed, it would be when the great climax came, when Israel’s God would become King of all the world. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The two on the road to Emmaus had been doing what the psalm told them to do: Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

The crucifixion of Jesus was therefore the complete and final devastation of their hope. Crucifixion is what happens to people who think they are going to liberate Israel and find out, too late, that they are mistaken. It is not simply that Jesus’ followers knew from Deuteronomy that a crucified person was under God’s curse. Nor was it simply that they had not yet worked out a theology of Jesus’ atoning death. The crucifixion already had, for them, a perfectly clear theological as well as political meaning: It meant that the exile was still continuing, that God had not forgiven Israel’s sins, and that pagans were still ruling the world. Their thirst for redemption for God’s light and truth to come and lead them had still not been satisfied. All of this we must, as historians, hold in our minds if we wish to understand the story of the road to Emmaus at its most basic level.

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and New Testament scholar, herewith