Unholy Sh+t: The One Where Jesus Uses a Cloaking Spell

When I was nineteen, I decided to go on a bit of a walkabout. I walked from Florida to Tennessee to clear my head. I left with nothing but the clothes on my back and just strolled all over the place. One day my adventures took me to some random mall in Alabama. Why? Because I was still a teenager, and that’s what we did before MySpace.

Some girl walks up to me and starts talking to me. She uses words that indicate that she is excited to see me and that we know each other.

I have no clue who she is.

Eventually, after a long time, I say, “Ashley?”

She was my middle school girlfriend, the first person I ever went to a school dance with. We had our first kiss behind the bleachers at a football game. Not because we were cool, though. She was in band.

I didn’t instantly recognize her because context matters. The last thing I could have imagined was that I would see my old flame in a mall in Alabama, so my brain needed time to catch up.

It made me wonder how many other moments in life I have missed because I wasn’t paying attention or because my mind couldn’t process what was happening right in front of me. 

Unholy Sh+t: An Irreverent Bible Study

Third Sunday of Easter

Today’s reading: Luke 24:13-35

*Queue the F•R•I•E•N•D•S intro*

The One Where Jesus Uses a Cloaking Spell:

During the three years that Jesus was in ministry, from his first miracle to his death on the cross, he was timid about his abilities. Jesus often appears to avoid his miraculous talents. More than once, Jesus tells those he has healed not to tell others what he has done for them. 

However, after Jesus is resurrected from the dead, he’s suddenly unashamed of his skills as a Jedi. He’s just out here doing weird sh+t just because he can. 

Welcome to the Wizarding World of Jesus.

There are a lot of bonkers stories post the resurrection of Jesus. First, you’ve got the whole throwaway line in Matthew when he’s all, “Anyway, after Jesus was resurrected, it started a zombie apocalypse when many of the saints walked out of their tombs and visited everyone in the city.” (Matt 27:52–53) And then you’ve got the whole Jesus walking through a wall, scaring the sh+t out of the disciples, before saying, “Hello, fellow humans! Shove your hand into my guts and see that I have bones, then people will know I’m not a ghost!” (Luke 24:39) Which, incidentally is why Thomas wanted to touch Jesus’ wounds. He wasn’t the doubter; he was the equalizer. He wanted the same deal the rest of the employees were getting. Thomas wasn’t doubting; he was unionizing.

So these two disciples are walking by themselves on the road to Emmaus, just doing some strolling, when Jesus appears, but they don’t know it’s him because he’s wearing his Clark Kent glasses. Then Cleopas (oh, we’re using our made-up names) and Jesus, who they don’t know is Jesus because he’s being sneaky, get into a theological debate. 

Now, this would be the absolutely most satisfying thing on the planet for me. Stay with me here: you die, and you get to watch who was actually loyal are not. You catch the lying rat in your friend group who betrayed you, and the dude who denies even knowing you when you aren’t around, and the friend who wants to put his fingers in you but was too afraid to say it to your face. But you don’t stay dead; three days later (or a day and a half, but who’s counting), BAM! You are back from the dead being all, “Oh, John was there! I f+cking saw Mary. Where were you, Peter?”

That is literally my fantasy. 

But I digress. Jesus is now giving his disciples a Miss Nelson is Missing style lesson: pop quiz, were you paying attention to Jesus’ sermons? Even after all the theological debating with incognito Jesus, they still don’t realize that it’s him. 

Now, my favorite verse in the whole Bible, the moment we find out Jesus is actually Southern. The two disciples arrive at their house and are about to go inside for dinner, but Jesus fakes them out for a dinner invite, “Jesus pretended like was going to keep going until they invited him in.”

This brings up two important theological points:

A. Jesus was still hangry even after death

B. He needed to be invited inside, which means we can not entirely rule out that Jesus was a vampire. 

The two disciples offer Jesus some food, and he sits down to have a snack and blesses the meal. He handed them the bread, and it said their eyes were opened, and they could see Jesus, but he also had disappeared. It’s a very confusing narrative until the final line, “They knew him in the broken bread.”

This is super important for everything that happens next.

They didn’t know Jesus through his teaching, his theological training, or conventional wisdom. They proved they knew him when they invited him in for a meal, even though they thought he was a stranger. They showed that they got the point of the message, even if they couldn’t fully understand all the details. He was only known to them in the sharing of the meal, in the breaking of bread, in the act of kindness to some random dude on the streets.

Because that’s the real message of the Gospels, not high-brow theology, but in loving our neighbor without qualifiers.