Rising Up Emmaus and Beyond

By Michael Jagessar, Council for World Mission

presence, engagement, and detour

The Emmaus Road walk remains a popular post-easter narrative that has grabbed the imagination of generations with its powerful storyline, a 7-mile walk, two conversation partners, a stranger joining in, the progression of the conversation, reaching home, meal sharing, heartburns, jaw-drops and much more. For this reflective piece allow me to take a detour towards current walks and ongoing journeys along roads of despair, displacement, terror, violence, and protests and various attempts of these walks to rise-up against current crucifixions and the ongoing struggle for full and flourishing life for all.

Unconsciously, I may have been thinking of the comment from John Dominic Crossan: "Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens”. Crossan, of course, may not have had my detours in mind especially since mine will be somewhat wayward and unpredictable. I am playing with the French root of detour meaning to ‘turn aside’.

Mulling over the piece, I came across what may seem largely amusing with no bearing on what will follow here. It was a news item about a woman who decided it was time to do something about the disgraceful state of some of roads in Britain starting with her own local and surrounding areas. The woman spray-painted images of various bugs around potholes (to warn others) after it damaged her car. In some of the deeper potholes she floated toy ducks! The local authorities were more concerned about the time and cost it would take them to remove the paint rather than fixing the holes or offering some sensible answers as to why these holes seem to multiply and stay around for some time. The community-minded woman was “alone” on that road, protesting to make other travellers aware and at the same time shaming the status quo to act. The authorities, like Cleophas and an unnamed companion, found it difficult to catch-on to this unfamiliar/maverick voice and her way of sending and signalling a message.

Like the local authorities in the above, can it be these supposed friends of the ‘rising-up’ One were actual stumbling blocks?. Was their unawareness designed or undesigned – missing all sorts of signals? What kept them from comprehending? What keeps us from comprehending, especially the connections and systemic causes of injustices? Can it be that friends of Jesus were suffering from some form of bandwidth deficiency: an inability to see beyond the immediacy before them, even though forewarned on numerous occasions? They were overly talkative about Jesus on their road walk. They were saturating the air with words, ideas and ‘what ifs’. A lot of speaking got in the way of seeing, listening, discerning, analysing, and acting. Perhaps what we have here is a tension between ‘rising up or arising’ (resurrection if you prefer) and the new possibilities and Empire’s narrative as being the only possible familiar reality however disastrous. Or is it a case of the ongoing effects of trauma, as a result of the crucifixion of hope, that is, the overwhelming nature of traumatic experiences (the force of the violence) hindering their ability to orient the resurrection experience into a new framework of meaning? Can this be why in the other resurrection appearances, the rising-up one shows the nail marks with a minimum of words?

There are many situations and circumstances today that are in desperate need of resurrection: from pandemic to endemic, the injustices within and between nations are multiple as they are intersecting and systemic. If Emmaus seems to suggest that gestures of hospitality, friendship and openness is where faith thrives, grace breaks through, and life may just flourish again then perhaps, we may do well to consider the many roads around us where protests against the agents of death continue to threaten and kill, and re-commit to walk those roads in solidarity. The Zapatistas of Mexico deployed the expression: preguntando caminamos (walking, we ask questions) pointing to a model of witness-solidarity-struggle. As people of the Jesus way, have we forgotten what it means to join the struggle, these walks? Have we become co-opted chaplains to the systems or shitstems?

detour and retour

So, onto to my detours around some roads/walks where numerous rising-up are taking place, roads that we need to be on protesting and in solidarity with those taking

Consider the current crucifixion of the people of Myanmar and Hong Kong. The contexts are not the same. But there is a pattern which can be named as geopolitical bullying. It is not new and the ones I am referring to are those embodying imperialist habits and acting with impunity. Be it nations or their puppets the agenda is to deny life and living through threat, terror, geopolitical manoeuvres, and death. The above two examples of people or country at the receiving end of bullying can be seen in other places such as Ukraine, India, the Middle East, Venezuela, and Haiti among others. Consider, for instance, why a country like Haiti cannot even procure Vaccine for COVID-19 yet armed to the teeth? Guess who is supplying Haiti with arms and who are the beneficiaries? Who benefits from social and political upheavals? Geopolitical Bullies remain the few powerful nations, engineered monetary institutions, large corporations, and their proxies whether dictators, government officials, the military, the beneficiaries of the arms industry. The underlying motivation remains greed and a deadly neo-liberal extractive capitalism. On this road walk, people of the way of ‘rising-up’ will have to put their lives on the line!

Wherever people are rising up in protests, economy and economics are implicated. We are all caught up in the endless commodification of everything. The current pandemic exposes this and the lies that are being spun and to which many of us are lured to believe in or even co-opted to become part of. What ought to be a health emergency is also an economic and political crisis induced by the insatiable and predatory reach of neoliberal economics. This reality did not appear from nowhere: it is the consequence of the collision and collusion of neo-liberal capitalist economic system. Achille Mbembe’s use of ‘necro-politics’ is helpful reminder. Simply put it is the socio-political - economic organization of powers that can decide which populations are disposable, discardable and should be left to die - the expendable ones within and between nations. It is predictable who the winners are. Just consider the very small minority who have seen their economic worth balloon during the pandemic. Are we ready to join the many protesting the systemic boot on their necks, throats, and hearts daring to ask the critical, collective, and systemic questions, irrespective of the costs?

I recall a conversation with some teaching colleagues who found my comparison of two male world leaders as outrageous. I identified one as a ‘thief’ and the other as a ’robber’, contending that while one ‘stole democracy’ by guile and the other did so by brute force. The trenchant ‘worshippers’ of these leaders, considered my comparison as rubbish and were unable to see my point. While my comparison was not thought through, most of these colleagues may now be very concerned with what has been and is happening to democracy across the globe, especially places that claim to be beacons of democracy. Consider as one example, the current peoplepower ‘taking to the streets’ over the UK Policing Bill (readers can identify examples from their own context). This Bill when located in the context of Brexit (that will re-establish British Sovereignty in the name of the freedom of her citizens) reveals how unfree Britain is becoming. Alongside new plans for immigration attempts to limit judicial review and the outworking of the Human Rights Act, the Police Bill sets the seal on a new dawn of state power where marginalised groups and political dissenters/protestors will be governed more as subjects. And there is a link and growing conflict between market forces and democracy (Mbembe). Democracy is no longer the rule of the majority when the minority (that is the rich) run things! Will capitalism ever give itself up to democracy aimed at redressing deficits and more equitable distribution? ‘Lockdown’ is taking on a different meaning as democracy and democratic rights are being starved of oxygen. The examples are multiple, and the imperative is clear: we must ‘rise-up’ against the deception of the thieves and robbers stripping democracy. The only ‘normal’ protest in this regard has to be a radical one!

“Memory is everything” writes Elie Wiesel. It is the case more than ever when there is an intentional agenda to ‘whitewash’ the racist frameworks of Western coloniality and its ongoing legacies. Milan Kundera may not have had such racist frameworks in mind but his insight that the human struggle against power “is the struggle of memory against forgetting” could not be more apt. The Black Life Matters (BLM) protest marches and the toppling of racist icons ought to still be fresh on our minds. Is this the Kairos moment to bring about and cascade the transformation of racist frameworks? The pushbacks already evident and the continuing racist attacks underscore that the anti-racist road is certainly a long-haul walk. Consider what has been happening to Asian-Americans; reflect on why many Haitians are still being deported from the USA; consider how Churches (episcopal in the USA and the Church of England) are currently wrestling with their racist habits; mull over the recent UK Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report that severs issues of race from class, putting institutional racism as something past, focusing on ethnic disadvantages largely down to cultural and genetic factors. The reach of racism, racist frameworks, ideas of exceptionalism, supremacy, and whiteness with its long, embedded, and subliminal history continue to rule. And extractive global capitalism needs massive racial subsidies (Mbembe). Solidarity is most critical and urgent on this walk, where less talk and more protests and actions are needed.

retour: beyond dead-end captivity

Discerning the potential for roads to take us where we need to go is crucial to faithful journeying. Some alluring roads turn out to be oppressive dead ends. Some will co-opt us to the ways of empire while others may be escape routes from any ‘taking on’ of the systemic issues. It may be the case that our rising-up walks need new tactics and approaches toward that destination we are all seeking: the heart of God which is one of flourishing life for all. “Please, I can’t breathe” has a far wider reach into the asphyxiation and crucifixion of the impoverished millions. What more should be toppled - thrown out? What new alliances are needed? How will you in your church and community spaces create empowering ‘breathing spaces’ that redress deficits, inequities, and foster life flourishing spaces? What are we going to give up? How can we live out our liturgical practices, as the work of the people, on the streets with the protestors?

Rethinking and locating what happened to Jesus (collisions and collusions) as a consequence of his resistance to Empire is a necessary and urgent undertaking. This misunderstood Jewish Rabbi took a trip up-stream, against the flow that brought him into public spaces where systemic evil, collision and collusion were at work. The gatekeepers of organised religion were angry at him for breaking religious rules, for threatening the temple economy, and for generating a large following. He took on the system and their distortions of God’s dream for the whole of creation and it was costly. He paid the ultimate price, with his life. A decolonial scrutiny would challenge us to rethink the ecclesial/theological mantra that Jesus died for our and the world’s sins. Was this an astute hegemonic (think ‘colonial’) move that hides the fact that Jesus was killed because of evil and the collusion of powerful forces? The ‘forces’ that nailed Jesus are still with us today, causing much brokenness, pain, crucifixion, and death. The sooner we recognise the above and the many forms Empire continues to take today in our ecclesial and liturgical life, the more able we would be to become communities of resistance and rising-up. Death and its agents will not have the last word. Transformation is God’s work of rising – up, resurrection. We are not alone!